Jacob’s battle with the negative angel was the battle with his own ego. We read about the fight between the negative angel and Jacob. We know everything has a physical and a supernal, non-physical manifestation. It says that Jacob found himself at night, alone, and he battled with this angel until sunrise. We know, as the Zohar explains, this wasn’t a physical battle–it was a fight of consciousness between Jacob and his own ego.
What was happening here, what Jacob feared the most, was beginning to happen. Jacob’s ego came to him and asked, “How many people are as connected as you? How many people know as much as you?” This battle we read in the Torah is not a battle of physicality, but a battle of consciousness. It was the battle of Jacob with his own ego.
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We know the Torah is not simply stories, but a discussion and explanation of great Lights being revealed and great supernal battles being fought.
Why was Jacob frightened by Esau?
This week we find something very interesting. Jacob was very scared. Jacob says, “I’m so afraid of Esau,” and he begs for assistance. It says Jacob was very worried. Time and again in his meetings with Esau, Jacob was very frightened.
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I wanted to share a little more, and I want to end with one of the last sections where the Zohar talks about the power of unity. It speaks about the time when they built the Tower of Babel. It says because they were unified, no judgment could come down to them until their language was mixed up and their unity began to fade. Because they were with one mind, one heart, one thought, nothing could stop them. And judgment from above could not come and rest on them.
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It says that Noah was a righteous person in his generation. I think I shared this last year: there are two teachings from the Apte Rebbe about this week’s reading. He teaches that the power is not that it just gives wisdom or understanding, but that it completely transforms it. As I was teaching the chevre on Thursday night, these are two of my favorite teachings. But you can’t keep repeating the same lesson over and over, and this year I was going to teach something else. I was reading in a different book, the O’hev Israel, and it’s the same teaching, but deeper. I was excited about the fact I could retell this teaching.
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The Baal Shem Tov, in his last will, speaks about Noach’s ark. What the kabbalists teach is the word tevah, ark, can also mean a word. What the Baal Shem Tov explains, and another appreciation and understanding we should have of the Zohar, is that there are two ways to connect. We can connect from the outside looking in, the way most of us make our intellectual connection. And then there is entering into the Zohar. The Zohar explains that the Light that is the Zohar can act as a Light that protects us from negativity, but only if we enter it.
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