What is it that made Jacob? Not Abraham or Isaac or Moses, the true father of the Jewish people.

We're the congregation of Jacob, B'nai Israel, the children of Israel. Jacob, Israel is the man

whose name we bear. Yet Jacob didn't begin the Jewish journey, Abraham did. Jacob faced no trial

like that of Isaac at the binding. He didn't

lead the people out of Egypt or bring them the Torah. Admittedly, all his children stayed within the

faith, unlike Abraham or Isaac, but that simply pushes the question back one level. Why did he

succeed? Where Abraham and Isaac failed. It seems that the answer lies in this

week's Parachar and the next. Jacob was the man whose greatest visions came to him when he was alone at

night, far from home, fleeing from one danger to the next. In this week's Parishar escaping from Esau, he stops and rests for the

night with only stones to lie on and has this epiphany. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway

resting on the earth with its top reaching to heaven and the angels of God were ascending and

descending on it. When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought,

surely God is in this place and I didn't know it. He was afraid and said, how awesome is this place?

This is none other than the house of God. This is the gate of heaven. In next week's Parasha,

fleeing from Laban and terrified at the prospect of meeting Esau again.

He wrestles alone at night with an unnamed stranger.

Then the man said, your name will no longer be Jacob at Israel because you have struggled

with God and with humans and have overcome. So Jacob called the place Peneal, saying,

it is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.

These are the decisive spiritual encounters of Jacob's life, yet they happen in liminal space, the space that is neither starting point nor destination, at a time when Jacob was at risk in both directions, where

he came from and where he was going to. Yet it was at these points of maximum vulnerability

that he encountered God and found the courage to continue despite all the hazards of the journey.

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