One of the online pieces to which I subscribe is "Covenant & Conversation: Thoughts on the Weekly Parsha" writen by the Chief Rabbi of the UK. [To give credit where credit is due, much of what follows is inspired by of a portion of the Chief Rabbi's comments.]  
 
The Parsha (Genesis 28:10-22) for the week of November 28 is one of the great dreams of the Bible.  Jacob alone and afraid, finds himself in what anthropologist Victor Turner called "liminal space"— the space in between.  On this night Jacob is between the home he is running from and the destination he has yet to reach.  He is between the fear of his brother Esau, from whom he is running, and the unknown danger of Laban, where he is heading, and from whom he will later suffer great wrongs.

Alone, isolated, and vulnerable, in the middle of a journey, Jacob has a most intense experience: A ladder rested upon earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and upon the ladder angels were ascending and descending.
 
There have been many interpretations offered to the meaning of this vision, but the simplest is that it has to do with the encounter between the human soul and God, what we call "prayer."  Yet, not a prayer as we are apt to offer.  In this prayer, God speaks to Jacob, not the other way around. Prayer in its deepest sense is not us petitioning God, but God assuring us with the words spoken to Jacob, "I am with you and watch over you wherever you go."  Just as God came to Jacob when he was most vulnerable, feared for his life, and surely doubted God, God comes to us unexpectedly. When Jacob awoke from his dream he thought, "Surely God is in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, this is the gate of heaven."

There is much to be said here:  First, as we have noted, it is in those in-between spaces when we most need the divine that we find God.  Secondly, if we read the story carefully, we see that it is not the God that Jacob thought he knew who came to him, but the God he didn't know.  God had to tell Jacob who he was (v. 13) and in v. 21, Jacob names (recognition) God "Jehovah."
Here we are reminded of Moses asking God to name himself.* The name God gives, "I AM (both knowable & unknowable)."  It is the "unknowable God" who reveals himself.  Jacob was experiencing what St. John of the Cross called, "The Dark Night of the Soul," when everything we think we know about God comes unraveled.  It is in this dark, in-between  space that we truly meet God and are changed forever.

Twenty-two years later, once again, Jacob is in-between, he has left Laban behind, but not until after being pursued by Laban.  Esau is coming at him with 400 men, and once again Jacob is afraid.  The name Jacob gives to the place where he camps is an interesting one, "Mahanaim" literally mean , "two camps."  True, met angels here, thus it was the "camp" of both angels and men, but could it not also be a hint to Jacob's conflicted mind, that of trust and not trust, toward God?  Whatever the significance  of the name, it is here that Jacob sends his family ahead with gifts to meet Esau while he remains behind God begging for help.  Again, God meets Jacob in an unexpected way: a wrestling match.  At first Jacob sees only a man, it is not until after the fact -- and the refusal of the man to name himself -- that Jacob comes to realized that he has wrestled with God face-to-face.  In the process of the match the stranger is unable to overpower Jacob until he "touched the socket of his hip." Still, the two wrestled to daybreak, when the man called for an end to the match.  Jacob replied he would only do so upon receiving a blessing from his opponent (meaning only that Jacob saw his opponent as a worthy one).  "What is your name," the stranger asked?  Yet, when Jacob asked for the stranger's name, he gave not a name, but a blessing. 

Jacob prays out of fear, God responds with a wrestling match.  Jacob was looking for a way out of his dilemma, even pointing out to God how he had done exactly what God asked of him, so therefore didn't God owe him something in return?  The point here is not that we have to wrestle with God in prayer to get what we want, but rather that we have to come to the place of willingness to let God bless us whatever the cost.  Jacob came from the wrestling match both as a new man – no longer Jacob, but not "Israel" – and a mark, the limp.  There is both a cost and a blessing when we wrestle with God.  Something of us dies, yet in the process something divine within is born.

There is significance in the blessing that Jacob "wrestled" from the stranger; twenty-two years earlier, Jacob had wrestled through deceit the birthright blessing from his brother. Now wanting to return home Jacob is facing a potentially dangerous foe in Esau.  Interestingly, although the blessing the stranger bestows upon Jacob is essentially a renewal of the birthright blessing, what is important to Jacob is that he has met God face to face and still lives.  He might say, that in this prayer is reborn in that he has found God's "forgiveness" for his deceit, and as the story unfolds, he also finds Esau's forgiveness.

"Israel," means "he struggles with God."  Note, not struggled, or will struggle, but struggles.  Prayer, of the right sort, is a continual wrestling match with God.  Not to get what we want, but to allow God to break us to make us able to receive what God wants for us.  One point often overlooked in the story, is the fact that the stranger was unable to overcome Jacob.  God will wrestle with us, but never forces us to give in.  Even with the dislocated hip Jacob was not forced to give in. 

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Prayer, the Chief Rabbi suggests is the ladder stretching from earth to heaven.  On this ladder of "words, thoughts and emotions," we gradually leave our supposed needs behind, we move from the world of our making to an awareness of what lies beyond us, beyond the world to the Creator of the world.  At the end of the ascent we stand in the conscious presence of God.
In time we will make our way back down the ladder, back into mundane concerns of the world, but we will be changed.  We have met God and can no longer be the same.  The great Jewish sage calls this state, kavanah, the intentional state essential to prayer.  The word means "to become what we do," that is, to become our prayers.  No longer are our prayers attempted manipulations of the divine, but rather we are in ourselves a "prayer" that reflects a fragment of the divine to the world.  Heaven is no longer some place else, it is here in our midst. We forever stand at its gates. It was in Jacob's midst, although at first unrecognized, when he most needed it.  Yet, heaven was not left behind when Jacob descended the ladder, a fragment returned with him to earth.

* I am using the masculine pronoun for convenience's sake, not to imply that God's nature is masculine.