The Name You Carry Home

I booked another flight. This time with a layover in Milan, departing next week for Tel Aviv. The airfare was absurdly cheap — the kind of deal that makes you check the dates three times because something must be wrong. Nothing was wrong. I bought two tickets before the price could change its mind. And possibly before I talked to my husband.

He looked at the confirmation email and said, "You know it's going to be hard to leave shul." He was right. This would be our third trip to Israel this year. We had just left for Thanksgiving. Leaving feels like stepping away at the wrong moment. But there's a broader congregation, too. Am Yisrael doesn't stop at the walls of one synagogue in Atlanta, and right now our people need hands and presence more than they need me in my usual seat.

I chose the name Uriel when I converted — "my light is God" — and Chanukah starts the week after we land. If there was ever a time to carry that name somewhere specific, this is it.

It will be hard to leave here. It will be hard to leave there. Both of those things are true, and neither one cancels the other out.

Parashat Vayishlach opens with Jacob heading home after twenty years away — and terrified of what's waiting for him. His brother Esau, the one he cheated out of a blessing, is marching toward him with four hundred men. Jacob prays. He sends gifts ahead. He divides his family into two camps so at least one might survive. And then, the night before the encounter, he does something strange: he sends everyone across the Jabbok River, and he stays behind. Alone.

וַיִּוָּתֵ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב לְבַדּ֑וֹ וַיֵּאָבֵ֥ק אִישׁ֙ עִמּ֔וֹ עַ֖ד עֲל֥וֹת הַשָּֽׁחַר׃

Jacob was left alone. And a figure wrestled with him until the break of dawn

— Bereishit 32:25

The Torah doesn't tell us who the figure is. The rabbis offer answers — Esau's guardian angel, a manifestation of Jacob's own fear, a divine messenger. What the text does tell us is that Jacob refused to let go. The figure wrenched Jacob's hip out of its socket, and still Jacob held on. Dawn came. The figure said, "Let me go." Jacob said no. Not until you bless me.

The figure asked his name. Jacob said it: Yaakov. The heel-grabber. The second-born who grasped at what wasn't his. And then:

וַיֹּ֗אמֶר לֹ֤א יַעֲקֹב֙ יֵאָמֵ֥ר עוֹד֙ שִׁמְךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל כִּֽי־שָׂרִ֧יתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִ֛ים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁ֖ים וַתּוּכָֽל׃

Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.”

— Bereishit 32:29

Jacob walked into the dawn with a new name and a limp. Both were permanent. The name Israel — the one who wrestles with God — was earned in the dark, through injury, by someone who would not release his grip.

Earlier in the parsha, before the wrestling, Jacob prayed one of the most quietly devastating lines in the Torah:

קָטֹ֜נְתִּי מִכֹּ֤ל הַחֲסָדִים֙ וּמִכׇּל־הָ֣אֱמֶ֔ת אֲשֶׁ֥ר עָשִׂ֖יתָ אֶת־עַבְדֶּ֑ךָ כִּ֣י בְמַקְלִ֗י עָבַ֙רְתִּי֙ אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּ֣ן הַזֶּ֔ה וְעַתָּ֥ה הָיִ֖יתִי לִשְׁנֵ֥י מַחֲנֽוֹת׃

I am unworthy of all the kindness that You have so steadfastly shown Your servant: with my staff alone I crossed this Jordan, and now I have become two camps.

— Bereishit 32:11

Katonti. I am small. I crossed this river once with nothing but a walking stick, and now look — two camps, a family, flocks, a life. The word isn't false modesty. It's the gasp of a man who can see the distance between where he started and where he stands.

On Monday, Israel's Defense Ministry announced that the Iron Beam laser defense system — renamed Or Eitan, "Eitan's Light" — is complete and will be delivered to the IDF by the end of December. The system intercepts rockets and drones with a beam of light at a cost of about three dollars per shot. It was named in memory of Captain Eitan Oster, twenty-two years old, an Egoz commando killed fighting in southern Lebanon in October 2024. His father, Dov Oster, was one of the system's lead developers. A father built a shield of light. It carries his son's name now.

Three dollars. A beam of light. A country that keeps building its defenses out of the thing the darkness cannot outlast.

I think about Jacob at the Jabbok a lot when I'm preparing to pack for Israel. The man had two camps — the family he was protecting and the brother he was facing — and he stood between them alone in the dark. He did not run. He did not strategize his way out. He wrestled. And the blessing he demanded was a name. Not safety, not wealth, not a promise that Esau would stand down. A name.

Names matter. I picked mine maybe a year ago and recieved it about seven months ago, standing in a mikveh in Atlanta. Uriel. The light of God. I did not pick it because I thought I deserved it. I picked it because I thought it was a direction — something to walk toward, not something I had already become. Katonti. I crossed this Jordan with nothing, and now I have two camps: a home congregation that needs me and a people across the ocean that need me.

Both camps are mine. The pull between them is not a problem to solve. It is what it feels like to belong to something larger than one building, one city, one comfortable life.

Jacob limped into the sunrise carrying a new name he would spend the rest of his life growing into. That is what names do. They don't describe who you are. They describe who you are supposed to become.

Next week we land in Israel just days before the first candle. We'll be there when the lights go up. A shield of light defending the skies, and eight small flames in the window, and a name that means carry this forward.

Shabbat shalom.

— Uriel ben Avraham