In Parashat Vayishlach, we read the story of Jacob wrestling with an unfamiliar being, most often understood as an angel of God. After this tussle, Jacob is renamed Yisrael (Israel), meaning “one who struggles with God.” A name change in the Torah often implies a change in character. Here, Jacob (Yaakov) is no longer simply the ‘deceiver’—one who would trick his own brother out of his birthright—but is now someone who wrestles with considerations of good and bad, to weigh what is easy against what is just. That our patriarch’s new identity became the very name of our people is an indication that each of us, as people of faith, must at times grapple with this very same notion of right and wrong.

 I recently reread a favourite novella of mine, titled Small Things Like These by Irish author Claire Keegan. The story is set in 1985 in a small Irish town at Christmastime. Bill Furlong is a coal merchant, husband, and father of five daughters. While making deliveries to the local convent, he begins to suspect that their claims of being a training school for girls are false and that the convent is in fact one of the infamous Magdalene laundries, cruelly abusive institutions run by the Catholic Church, with complicity from the Irish government, to house “fallen women”. The last of these were only closed in 1996. This discovery forces Bill to personally confront his past as well as the complicit silences of a society controlled by the Church, knowing that speaking up could have serious ramifications for his livelihood and his children’s education.

In this short, quietly understated book, Keegan paints a vivid portrait of a close-knit community rooted in tradition and at the mercy of a powerful institution operated by people who firmly believe they are doing God’s work but are in fact creating irreparable harm. Like Jacob, Bill must wrestle with his beliefs and values and redefine his relationship with God, all while weighing the consequences of not sacrificing his principles for the sake of expediency.

For Bill, doing the right thing against the worries of retaliation has a poetic quality. As the story ends, we read:

As they carried on along and met more people Furlong did

and did not know, he found himself asking was there any

point in being alive without helping one another?...

The worstwas yet to come, he knew. Already he could feel a 

world of troublewaiting for him behind the next door, but the 

worst that could have happened was also already behind him;

the thing not done, which could have been–which he would

have had to live with for the rest of his life. (p. 112-114)

A beautifully powerful film adaptation of Small Things Like These opened in November, starring Cillian Murphy as Bill Furlong and Emily Watson as the Mother Superior. It is currently showing in very limited release at the Carlton Cinema (next to the old Maple Leaf Gardens). Another related film I also highly recommend is 2002’s The Magdalene Sisters.

To learn more about the dark history of the Magdalene Laundriesand the work being done for survivor healing and advocacy, visit Justice for Magdalenes Research.

May each of us, when called to, find the strength to struggle with what is right and what is expected, even when it is the hard and unwelcomed thing to do.

Shabbat Shalom,

Cantor Audrey