There is a delightful Snoopy quote, one of my favorites in all of the Charles Schulz Peanuts’ tradition: “I love the kinds of hugs where you can physically feel the sadness leaving your body.”
We all could use a hug like that, especially during the pandemic. Jacob, the hero of this week’s Torah portion, Vayetzei, gets not just one Snoopy hug, but two.
The most well known of these is the one his brother Esau gives him in their dramatic reunion as described in Genesis 33:4, “Esau ran to meet him and embraced him.” Since stealing his brother’s birthright and blessing a few chapters before, Jacob has been petrified Esau will enact revenge upon him. But instead of revenge he gets reunion, one of the most dramatic in all of Torah.
The other Snoopy hug Jacob receives is hidden inside a Hebrew word whose root is A-V-K, often translated as wrestle, as in Genesis 32:25: “And Jacob was left alone and there wrestled (VayA-VeK) a man with him until the breaking of the day.” But, the root for wrestle (A-V-K) and the root for hug (H-V-K) are almost identical, only one letter off. Isn’t it better to imagine that instead of wrestling with the angel, Jacob was hugged by him?
Our name Israel, as the portion tells us, actually comes from this anecdote. We are, as Israel is often translated, “God Wrestlers.” But, I personally prefer the less antagonistic task of hugging. How beautiful it is to think that at our patriarch’s lowest moment he received a divine embrace. In these times of social distancing, I’ll leave you with another Snoopy quote that I saw recently on a social media site: “When my arms can’t reach people who are close to my heart… I always hug them with my prayers.”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex