Many of us carry a ghost inside of ourselves—the phantom of who we wish we were. For some, it’s the confident colleague who commands every room. For others, it’s the sibling who earned their parents’ unqualified love. We spend our lives chasing these shadows, trying to become someone else, and the pursuit destroys us from within. According to Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, the biblical patriarch Jacob lived this torment for decades, and his story reveals why so many leaders fail before they ever begin.
Jacob was born grasping his twin brother’s heel, and he never let go. Esau was everything Jacob was not: physically powerful, a skilled hunter, his father Isaac’s favorite son. The Bible tells us plainly:
That single verse contains a lifetime of pain. Jacob bought Esau’s birthright. He stole Esau’s blessing. When his blind father asked his identity, Jacob answered, “I am Esau, your firstborn” (Genesis 27:19). As Rabbi Sacks observes, Jacob embodied what the French theorist René Girard called mimetic desire—we want what others have because we want to be those others. Jacob didn’t just envy Esau. He wanted to become him.
The consequences were catastrophic. Esau vowed to murder his brother. Jacob fled to his uncle Laban’s home, where he encountered more betrayal and conflict. Twenty-two years later, returning home with wives, children, and vast wealth, Jacob learned that Esau was approaching with four hundred men. The Bible uses unusually intense language to describe Jacob’s emotional state: he was “very frightened and distressed” (Genesis 32:8). Why was Jacob distressed and frightened?
The night before the confrontation, something happened that changed Jacob forever. The Bible records that “a man wrestled with him until the break of dawn” (Genesis 32:25). Commentators have debated the stranger’s identity for millennia. The Bible calls him a man. The prophet Hosea calls him an angel. The Sages identified him as Samael, the guardian angel of Esau and a force for evil. Jacob himself believed he had encountered God directly, naming the place Peniel—”face of God”—because “I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared” (Genesis 32:31).
Rabbi Sacks argues that that night, Jacob wrestled with himself. He wrestled with the person he had been trying to become for his entire life. He wrestled with the lie that he needed to be Esau to matter, to be loved by his father, to be worthy. And in that violent, exhausting struggle that lasted until dawn, Jacob finally threw off the image he had carried. He stopped trying to be someone else. He accepted, perhaps for the first time, that being Jacob was enough.
This is why Jacob felt distress along with his fear. He knew that Esau’s rage was not unjust. Jacob’s name can also mean deception (Jeremiah 9:3). Jacob had wronged his brother, and he knew it. The distress came from guilt. The fear came from consequences. But the wrestling match transformed both.
When Jacob met Esau the next day, he was a different man. He bowed seven times before his brother. He called Esau “my lord” and referred to himself as “your servant.” Something dramatic had shifted. Rabbi Sacks points out that the blessing Jacob had stolen from his father contained specific words: “Be lord over your brothers, and may the sons of your mother bow down to you” (Genesis 27:29). Now Jacob was living out the opposite. He was bowing to Esau. He was calling Esau his lord. The previous day he had sent hundreds of animals—goats, sheep, camels, cattle, donkeys. When he urged Esau to accept these gifts, he used a telling word: “Please take my beracha that has been brought to you” (Genesis 33:11). Most English translations render beracha as “present” or “gift,” but the word literally means “blessing.” Jacob was giving back what he had taken—not just the material wealth represented by the animals, but the spiritual reality of the blessing itself. The brothers who had been mortal enemies met and parted in peace.
What does this have to do with leadership? According to Rabbi Sacks, everything. Leaders face constant pressure to be what others want them to be. A leader tells liberals what liberals want to hear, conservatives what conservatives demand, shifting positions to chase temporary approval. But people see through this. The contradictions become obvious, particularly in our age of total transparency. Trust evaporates. Authority collapses. The leader who pursued popularity becomes universally despised.
Abraham Lincoln was called a perjurer, usurper, and destroyer of liberty. Winston Churchill was considered a failure until he became Prime Minister, then was voted out immediately after winning World War II. Margaret Thatcher’s death sparked celebrations in the streets. These leaders endured hatred, says Rabbi Sacks, because they refused to pretend to be something they were not. They knew who they were and what they believed, and they led from that certainty even when it cost them everything.
Rabbi Sacks notes that Jacob was not yet a leader—there was no nation for him to lead. But the Bible spends enormous space on his internal struggle because it was not his alone. The word avot, which describes Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, means not just “fathers” or “patriarchs” but “archetypes.” We all wrestle with the desire to be someone else, to have what they have, to be what they are. And as long as that conflict rages within us, conflict will rage around us. Jacob was surrounded by strife—with Esau, with Laban, between his wives Rachel and Leah, between his sons. The Bible teaches us that internal war creates external war. We must resolve the tension in ourselves before we can resolve it for others.
The transformation that began at Peniel gave Jacob a new name: Israel, meaning “one who struggles with God.” But it also gave him something more valuable than a name. It gave him himself. And from that moment, he could finally lead—not by pretending to be Esau, not by deceiving others or himself, but by standing in the truth of who he actually was.
No one is stronger than the person who knows who they are. Leaders who chase approval will lose it. Leaders who know themselves—who accept that some will love them and others will hate them, who understand that respect matters more than popularity—these leaders can endure any storm. They can make peace where there was war because they have made peace with themselves first.
The ghost Jacob carried for decades was Esau. The ghost you carry might be someone else. But until you wrestle it to the ground and let it go, you will never discover the strength that comes from finally, completely, being yourself.
