The Magazine  Patriarch of Identity  Who is Jacob, and what does
he mean?  Mar 18, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 26 • By DAVID WOLPE Widget
tooltip Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts  Jacob
dreams of ladders. A romantic reading of his story would see the
ladder as a metaphor of ascent. This child who begins as a
deceiver ends surrounded by his children, and is brought back
home to Israel for burial. A preacher would tie it up (as many
have) with a nice didactic bow.  ‘Jacob Receiving the Tunic of
Joseph’ by Diego Velázquez (ca. 1630)   But Yair Zakovitch is
not a preacher, and this is not a homiletic book. It is a
profound, unsparing, and deeply learned look at a character who
demonstrates the uneasy and charismatic qualities of a flawed
hero. This is also a book about the underside of the Bible: the
manner in which it hides the shadow of its own story, and the
way in which a biblical scholar with a keen eye can bring that
tale to light.  Zakovitch begins his short, lucid inquiry by
asking why the Torah n