I have two wonderful brothers, but they live far away. I am so thankful that we talk to each other on the phone each and every day. But I wonder what it would be like if we didn’t talk for a week, a month or a year … or, worse yet, for many years.

Well, that’s exactly what we find in the Torah. Jacob and Esau have not seen nor spoken to each other for many years. Oh, and let me remind you that when they parted company years before, one threatened to kill the other.

I am the baby in my family. My brothers and I are as different as night and day.

Then again, as different as we are, there are parts of us that are so similar, we may as well have been twins. I am blessed that even if my brothers get angry at me, it does not lead to one of them wanting to kill me … at least, not that I know of.

As the baby brother, I used to hate all the hand-me-down clothes. I used to hate trying to live up to my brothers’ reputations. Year after year, on the first day of school, my new teachers would tell me how thrilled they were to have another Ezring in their class. They would tell me how brilliant, how helpful, how studious my brothers were. Oy, were they in for a disappointment.

For years, I tried to be like my brothers and then, thank G-d, the day came when I realized that I am not them. I am me! (at least, I think I’m me).

By the time my brothers left for college, they were so dear to me that I cried. I was alone. Most of you have experienced being alone. There are times that it seems like a huge blessing, but there are also times when it feels like a curse.

Sometimes, when I am alone, my brain starts to go around in circles. I think too much. Sometimes I even get into arguments with myself, which brings us to Jacob and his famous wrestling match with an angel. But, if you look at the wording carefully, you’ll find that Jacob was alone.

Well, if he was alone, who exactly is he wrestling with? It says that he wrestled until daybreak so, perhaps, he was having one of those nights where something was weighing heavily on his mind and an internal battle ensued.

So, how does he hurt his hip? Okay, that’s a fair question. Of course, I have had times that I have thrown my hip or my back out of whack from all the tossing and turning I do at night.

Then again, there is a wonderful idiom we have had for many years now in which we refer to someone who is trying to fit in with the current fads as being “hip”.

While someone else has taken credit for the lyrics, it wouldn’t surprise me if, upon waking up from his dream, Jacob was the first to come up with the song, “Oh the hip bones connected to the thigh bone … the thigh bones connected to the knee bone … Oh, didn’t it rain.”

Jacob limps and realizes how very important each and every bone is. He sees how one relies on the other for its next step. And then, in the midst of the reading, we find that Jacob goes back to retrieve some small earthenware jugs. I suspect that those little jugs were fragile and it would not take much for one of them to break. The same is true of our relationships with others. Just as one needs to handle a small earthenware jug with care, one must also remember to handle their brothers and sisters with tender loving care.

Shalom My Friends,

Rabbi Craig H. Ezring

Rabbi Ezring is a Hospice Chaplain and Member of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. He also provides Professional Pastoral Care Services to a number of health centers in Broward County.