Wholly, Wholly, Wholly

One might have reached the erroneous conclusion that there is some good in suffering because of the heroic responses that it elicits. The Torah, by telling us that Jacob returned whole in terms of his body, wishes to impress upon us that suffering is not a permanent fixture in G-d’s plan for the world. To be sure, suffering has elicited our deepest soul powers of self-sacrifice. Suffering has given us an opportunity to actualize hidden spiritual potential. Nevertheless, it is a state of existence that will come to an end and will ultimately be transcended.

Three-fold Connotation of Whole

When the Patriarch Jacob returns to the Land of Israel, after many years of travail, he settles in the city of Shechem. The Torah, in this week’s Parsha, describes his arrival in Shechem as follows: “and Jacob arrived in Shechem whole.”

What is the implication of the word “whole?”

Our sages explain that it has a three-fold connotation. Firstly, Jacob, despite the injury that he had suffered when he had a wrestling match with Esau’s angel, was now cured. He was no longer limping as he had previously. Hence he was whole in terms of his bodily functions.

Secondly, our Sages continue, Jacob was financially whole. Despite the extravagant gift he had given his brother Esau, he was still fiscally sound and “whole.”

Thirdly, Jacob did not suffer spiritually. All his Torah knowledge that he had acquired in his youth prior to his departure from Israel, was not lost as a result of his many years that he spent working for his uncle Lavan.

Omen for the Future

Everything the Torah tells us about our Patriarchs, our sages tell us, has a direct bearing on the lives of the Jewish people.

Jacob’s ordeals in Charan where his scheming uncle Lavan lived, is a portent of the wanderings and travails of the Jewish nation in their exile from their homeland.

Accordingly, Jacob’s return to his homeland and his settling in the city of Shechem in a state of “wholeness” is an omen for the Jewish people as well. After all that the Jewish nation has been through, they will finally experience peace and tranquility and will remain whole in all of three aforementioned areas.

An End to Suffering

Firstly, we will remain whole physically. Although the Jewish people responded to their physical persecution heroically and with great self-sacrifice, G-d will ultimately bring an end to suffering. One might have reached the erroneous conclusion that there is some good in suffering because of the heroic responses that it elicits. The Torah, by telling us that Jacob returned whole in terms of his body, wishes to impress upon us that suffering is not a permanent fixture in G-d’s plan for the world.

To be sure, suffering has elicited our deepest soul powers of self-sacrifice. Suffering has given us an opportunity to actualize hidden spiritual potential. Nevertheless, it is a state of existence that will come to an end and will ultimately be transcended.

Material Matters Intact

Secondly, our experience in exile necessitates involvement in worldly affairs that is analogous to Jacob’s lavish gift he had sent to Esau. But, alas, Jacob’s gift was no longer in the possession of a man as spiritual as Jacob. It would have appeared as if Jacob’s material resources were compromised and tainted.

Likewise, life in exile necessitates that our resources — time, effort and money — are expended on “Esau-like” worldly pursuits, rather than on the “Jacob” oriented spiritual ones. It appears that our resources are lost to the world of the spirit, or at the very least compromised.

True, the reason for this involvement is to tame the world, refine it and bring it closer to G-d. Nevertheless, one might have thought that in the final tally, we will remain deficient and the integrity of our existence will have been compromised.

By telling us that Jacob returned whole in the material sense as well, our sages suggest that the end result of our exile involvement with material matters will be to elevate the material to the point where they too become G-dly and in the final analysis nothing will be lost.

Torah Knowledge Intact

And finally:

Just as Jacob did not forget his Torah knowledge, so too, all of the spiritual qualities that we acquired before we were exposed to the influences of exile cannot be lost.

The reason for this is that even if outwardly we seem to have lost some of our spiritual content and Torah knowledge, they remain embedded in the inner core of our souls. By way of analogy, in this computer age, we know of many instances where information may have been deleted from our files. But, with the right software, we can still access all the information by probing into some hidden parts of our hard drive.

The message from Jacob’s return is an uplifting one. No matter how much we think we lost in all of our painful history, everything will be restored to us in the end. We should, therefore, never feel that our efforts are in vain. On the contrary, every positive act brings us one step closer to the realization of our greatest hope and dream — a time of “returning whole” in the final redemption ushered in by Moshiach.

From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Vayishlach by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.