“Because You Have Struggled,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings
December 5, 2025 | 8 Kislev 5786
Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection, as we make our way toward Shabbat. You can also listen to it as a podcast.
I have noticed two topics of conversations coming up recently.
The first is a renewed focus on the impact of the “Covid era” and its effect still on people’s lives. The second is about worry and fear for the future from multiple perspectives. The ground feels shaky beneath us. I think both are intertwined.
Covid was traumatic and so is feeling unnerved by the future. These are challenges that can easily overwhelm us, but they don’t automatically have to. We have inner resources to pull from.
In weight lifting — even with light weights — muscles must tear to get stronger. Though I don’t wish it on anyone, forces rise against us that bring out our perseverance and courage. They are lessons we learn not by desire but by experience.
This week’s Torah portion contains the dramatic story of Jacob wrestling throughout the night with what is described as an eesh, אִישׁ֙, a person or a being. The next day he would encounter his brother, Esau, after many years apart and after the disastrous way he manipulated the blessing from his father meant for Esau, the older son. We don’t know for sure with whom Jacob wrestled. Was it Esau? An angel? Himself? As the dawn began to appear the eesh, אִישׁ֙, gave him a new name of Yisrael, explaining, “you have struggled with beings divine and human and you have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29)
Jacob, whose progeny will make up the 12 tribes and become known as the people of Israel, will carry this experience as part a legacy we inherit. Struggling and striving are embedded into our history. The path of the Jewish people is one filled with challenge and has Biblical origins. These words by Rabbi Mendel Mintz (from Tablet Magazine) show how they emerge from the Biblical stories.
“When God wanted to make David a king… God didn’t give him a crown but gave him Goliath.
When God wanted to make Joseph a leader… God didn’t give him a palace but sent him to prison.
When God wanted to elevate Moses, God didn’t give him a stage but gave him decades in the wilderness.
When God wanted to make Esther a queen, (in the Purim story), God gave her a crisis and Haman.
Time and again, we see:
God doesn’t elevate people through ease, rather through struggle.
Because it’s not despite the challenge that we rise.
It’s through it. That’s how the human spirit is made and rises higher…
We weren’t placed in this world to hide from its problems — we were created to illuminate and solve them.
And if, this year, you find yourself walking through a wilderness… or standing before your own personal or professional Goliath… Remember: that’s not a detour from your destiny. That is your calling.”
A week from this Sunday, we light the first candle for Chanukah. This story, too, reminds us to face the forces that challenge us so that together, we, like the light, can grow stronger.
Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום
Connect with me here. What have you been hearing?.
Rabbi Elaine Zecher