I am often surprised when Jews say to me, “Jews don’t believe in angels.” What then are we to make of the many angels in Genesis? Don’t they realize that the song we sing every Friday night, Shalom Aleichem, is about welcoming angels into our home for Shabbat?

And they have obviously forgotten about our patriarch Jacob, who had two meaningful interactions with angels. In the first, he lay down to sleep in the wilderness with only a rock for a pillow, and dreamed of angels going up and down a ladder to heaven.

In the second, he was again alone and spent the night wrestling with a “man” who we understand to be an angel. After seriously injuring Jacob, the angel renamed him Israel, God-wrestler.

But he had one other encounter that is often overlooked. It happens in two brief verses, just before the beginning of this week’s Torah portion (Vayishlach) where we read: “And Jacob went on his way, and the angels of God met him. And when Jacob saw them, he said, This is God’s host; and he called the name of that place Mahanaim.” (Genesis 32:2-3). The name means “two camps.”

That’s it. There is no other discussion of this meeting. Nothing else happened.

Except in the very next verse, Jacob decided to seek out his brother Esau. Who he hadn’t seen since he ran away from him 20 years ago.

The place name relates to what Jacob did next: He divided the family into two camps, sending his many children, two wives, and two concubines in different directions, protecting them from his brother. Just in case.

Some people are willing to deal with conflict. Some (like me) prefer to run from it. Jacob, despite his trepidation about meeting his brother, and his fear that — even 20 years later — Esau might still be brimming with anger at the loss of his birthright and father’s blessing.

In the Bible, the meeting didn’t go especially well. They embraced and kissed, but if you read it a certain way, it’s possible that Esau actually bit Jacob during their embrace. Once the reconciliation was over, Jacob made sure to separate himself and his family from Esau as quickly as possible.

Two camps. Angel and human. Brother and brother. They wrestle, they reconcile, they part ways.

But somehow or another, they manage to meet in the middle. They challenge and change each other. And as for the brothers, they came together one last time, to bury their father Isaac. Just as Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their father Abraham.

Whenever someone meets with me to talk about strained familial relationships, I seem to always end up saying, “Families are complicated.” So are all relationships. In a very real sense, we are all in separate camps, with different perspectives on pretty much everything.

Despite that, when we are brave enough and wise enough, and willing to risk getting hurt, we can meet in the middle. We can learn and grow and change and yes, even wrestle. If we are willing to try.