"And [the Lord] said, 'Not Ya'akov shall your name be called any more, but rather Yisrael, because you have striven with gods and with men and you have prevailed." (Genesis 32:29)
The name Ya'akov (ekev means "heel" in Hebrew) can be taken to mean two very different things.

Two questions: What does the name Yisrael really mean? Also, why does Ya'akov take such a circuitous route after leaving Laban, rather than going straight away to his father's house?

The name Ya'akov (ekev means "heel" in Hebrew) can be taken to mean two very different things: the connotation can be taken to be either the younger twin brother grasping onto the heel of the older as they both emerge from the womb, coming up from behind, succeeding against difficult odds by dint of desperate diligence and extraordinary effort, surviving and triumphing at the end; or it can mean a usurping, supplanting, crookedly pushing aside, "heel-sneaking," younger brother.

In the latter definition, the "heel-sneak" always seeks to avoid confrontation and to escape responsibility; after all, he can always claim he didn't see you in front of him, he didn't mean the words that you heard him say, he was merely peeling the wands without an intention to manipulate the appearance of the sheep. In contrast, only the son who is willing to assume full responsibility to help realize the vision and mission of Israel will prevail in the end - if indeed "the end" connotes the Messianic era of redemption.

We have already seen how the naive whole-hearted dweller of tents became a "scheming deceiver," first manipulating his elder brother into selling him the birthright, then pretending to be the brother he was not, and finally resorting to all manners of subterfuge in order to outsmart the wise-aleck Laban and come out with the majority of his flocks. Indeed, the hands of the aggressive animal-hunter and people-trapper Esau overcame the spiritually pure voice of Ya'akov, so that Ya'akov turned into Esau.

Yes, he succeeded in this "drey-around" (turning himself around) in order to gain the father's love that he yearned for so much. Nonetheless, in the process of
He suddenly and literally wakes up to his genuine and original vocation.
pursuing his father's love he ended up turning himself into the very disguise he had assumed. He truly had become the 'crooked' Ya'akov who had twice circumvented the legitimate gains which were his brother's just due (Genesis 27:36).

Ya'akov manages to bury his true character - until he suddenly and literally wakes up to his genuine and original vocation when he realizes that his very dreams have become sullied and transformed: if our dreams reflect what we were thinking about when we were awake, then Ya'akov is no longer seeing angels ascending and descending a ladder connecting Heaven and Earth, he is rather now seeing speckled and striped and spotted sheep. And this latter dream is not the dream he wants to bequeath his newest newborn, Joseph, the eldest child of his beloved Rachel.

In his oath more than two decades earlier, Ya'akov had predicated his acceptance of HaShem as his G-d if and when he returned to his father's house in peace; and no doubt the father he had in mind was Father Isaac who had just accepted him in his role as a new, improved Esau. But at this stage in his life, Ya'akov realizes that the very opposite is true, that he must find the courage to be what he really is - a wholehearted dweller of tents - whether his father values it or not. He must become his own man, G-d's man and not necessarily his father's man. Only then will he be free to be himself.

He leaves Laban - and wily Labanism. He is ready to confront Esau, and return his unearned blessing by giving his elder brother his "crookedly" gained material blessing and flocks. But first he must stand alone - he and G-d - and exorcise Esau-ism, the very desire to become Esau in order to gain paternal favor, from the very depth of his being. He confronts and wrestles with himself - and comes back to his true self. He is no longer the crooked Ya'akov; he becomes the straight and upright Yisrael; i.e., yisra or yashar person of G-d (El).

He is now almost ready to return home; he must first, however, test out his new persona of walking in a straight line rather than dreying around and cutting corners. He takes Shimon and Levy to task for selling Shechem a bill of goods about circumcision in a war of subterfuge rather than confronting them as terrorist-rapists head-on: "You have muddied me, causing me to stink in the eyes of the inhabitants of the land...." (34:30); you desecrated G-d's name by having been disingenuous. Jacob then weeps and mourns the death of his mother's nurse and nanny Devorah - but Rebecca, who instigated Jacob's crookedness, is not mourned or even mentioned at all. In mourning only for his nanny, he confronts the anger he feels for his mother.

Rachel then dies in childbirth for having deceived her father and stolen his teraphim, presumably because she believed that the teraphim (or trophies) - a tangible sign of the heir to the family fortune - rightfully belonged to Jacob who worked alongside her father so diligently and capably. But Jacob was firm in his moral commitment: "The one in whose possession are the teraphim shall not live." (31:32) A birthright dare not be stolen, no matter how just the motive.

And finally, "And Reuven went and lay with Bilhah, his father's mistress...." (35:32). Reuven usurps his father's place in a most blatant and lewd manner; he deserves to be punished, perhaps even banished from the family.
A wiser and chastened Yisrael understands that he must assume a large portion of the blame.
Jacob is justifiably furious. But the 'newborn' Yisrael also understands that he must take direct responsibility and own up to his own weaknesses. Was this immoral act not a desperate (albeit unfortunate) cry of Reuven's pain, a poorly designed and badly executed declaration that he - Reuven - was his father's rightful heir as first-born son of the first wife, and that he should not have been cast aside in favor of Joseph, younger first-born of the more favored wife?

A wiser and chastened Yisrael understands that he must assume a large portion of the blame for Reuven's immoral act - and so he hears of the incident and overlooks it. His silence allows him to remain the patriarch of the twelve tribes - and his silence also gains him the catharsis of self-forgiveness for his act of deception, which he so yearns to receive. After all, if his misguided paternal favoritism allows him to forgive the transgression of Reuven, ought not Isaac's misguided paternal favoritism of Esau allow him - Ya'akov - to be forgiven of his transgression towards his father Isaac?

And so now, "Ya'akov returns to Yitzhak his father" (35:27) in peace within himself, at last. Finally, "the crooked has become straight" (vehaya he'akov le'mishor - Isaiah 40:4), Ya'akov has become Yisrael - yashar-El, the straight, righteous man of God.