The oldest coin in my coin collection is my Greek silver stater struck more than 2,300 years ago. Pictured on the obverse side of it are two unclothed wrestlers engaged in a match. No offense to the ancient Greeks, but despite their many wonderful philosophers, they were a pagan society, and under the kingship of Antiochus IV they excelled at intolerance when it came to the Jewish subject state of Judaea.

The Greeks did not invent wrestling but they did bring it to a whole new level. They made it into an art form with their wrestling schools and by integrating it into their Olympic Games.

While ancient Greeks wrestled amongst one another, Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, was starting a Jewish tradition of a different kind: wrestling with God. During the course of a single night, Jacob wrestled God’s Angel. It was transformative. Jacob may have limped away from the encounter but he was a much better man for it, blessed with a new name too, bestowed by that Angel. His new name was: Israel. Israel in Hebrew, for those who do not know, means “wrestles with God.” Jacob’s descendants, the Jewish people, carry the same name, Israel, and have been wrestling with God much as did our forefather Jacob. It is a spiritual as well as physical struggle. We seem to find ourselves the center of attention during important moments in time: we question, we struggle, we strive, we survive, we limp away stronger for the experience. It is part of our DNA.

The holiday of Hanukkah marks the pitting of two enemies: the Hellenist Greeks and the Jews. The then ruling Hellenists, in their war on Judaism, outlawed circumcision, keeping kosher, studying Torah, and they desecrated the Second Temple with pig sacrifices and a Zeus statue. The Jews revolted, and led by Judah Maccabee (and his brothers), succeeded in restoring the sanctity of the Temple and the ousting of the Greeks from the Holy Land. It was a great victory for those who wrestle with God – and hence the yearly Hanukkah celebration.

Now wrestling with God is a precarious endeavor. When you wrestle with God you wrestle to do the right thing and that means you wrestle with your personal demons, with your conscience, and with your yetzer hara (evil inclination). When you wrestle with God, you may find yourself like Joseph, wrestling with your own brothers. You find your enemies are many and the wrestling can be to the death. Wrestling to do the right thing can turn the world against you. It can mean you get the blame for the world’s woes.

And that is where we are now. As stated before, the word Israel means: wrestles with God. No nation on earth, and no people belonging to a single religion, have a name that says so much.