Living a Life that Matters: Rabbi Kushner on Jacob

Harold S. Kushner

Some days ago, I uncovered two unread books in my basement, Listening to Midlife and Living a Life that Matters. Too late for those, I guess. I wasn't yet 50 when I bought them at a long-gone local bookstore almost 15 years ago.

Yet Living a Life that Matters by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner still resonates. I'm especially drawn to what Kushner sees in the story of Jacob in Genesis.

Kushner compares Jacob's story to a play in three acts: boy, suitor, and patriarch. The arc of the play is implied by the character's name change. Jacob, his name in youth, relates to Hebrew akav "crookedness," while the name he later earns, Israel ("he wrestles with God") relates to yashar "straight."

In the story, Jacob masquerades as his brother Esau to trick their father into passing his legacy on to him instead of Esau, his firstborn son. Kushner speculates that it's deeper than that: Jacob wants the strength and boldness of Esau; he feels incomplete. (22)

Kushner observes that, lacking curtains or chapter headings, the ancient text marks transitions from one act to the next with dream-like epiphanies in the night, a ladder to heaven and an all-night wrestling match with an unnamed being. The first of these happens at the end of the day when Jacob fled his home where Esau has sworn to kill him. Ashamed and afraid, Jacob envisions a bridge between earth and heaven. Kushner says this image gives Jacob hope that he can reach higher (21). That night Jacob bargains with God: for divine help, he will give God a tithe of his earnings.

In the second act, he is the first (the only?) character in the Bible who falls in love. Others take wives, are given wives, coming to appreciate them later, but for Jacob and Rebekah, it's love at first sight. Rebekah's father tricks Jacob as badly as Jacob tricked Isaac, fooling Jacob into marrying the less lively older sister Leah. We're told that Jacob hated Leah. Kushner speculates that she was always a living reminder of Jacob's own malfeasance. Jacob has to wait 14 years to consummate his love for Rebekah. He builds a family and wealth, and readies himself for a return to Esau.

[My poem Angels Never Know grows from Jacob's story.]

In the second transition between acts, Jacob has sent his family ahead. We're told that Jacob was alone. But then he's wrestling with someone who doesn't give a name. Who is it? I've heard it's God, it's an angel, it's a devil, it's a spirit of the place. Kushner thinks it's Jacob's own self, equally strong, equally adept. Jacob's fighting his own fear; Kushner says he's fighting his own impulse to use some underhanded way to avoid meeting Esau face to face. Jacob's injured, but survives, a lesson to take away, that he doesn't have to be afraid. Again, Jacob prays, but this time he does not bargain with God but requests strength to do the right thing (31).

Across the three acts, Kushner sees Jacob moving from amorality and selfish ambition, shame being the only sin, to a morality of integrity, in which the primary sin is to fail to live up to your ideals (21). Kushner tells us the scripture calls him "shalem, whole, united within himself" (107). He lives the rest of his life raising the brothers who will constitute the nation of Israel, and he carries his love for Rebekah to the end.

What does Jacob's story have to do with Kushner's readers leading lives that matter? Kushner's chapter following his analysis of the Jacob story is titled "Family and Friends: We are Who We Love." Essentially, it's what I've known for years, said simply in a lyric by Comden and Green, Make someone happy / make just one someone happy / and you will be happy, too (see blogpost of 11/2006). Kushner tugs at my heart when he refers to adolescents, himself included, who were "redeemed from self-doubt" by a parent or teacher who let them know what Jacob's first dream told him: you are someone who will matter. Kushner steps out from behind his screen of authority to tell of his son killed in middle school by a rare genetic disorder, whose classmates years later cited him again and again as their inspiration and a shaping influence on their lives.

Kushner's message resonates with what I believe as a Christian: We cannot bring the Messiah down to solve the world's problems, but we can bring the Messiah down for someone else.

[Harold S. Kushner. Living a Life that Matters. (New York: Knopf, 2001.)]