Living Between Yaakov and Yisrael
We spend a lot of time learning, understanding ideas, concepts, frameworks. But there's a gap that most people never cross. The gap between understanding something and actually living it. In the language of Torah, that gap is the difference between Binah and Das. Binah is when something makes sense.
Speaker 1:Das is when what you understand and how you actually live are aligned. When what you know becomes the way you experience and respond to reality. This series is about closing that gap. Taking ideas that we understand intellectually and turning them into something real, something lived, something that shapes how we see everything that happens in our lives. We'll be working with Torah teachings that approach this with precision and structure.
Speaker 1:Not just what to believe, but how reality actually works and how to operate within it correctly. So this is not a series about inspiration. It's a series about process, a structured path from Bina to Das. Welcome back my friends. Here we are once again for another episode of the Shema Podcast.
Speaker 1:I said when I started this series that my goal was to do a couple of episodes per month. And here I am less than a week later with a third episode. I don't think this pace will continue. Matter of fact, I am sure it won't, but there is a lot of content that I have been studying for quite some time contemplating journaling about. So the episodes may flow a little more robustly at first, but once those ideas have been depleted, it'll take me time to learn more ideas and share them with you.
Speaker 1:There is the idea of slowly releasing episodes over time. However, when things are flowing, I decide I'm just going to put it out there. When the ideas are fully formed in my mind, because the way my life works, sometimes I may go through a long stretch where there's not a lot happening in that area. Ideas are not flowing. This is an idea that I had been working on for quite some time.
Speaker 1:It's a pattern I saw, a very clear pattern between the name of Yaakov and Yisrael being interchanged throughout the Torah. But before I get into this framework and how to apply it in our lives, I wanted to touch back on the previous episode and bring some clarity to that idea to make sure it's understood. That idea of the system of concealment and disclosure, that is a once in a lifetime event. That is something that happens on a macro level that everyone has to go through at some point in their spiritual growth. So it's more intense, but it's something that, again, that happens once.
Speaker 1:What we're going to be learning today through the system defined through the what the Torah tells us of the names Yaakov and Yisrael are going be something that happens more on a regularly occurring even intraday basis. I did want to say, if it's not already clear, that the reason I'm studying these teachings and sharing them with you, if it's not obvious after my last episode, but I am deep into that stage two concealment. I entered stage one as I moved into a community. In the last two years, it moved to a stage two. And I realized that these teachings are going to be much more meaningful by me giving them now.
Speaker 1:And it has also aligned me to take my struggles and turn them into something that I hope, God willing, will allow someone listening to go through those periods of concealment and disclosure as discussed in the last episode with much more ease understanding what they are going through. I'll tell you another story as well before I get into this teaching. Last December, maybe it was January, can't remember exactly when, but Rabbi Yisrael had told me he wanted me to meet with this rabbi who was coming into town. Because I had shared with him when we were doing those episodes together on the Merkavah sort of what I was going through. And I had stopped really talking to rabbis about this.
Speaker 1:I mentioned it to him in passing when we were in here recording because no rabbis I spoke to about it understood what was happening with me. And I felt it was even harming their Amunah. So I was like, I'm just not going to bring it up anymore. And he really wanted me to go meet with this rabbi that was coming in town from Israel. He goes by the name of the Saussure Rebbe.
Speaker 1:And he assured me this is a different type of person to definitely go speak with him. He told me a encounter his friend had with this rabbi, and it was insane, mind blowing story. Something was different here. There's something about this person that he's able to have clarity on situations, which is what Torah does. If you study Torah and you learn Torah, apparently this person wakes up in the middle of the night and goes and learns in Rachael's tomb.
Speaker 1:So there's I'm not denying the fact that when someone with a pure, pure heart, which this man did, studies Torah, they're able to have Ruach HaKodesh, have clarity on things. So I said, Fine, I'll go meet with him. Someone had sponsored, I guess, for him to come in town. He spent a couple of days here, not doing sightseeing, but literally sitting in someone's house in their office, seeing one person in this community after another, having those people share what their challenges are and him providing clarity and insight on how to navigate that situation. One after another, after another, after another.
Speaker 1:We're very sweet person. Comes out here and just does this for, I don't know how many days he was here, but it was just one meeting after another meeting after another meeting. I go see him and I walk into the office, I introduce myself. I said, I understand you can offer guidance to me? And he says, Sure, sit down.
Speaker 1:Mostly Yiddish speaking, but he had some broken English. We were able to communicate. He asked me for my mother's name and he started writing on a piece of paper. And then he asked for my wife's name. I could tell then he was wanted her mother's name.
Speaker 1:So I explained that my wife, Elisheva, is a Ger. So he knew it would be Sarah. And he's writing the Hebrew names on a piece of paper, but like in a format going down the page in a certain structure. He asked for my daughter's name. Again, said she's a Gare.
Speaker 1:And he wrote everything out on a piece of paper, like in this pattern down the sheet. And then he stared at it. And then he started getting frustrated, putting his face in his hands and shaking his head and clearly confused and frustrated. He grabbed a book out of his book bag and sort of flipping through the book. And he was just saying like, this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what he was doing. It was something to do with names. And I realized after a while, Okay, woah, woah, let me explain. I introduced myself as Dan, but my Hebrew name is Danielle. So he said, Oh, okay.
Speaker 1:And he put the additional letters, the yud and the aleph and the lamed. And then he seemed very happy. He was like, Oh yes, yes. Okay. See, everything seemed to make sense to him.
Speaker 1:I still had no idea what's going on. I just kept thinking back to the episode I did during the Q and A, where I was asked to look into names and we learned that when we receive our Hebrew name from our parents or when we give a Hebrew name to our children, we lose our free will. That those names come from a deeper level. They're not random because our souls are like branches on a tree. And I think that's maybe what he was doing by writing all the names out in Hebrew in this particular pattern to see something.
Speaker 1:And then he took my hand and he looked at my palm, which I didn't even know this was a Jewish thing. It makes sense. I've heard that the Arizal was able to look at the lines of someone's forehead and tell exactly what their previous lives were. It does make sense that since our bodies are simply physical impressions of our soul in this world that there's obviously nothing is random or ancillary or has something with no meaning. So I guess I understood when he was looking at my palm that there was telling things about my life journey.
Speaker 1:He said, Explain to me everything that had been occurring in my life. It was very surreal to listen to a total stranger talk to you about your life. But he said, This phase will be over soon and everything will flow much stronger than it did before. I don't know real soon what that means, especially in the from world, Hasidic Jew. I mean, if you want meet Hasidic Jew at 07:00, tell them six.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like, I don't know what real soon means, but eventually this phase will be over. And that's why I realized I need to do these teachings now because they're going to have more of an impact. They're more real to me now while I'm raw and involved in the experience. So I just wanted to share that. So you understand where I'm coming from, why I'm clinging to these teachings, why they are like oxygen to me.
Speaker 1:And God willing, I hope that they'll be there to help out you in those times in your life when they can be most helpful. So to the teaching at hand, we're going to learn about this system, this struggle, this oscillating pattern between Yaakov and Yisrael. So we tend to believe that growth happens when things become clear, when confusion goes away, when pressure is removed, when the situation resolves. We assume that the struggle is the obstacle, but the Torah presents a completely different model. It shows us a person who reaches his highest level, not when life becomes simple, but in the middle of struggle.
Speaker 1:And that person is Yaakov. But there's something important to understand. This is not just a story about Yaakov. This is about us because the Jewish people are called by two names, Yaakov and Yisrael, and that itself needs to be understood. Avrael has children, but not all of them continue the covenant.
Speaker 1:Yisrael has children, but not all of them continue the covenant. But Yaakov is different. All his children become the foundation of the Jewish people. The 12 tribes all emerge from him. And because of that, his identity is not just personal, it becomes national.
Speaker 1:We are called B'nei Yisrael, the children of Israel. But at the same time, the Torah still calls him Yaakov, which means something powerful. We are not just Israel, we are Yaakov. And if the Torah preserves both names, then both are essential. So when we study the movement from Yaakov to Yisrael, we are not studying his life.
Speaker 1:We are studying our own. If we want to understand this properly, we have to do something simple. We have to follow the Torah step by step and pay attention to one thing. What does the Torah call him in each moment? Yaakov or Yisrael.
Speaker 1:Because the Torah is not switching names randomly. It is teaching us something, something very important. Let's begin in Bereshish verse thirty two eight where it says Yaakov was very afraid. He's about to meet Yisrael, so this is not theoretical. Yisrael hates him, wants to kill him, is coming with 400 men.
Speaker 1:So what does Yaakov do? He prepares in three ways. He sends gifts. He prays. He prepares for war.
Speaker 1:He is fully engaged in reality, and the Torah calls him Yaakov. What does this mean? Yaakov represents navigating reality, dealing with uncertainty, managing risk, acting within complexity. And this is critical because we often think if I had more amuna, I wouldn't feel fear. However, Yaakov Avino And this is a necessary step.
Speaker 1:At some point, everything falls away. No family, no support, no strategy. The Gemar tells us that he went back for small vessels, but the Torah is emphasizing something deeper. He is alone. And what does aloneness mean?
Speaker 1:Sort of going back here to what I was saying about my situation. It means no one can answer for you, no one can decide for you, and no one can remove the moment. And this is where transformation begins. Not in clarity and not in comfort, but in a place where you cannot avoid yourself and you can't avoid the struggle. The next verse, a man wrestled with him.
Speaker 1:Bereshis 3two 25. Now something completely different happens. No more strategy, no more planning, just struggle. Direct confrontation. Until now, Yaakov was navigating around reality.
Speaker 1:Now, he is directly engaging in it. And this is where everything changes. The angel says your name will no longer be called Yaakov, but rather Yisrael. This is the moment of clarity, the moment of alignment. What is Yisrael?
Speaker 1:You struggled with God and with men and you prevailed. Yisrael represents clarity, directness, alignment with truth. But now comes the most important part. Right after this highest moment, the Torah says, Yaakov called the name of the place Peniel. The next verse, he's referred again to Yaakov.
Speaker 1:A bit shocking. He just became Israel. So why is he called Yaakov again? Because the Torah is teaching the experience of Israel is not the goal. The goal is bringing Israel back in to Yaakov.
Speaker 1:Yisrael is the moment of clarity. Yaakov is the one who has to live with it. Naming is an act of integration. He is taking the experience and giving it meaning. This is a Yaakov function.
Speaker 1:Why does the Torah tell us that he went back for small vessels? Because transformation is not about escaping life, leaving details behind. It's about engaging every part of life. The small things matter because life is made of small things. And now we can understand the structure.
Speaker 1:This is what's interesting when I looked up the gematria for the names. It revealed something incredible. The gematria of Yaakov is Yud10IN70Kuf100Base2182. Yisrael is Yud 10 Shin 300 Reis 200 Alef one thirty, five forty one. So, again, the Gematria Yaakov is one eighty two, the Gematria of Yisrael is five forty one, the difference being 359, which is what I was thinking had something to do with this, and it did.
Speaker 1:Three fifty nine is the gematria of the satan. Shin 300, test nine, nun 50. What is this telling us? The difference between Yaakov and Yisrael is the value of satan, which means the struggle is not in the way. It is not delaying something.
Speaker 1:It is the bridge. It is the mechanism for transformation. The Gemara states that the satan and the yetzer harah are the same system, expressing itself in different ways. The Satan is what creates external challenges, and the Yitzhahara is what gives us the internal challenge on how we interpret the external challenge. And what we're learning here is that the struggle that's being created here through the satan is what is necessary to move from Yisrael to Yaakov.
Speaker 1:It is what creates us, what builds us. I'm not sure if it's my place. I'm still fairly new to the from world, six years here. I don't know. I think I can say this.
Speaker 1:And look, what do I know? I'm not a rabbi. I'm just a regular guy. But it seems like there is a problem in the from world of Segula addicts. It's just my observation because what I see is that when people have these struggles, they look for Segula to remove the struggle, get rid of the struggle in front of me so I can move forward, not realizing that the struggle is there for a reason.
Speaker 1:The struggle is there for a reason. The internal way in which we deal with the external struggle is what's going to transform us. So it seems like that's a problem when you're always just trying to figure out some quick fix to remove the outside struggle instead of realizing that Hashem authorizes to be there to cause us our necessary and create our growth and what's necessary for us to transform. Now, I just happened to last Shabbos read an amazing writing by Rabbi Joey Rosenfeld. I was planning on doing this and I just added this in yesterday because it was like so amazing how this all fit in.
Speaker 1:The PC wrote, if anybody wants them, I'm happy to forward them the PDF. You can request it through the Shema Podcast WhatsApp group by clicking in the link in the show notes or email me at shemapodcastshowgmail dot com. Where my Joey Rosenfeld explains that the entire structure of reality is built on what appears to be opposites. Things like giving and receiving, light and vessel, clarity and concealment. These are not just abstract ideas, they are basic structures of how reality functions.
Speaker 1:At first, these forces appear completely separate, even opposing. One feels like light. The other feels like darkness. One feels like clarity. The other feels like confusion.
Speaker 1:But rabbi Joey explains that this separation is not the ultimate truth. It is how reality appears from within the system. At a deeper level, these opposites are not truly separate. They are unified. And the process of growth is not simply choosing one side over the other.
Speaker 1:It is learning how to reveal the unity between them. He goes on to explain that this unfolds in stages. First, you experience the havdala, the separation. You feel like there are two forces, clarity versus confusion or light versus darkness or good versus bad. Second, you try to bring them together.
Speaker 1:You try to integrate. You try to understand how they relate. But the deepest stage is something else entirely. You begin to realize that they were never separate to begin with, that what appears as opposition was actually part of a single unified process. Now we can get back to Yaakov and see what's really happening.
Speaker 1:At the beginning, the struggle feels external. Something is happening to him. Then he engages it. He wrestles with it. But the turning point is not when he wins.
Speaker 1:The turning point is when he says, I will not let you go unless you bless me. This is a completely different stance. I wanna repeat this. The turning point is not when he overcomes the struggle. The turning point is when he says to the angel that he's wrestling with, I will not let you go unless you bless me.
Speaker 1:He's, again, not trying to escape the struggle. He is demanding that the struggle itself reveal its purpose. He is saying, if this is part of reality, then it must contain meaning, and that is the moment he becomes Yisrael. Rabbi Joey also explains that what we call opposing forces, the Yitzhertov and the Yitzhara, are not enemies in the way we think. They are completely complementary.
Speaker 1:Each provides what the other lacks. One expands, one constricts, one reveals, one conceals, but both are necessary. Without concealment, there is no striving. Without darkness, light is not revealed. This is why struggle happens at night.
Speaker 1:Night does not mean the absence of light. It means a different mode of light, a concealed light. And in that concealed state, things feel confusing, fragmented, difficult. But that concealment is not a mistake. It is a condition that allows for growth.
Speaker 1:So now we can say something deeper. Yaakov becomes Yisrael is not about escaping struggle, eliminating difficulty. It is about recognizing that what appears as struggle was always part of the system, that the separation was never real, and the darkness itself contains light. The deepest shift is this, not that the struggle goes away, but that you realize it was never separate from the process in the first place. Now we're going to be touching on the story of when Yaakov realized that Yosef was alive, and it says, the spirit of Yokov was revived.
Speaker 1:Pay attention here because the Torah again calls him Yokov. To understand why, we have to step back. For over twenty years, Yaakov believed that Yosef was gone, that he had died. The brothers brought back the tunic dipped in blood, and he concludes that a wild animal had devoured him. From that moment, everything changed.
Speaker 1:The Torah tells us he refused to be comforted. Chazel explained that normally a person is comforted over time, but Yaakov is not because something deeper is happening. Yosef is alive, but Yaakov cannot access that reality. So he is living in a split state, a reality that feels final but is not truly final. And that is exactly what Yaakov represents, living inside a world where truth exists but is concealed.
Speaker 1:Years pass in that state. Then the brothers return and tell him, Yosef is alive. At first, he cannot accept it. The Torah says his heart went numb. He cannot process it, but then something shifts.
Speaker 1:He sees the wagon that Yosef sent, and Hazel explained that these are were a sign connecting back to the last Sukkah that he learned with Yosef. And in that moment, something internal changes. Not externally. Externally, nothing has changed yet, but internally, something comes back to life. And the Torah describes that moment as the spirit of Yaakov lived again because this is still Yaakov.
Speaker 1:This is a shift happening inside concealment. And then immediately, the Torah says, and Yisrael said. Now the name changes. Nothing external has changed yet, but internally, clarity has returned. And that is when the Torah calls him Yisrael.
Speaker 1:Now we can say it clearly. Going back to the whole series we're doing here, from Bina to Das. Bina, again, is understanding Das' lived reality. Yokov is understanding inside life. Yisrael is clarity aligned.
Speaker 1:Das happens when Yisrael enters Yaakov. We also experience this oscillating pattern during the week. Shabbos is Yisrael, clarity. Weekday is Yaakov. Shabbos gives clarity, the week is where you live it.
Speaker 1:The goal is not to stay in Shabbos. The goal is to bring Shabbos into the week. This is a final point here that we need to point out to bring everything together. When Avram becomes Avram, the Torah says, your name should no longer be called Avram. Your name shall be Avraham.
Speaker 1:In the Talmud, it says, one who calls Avram Avram violates a mitzvah because the old identity disappeared. And the same is true for Sarai. She becomes Sarah. And we're not supposed to call them by those old names. They become totally new.
Speaker 1:But again, Yaakov is different. The Torah gives him the name Yisrael, but never removes the name Yaakov. Because Avram represents the beginning, a new identity, a break from the past, but Yaakov represents something else entirely. He represents living inside a complex world, a world of concealment, a world of tension, a world where things are not fully revealed. And that world does not disappear, so the Torah does not remove Yaakov because the goal is not to leave that world behind.
Speaker 1:The goal is to bring Yisrael into it, to take moments of clarity and live them inside reality. And that is why we are called B'nei Yisrael, but we still live as Yaakov. Because the work is not to escape the struggle, it is to transform within it. And that is the path from Yaakov to Yisrael. The struggle is not the interruption.
Speaker 1:It is the invitation. It is not separate from growth. It is the growth because the path from Yaakov to Yisrael runs directly through it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening. And if you enjoyed the episode and found it meaningful, please take a moment to rate, review and share the podcast.
