From: dzk@cs.brown.edu (Danny Keren)
Subject: Jacob (was: Re: Jews and Ozir) 
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1993 05:37:06 GMT

At the request of Ishaq S. Azzam, I am posting a short comment on the
story of Jacob's fight with the angel.

I do hope that this newsgroup will serve as a tool for Moslems and Jews
to understand each other's religion, and not be used for lame attempts
of spreading religious hatered by mis-interpreting, mis-translating,
and mis-representing words written thousands of years ago.

So, here is the relevant paragraph from the Bible (Genesis 32:25-32):
The story starts when Jacob returns to his previous camp site, to see
if he did not leave anything behind.

"And Jacob was there by himself, and a man fought with him until sunrise.
And he saw that he could not beat him, so he touched his thigh and Jacob's
thigh was dislocated while fighting with him [1]. And he said 'let me
go because the dawn has risen' [2] and Jacob said 'I will not let you
go till you bless me'. And he said to him 'what is your name' and he
answered 'Jacob'. And he told him 'your name will no longer be Jacob
but Israel because you have been with Elohim [3] and with people and
you survived [4]'. And Jacob said 'please tell me your name' and he 
answered 'why should you ask my name', and he blessed him there. And 
Jacob called the name of the place Pneiel [5] because I have seen Elohim 
face to face and lived".

Some explanations:

1 - it was Jabob's thigh that was dislocated, not the angel's one, as
    was erroneously written in a previous poster.

2 - the explanation is: the "man" with whom Jacob fought was an angel
    of Essaw (sp?), who cannot be seen by people during daytime.

3 - this is more elaborate. In the Jewish tradition, there are different
    words to describe various revelations of the almighty. The main
    mechanism through which the almighty reveals himself and communicates
    with people is the so-called "tree of life" (hinted to by the
    ladder in Jacob's dream), which is composed of various "sefirot"
    (called in English "spheres", not to be understood in the geometric
    sense). There are four "trees of life", with the highest joining
    the second highest at its bottom an so on till all four are
    connected in a chain leading from the almighty to the lowest
    part of existence, e.g. raw material. The "sefirot" are organized
    in three columns: the right one (also called "the active pillar"),
    the left (the "passive pillar"), and the middle ("pillar of 
    consciousness"). The word "Elohim" means the first "sefira" of
    the left column. 

    It is a fundamental principle in Judaism that connection with the
    almighty is never direct, but only through one of the "sefiras".
    the higher the "sefira", the more direct the contact. The highest
    such "sefira" that a person contacted with was the first "sefira"
    of the right column, with which Moses contacted (Deutermony 34:10).

4 - 'Israel' is a combination of the words 'sharita' (you have been)
    and "El" (short for Elohim).

5 - "Pnei" means "the face of", "El" as in [4].


Undoubtedly, there are better and more complete explanation... I hope
this helped.


-Danny Keren.