(Delivered December 21, 2024)

There’s a teaching from Pirkei Avot that I return to again and again. In Chapter 2, Mishnah 5, we read:

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be a human

I understand this beautiful teaching to mean that while the opportunity to do the right thing is always there for us, it’s much easier when the circumstances push us in the right direction to begin with, when the wind is at our backs. But in a setting where the impetus is toward cheating or inflicting pain or lying or simply doing nothing, it takes real courage and striving to resist the prevailing winds and walk the path of righteousness. 

In the middle portion of Sefer Breishit—the Book of Genesis—there are two instances where the Torah teaches us about an encounter with an אִישׁ (ish). Both Jacob and Josef have such encounters, and each of them is changed in surprising ways through their respective experiences. 

In last week’s parsha, Vayishlach, Jacob is preparing to be reunited with his estranged brother Esav after many years apart. He sends his family ahead across the river Yabok. Then:

וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר׃

And Jacob remained alone, and he grappled with an אִישׁ until daybreak.

The tradition explores the meaning and nature of this אִישׁ. There are all sorts of possibilities: is it God? An angel? And if it is an angel, what kind of angel? In Breishit Rabbah, the Midrash posits that perhaps the אִישׁ is Esav’s guardian angel. The Bechor Shor, a 12th century French rabbi, suggests:

מלאך היה שהיה רוצה לְהַפִּילוֹ אלא שהק’ עזרו

It was a messenger who wanted to cause his downfall,
but the Holy One helped him

Many think that the אִישׁ represents Jacob’s conscience: as he reflects on the chaos that his youthful deceptions caused, as he wonders and worries about how his brother will receive him, his inner churn is embodied through this mysterious encounter. 

However we might understand the nature of Jacob’s אִישׁ, we do know that this dustup has a strong and lasting effect on him. When the stranger renames him Yisrael it is כִּי־שָׂרִיתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁים וַתּוּכָל׃—because he has reckoned with both God and man and held strong. The felt sense of struggling with forces larger than himself, forces he doesn’t fully understand, helps Jacob see himself more clearly. And his new name gives him—and us—a model of relationship with God that admits complexity, ambiguity, and struggle. Becoming God-wrestlers turns out to be central to Jewish identity, and our capacity for considering and reconsidering contributes to our resilience throughout our history. Only God-wrestlers could have endured the millennia of hardship and struggle and still maintained faith in God and a sense of purpose as a religious group, even as fractious as we are. Jacob’s encounter with the אִישׁ and his transformation into Yisrael lay the groundwork for what we would become as a culture. 

On the other hand, the אִישׁ that Josef encounters is of a different sort, indeed their meeting is so short and seemingly mundane that we might overlook it in the sweep of the overall narrative arc. It comes in this week’s parsha, Vayeshev. The Josef cycle opens with a depiction of Josef and his brothers, a relationship full of conflict & rivalry, which, frankly, Josef doesn’t handle well. Meanwhile his father Jacob, widowed of his beloved Rachel and perhaps overwhelmed by the difficulties between and among the brothers, plays favorites and ignores problems. And in this dynamic of Jacob not really fully seeing how his other sons regard Josef, it happens that when the brothers go off without Josef, Jacob sends his beloved favorite child to catch up.

Josef, wandering the fields to try to find his brothers and the flocks of sheep they are allegedly tending, runs into (you guessed it) an אִישׁ.

וַיִּמְצָאֵהוּ אִישׁ וְהִנֵּה תֹעֶה בַּשָּׂדֶה וַיִּשְׁאָלֵהוּ הָאִישׁ לֵאמֹר מַה־תְּבַקֵּשׁ׃

An אִישׁ came upon him wandering in the field, and the אִישׁ asked him,
“What are you looking for?”

It might be tempting to write off Josef’s אִישׁ as a random minor character, a mere plot point for getting Josef physically near enough to his brothers that the conflict can play out through the cruelties they are about to inflict. But I actually think there’s more there. This אִישׁ is a model for the Jewish tradition of chesed, of caring for one another and offering companionship and support when needed. Josef’s אִישׁ has no particular reason to approach and could just as well have passed right by the young man with the colorful cloak wandering aimlessly by. The Torah doesn’t say that Josef was in distress, but something makes the אִישׁ take note of him and offer gentle assistance. And in so doing, the אִישׁ teaches us a mode of offering care and a clarifying question. 

Of course, where would we be without this essentially anonymous figure? His gentle question and then pointing Josef in the right direction opens up the whole grand story—of the brothers faking Josef’s death and selling him off into slavery in Egypt; of Josef leveraging his wit and skill to make something of himself, even as a slave in a foreign land; of the famine that made Josef a hero in the region and eventually brought his brothers back into his orbit in a stunning scene of reconciliation—and eventually, of the rise of a Pharaoh who knew not Josef and the ensuing enslavement and redemption that is at the core of Jewish identity. 

Both Jacob’s אִישׁ and Josef’s are formative, representing the chesed and the gevurah—the kindness and the strength—of Jewish culture. These two mysterious beings teach us about ourselves and our values, even as they resist easy explanation. 

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

Both of these אֲנָשִׁים —these ishes—show us that each and every life, no matter how long or how short, has the potential to be meaningful and to make an impact. Over the course of our unfolding lives, we too can read our small encounters as sources of learning, insight, and meaning. And each one of us can be an אִישׁ in someone else’s narrative; in fact we never know when we will be. Through seeing the importance of everyday moments and everyday people, we become more fully human.

Shabbat shalom!