Dear TBZ Community,
In the face of war, our community has turned again and again to prayer. Over the more than two years since October 7, 2023, the prayers we recite have evolved, reflecting the shifting realities around us and our own changing understanding, grief, urgency, and hope.
Since the winter of 2025, our prayer has included this line:
“Master of all life, we have been taught that before our ancestor Jacob met his brother Esau he was afraid that he would be killed, and distressed that he would kill. We have lived through both – our people have been killed and we have also taken many lives.”
This week, as we read the Torah portion Parashat Vayishlach and return to that foundational moment between the brothers, we encounter the verse that inspired this line. Jacob is on his way back to Canaan and learns that Esau is approaching with four hundred men. The Torah tells us:
וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ וַיַּחַץ אֶת־הָעָם אֲשֶׁר־אִתּוֹ וְאֶת־הַצֹּאן וְאֶת־הַבָּקָר וְהַגְּמַלִּים לִשְׁנֵי מַחֲנוֹת
Jacob was greatly frightened; in his anxiety, he divided the people with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps (Genesis 32:8).
Rashi explains, drawing from the midrash (commentary):
ויירא ויצר. וַיִּירָא שֶׁמָּא יֵהָרֵג, וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ אִם יַהֲרֹג הוּא אֶת אֲחֵרִים
He was afraid lest he be killed, and he was distressed that he might kill someone.
But the full midrash in Genesis Rabbah 76:2 expands the emotional and spiritual terrain of this moment far more fully:
דָּבָר אַחֵר, וַיִּירָא יַעֲקֹב מְאֹד וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ, אָמַר רַבִּי יְהוּדָה בְּרַבִּי עִילָּאי: לֹא הִיא יִרְאָה לֹא הִיא צָרָה. אֶלָּא “וַיִּירָא” – שֶׁלֹּא יַהֲרֹג. “וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ” – שֶׁלֹּא יֵהָרֵג. אָמַר: אִם הוּא מִתְגַּבֵּר עָלַי – הוֹרְגֵנִי. וְאִם אֲנִי מִתְגַּבֵּר עָלָיו – אֲנִי הוֹרְגוֹ. הֲדָא הוּא: “וַיִּירָא שֶׁלֹּא יַהֲרֹג, וַיֵּצֶר לוֹ שֶׁלֹּא יֵהָרֵג.”
“Jacob was very frightened and distressed.”
Rabbi Yehudah son of Rabbi Ilai said: The fear and the distress are not the same.
Rather: he was frightened that he might kill; and distressed that he might be killed.
He said: “If he overcomes me, he will kill me. But if I overcome him, I will kill him.”
That is: he was frightened lest he kill, and distressed lest he be killed.
The midrash does something courageous: it refuses to simplify Jacob’s inner world. It does not say he is afraid only of being harmed; it does not say he is distressed only by the threat of violence against him and his household. Instead it tells us that the fear of harming another human being is itself a source of anguish.
This midrash insists that both fears can exist at once: the fear of being destroyed, and the fear of destroying.
This teaching has felt achingly relevant over the past two years. Reciting that line in our prayer – that we have lived through both – has been grounding for me. It reminds me how fear can shelter us and also distort us, how it can keep us alive and also close our hearts.
And because of that, I cannot help but hear the next line of our prayer with even more tenderness:
“Our hearts are broken for all the innocent Palestinians who have died… We pray for an end to the destruction, trauma, and devastation in Gaza.”
Jacob’s fear of killing sensitizes us to this grief. It calls us to stay awake to the suffering of Palestinians, to the devastation in Gaza, and to our own capacity for harm, even when born of fear. It invites us to hold both peoples’ wounds with honesty and trembling compassion.
A few weeks ago, I was invited to speak at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline. As part of a series, the community heard from three perspectives (a Christian, a Muslim from Gaza, and myself) about October 7th, the war in Gaza, and the violence in the West Bank. I chose to speak through the lens I know best: prayer.
Preparing for that talk, I gathered many of the prayers we have recited at TBZ since October 7th. The process was unexpectedly powerful. I could feel the arc of our communal heart: our shock, our grief, our yearning for the safety of Israelis and Palestinians, our pleading for an end to suffering, our insistence on human dignity, our exhaustion, our hope.
Our prayers became a kind of spiritual diary, a record of how we have tried to stay human, awake, and compassionate in a time when it would be so easy to shut down.
I share the collection of prayers with you here, including the prayer we are currently reciting since the ceasefire. (Please know it is not exhaustive; it reflects what I compiled for the purpose of the presentation.)
The midrash on Jacob ends without resolving the tension between the two fears. It simply names the truth. Sometimes naming the truth is the prayer itself.
May we find strength, courage, and patience.
May all who are ill or suffering find healing.
May the brokenhearted be comforted.
May we stay open-hearted in a world that teaches us to close.
And may we continue to seek, in prayer and in action, a path that honors all life.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rav Claudia