“Struggle Is Divine,” Rabbi Elaine Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings & invocation blessing offered to the Boston City Council

December 13, 2024 | 12 Kislev 5785

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we make our way toward Shabbat.  This week I share with you the invocation blessing I offered the the Boston City Council on Wednesday. You can listen to it as a podcast here.

I am grateful to be able to stand here before you.
And I thank you for the gracious invitation to offer words of blessing as invocation for this gathering.

There are many words that course through, around, and off these walls.

There are many interactions, discussions, disagreements that animate your discourse. Perhaps every single person here has engaged in struggle; wrestling with ideas, potent with hope and possibility — but also ideas threatening to derail, distract, and disturb the ability to bring balance and maybe even calm.

And yet, at the very same time, struggle can help to synthesize, to create the dialectic that pushes us out of comfort to be even better than we imagined and lead us beyond ourselves and toward others.

It is this very act of struggling and wrestling that I want to lift up at this noon hour where we stand (or sit) in between before noon and after noon.  A liminal moment that calls upon us to consider how to go forward.

In my tradition, in Judaism, struggle is a worthy value and endeavor. It describes our very existence and takes us to the story in Genesis we read and study this very week.

The patriarch, Jacob, had had high hopes for himself, so much, that he managed to wrest, not wrestle, the birthright and blessing from his brother, Esau. As a result, Jacob had to leave and escape his brother’s anger.

Years pass and life happened to him. Marriage (complicated),  and children (immensely complex), and trouble with the in-laws all served to put life in perspective and demand deeper consideration of his path.

Jacob prepared to encounter his brother after all these years. He sent his family across the river. In the darkness of night, he was left alone. Yet, the Genesis text informs us that Jacob wrestled until the break of dawn. (32:25) But with whom?

Was it an angel?
His brother Esau?
Or perhaps with himself.

The text tells us that he wrestled with both what is divine and human and prevailed. Ambiguity in Biblical texts summons us to draw out interpretation, even as it focuses our attention on the very act of wrestling.

Here’s what I think: Jacob wrestled with himself.  He had to rediscover his ability to struggle as a sacred and human action in order to prevail. He received a new name of Yisrael, the one who prevailed in his struggle.

Notice it does not say succeeded or won, as if it was a competition. The struggle itself is what strengthened him and would lead into the future.

Struggle is what strengthens us as well.  It would be much easier to live a life in stasis, unprovoked, never frustrated, and certainly not emotional.

Yet, life at the growing edge causes us to teeter, to continually find our balance and to lose it again.  This is at the very heart of what it means to struggle, with ourselves and with one another.  It is a sacred act.

Jacob does encounter his brother and they embrace and say: “to see your face is to see the face of the divine.”

Struggling, wrestling, arguing, disagreeing lead us toward a divine encounter.  It helps us deepen our understanding of the core of the sacred work we all engage in.

To see your face, your humanity, your needs and hopes as a fellow human being is to see the face of the divine.

You are here because you have that gift as those who govern, who lead, who engage in the art of argument to wrestle and to struggle. That is the blessing today and every day and it is divine. Hold that opportunity as precious. You have the capacity to behold the face of the divine in every human being for whom you toil and wrestle to turn this world and city into that which you can imagine it to be and to be better.

May these moments allow you to prevail as the dawn of awareness breaks and awakens in each of you possibility and promise to be healers in this uncertain and broken world waiting to be redeemed by all of you.

So may it be.

Shabbat Shalom! שבת שלום

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It has been an eventful week. I welcome your responses and reflections. Share with me what you think here. Your email goes directly to me!

We join together onsite and online for Qabbalat Shabbat at 6:00 p.m. to sing, to pray, and welcome Shabbat in community. Register here to join on Zoom.

Riverway gathers at 6:45 p.m. for dinner, followed by an 8:00 p.m. service. Schmoozing, drinks and dessert follow the service.

On Shabbat morning, we gather at 9:00 a.m. in the library for a short Shabbat service and Torah reading, followed by a lively discussion of this week’s Torah portion. All levels and abilities are welcomed. Register here to join on Zoom.

Rabbi Elaine Zecher