Jewish Life #32. Beresjiet serie #17:Loneliness and Individuation

It is one of the most dramatic scenes in the Tenach. In parashah Vayishlach we read: ‘Jacob remained alone’ (32:25). He, in order to meet his brother Esau south of the Yabok River, was left alone and a mysterious, unnamed man wrestled with him until dawn. 
The entire episode is shrouded in mystery. At first Jacob and this man (or figure, or angel?) fought in complete silence. Some say, the adversary had the appearance of Esau. Jacob’s battle with him therefore takes on symbolic or psychological significance. Steinsaltz comments: ‘As his encounter with Esau approached, Jacob had to deal with an internal battle and identity. He struggled to retain his basic self-identity without surrendering or giving in to this dark, half-spiritual alter-ego, represented by this being’[1]  
 
Steinsaltz’s comment could have been written in Freuds’s work Traumdeutung (1899), Jung’s work on the theme of individuation or Yalom’s insights on the topic of loneliness.
 
A dream can be described as a sequence of images, thoughts, emotions and feelings that usually occur involuntarily in the mind during certain phases of sleep. An analysis of a dream, as the scene of Jacob at the Yabok is often considered, should, according to Freud, be about an analysis of the manifest content (the directly experienced and remembered content of a dream), the latent content (its deeper, hidden meaning) and the dream work (the processes by which the latent content of a dream is transformed into the manifest content). Jung, in line with Steinsaltz, would say: the scene at the Yabok is all about the identity of Jacob and his individuation process. A complicated matter that I do not burn my finger on. Perhaps that is reserved for one of my psychoanalytically trained friends. 

What strikes me in this scene is the sentence: 'Jacob remained alone.'
 
A brilliant analysis of the condition of loneliness intrinsic to being human, in my opinion, comes from Rav Soloveitchik. In Lonely Man of Faith, the Rav, based on the analysis of the Biblical passage about the creation of man and the first human couple, shows that a human being is existentially lonely by definition. We wrote about this topic in Blog #19. 
According to the Rav, the Torah is highlighted an existential dichotomy of human experience: community and aloneness. 
The Rav in The Community writes: ‘The originality and creativity in man are rooted in his loneliness-experience, not in his social awareness. The singleness of man is responsible for his singularity; the latter, for his creativity. Social man is superficial: he imitates, he emulates. Lonely man is profound: he creates, he is original.’[2]
The existentially lonely man expresses himself through his uniqueness and related creative capacities bestowed by his Maker. By doing so, he lives life more fully, and enriched the lives of others. 
 
It is precisely through our individuality that we humans are able to make our unique contribution to a better world. The scene of Jacob shows us that the process of individuation does not go without a struggle. It is a process of trial and error, of struggle. In 32:28 we witness the new name for Jacob: Israel, 'for you have striven with God and with men, and you have prevailed.'
 
Jacob sought to clarify the meaning of his fight and struggle. He did not know whether his adversary was an angel, Esau of his own alter-ego, or whether their confrontation was a trial from God or an actual threat form dark heavenly force. 
In fact, says the Jewish Bible, this is not important. What is important is that we humans realize that we are unique, solitary beings and that the process of individuation involves struggle. The struggle that Jacob also had and ultimately resulted in his name change.
 
[1] Steinsaltz’s Humash, p.180.
[2] Soloveitchik, J.B. (2015). Confrontation and Other Essays. Maggid (pp.8-9). 

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