|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Dec 17/05 - Shabbat Vayishlach Commentary by Rabbi Lawrence Pinsker
How long does it take for someone to abandon guilt, anger, and bitterness over events and replace them with a sense of acceptance? In this week’s Torah portion we read about the reunion of the estranged twins Jacob and Esau. Somehow Esau has made peace with his brother’s actions of twenty years earlier. Although Esau does not inherit the mantle of tribal leadership from their father Isaac, he recognizes his life is blessed. Jacob, too, feels blessed, but he has remained profoundly uneasy over how he treated his brother and deceived their father. Jacob is convinced that Esau will attack him and fulfill his terrifying pledge to kill him. When they meet, Jacob conducts himself with unusual formality, bowing repeatedly, perhaps to hide his deep-seated fear, while Esau, apparently overwhelmed by emotion, simply runs to Jacob, embraces him, and kisses him. Both of them cry. And the life-threatening confrontation feared by Jacob does not take place.
Jacob’s twenty years as a refugee in Haran, during which time his uncle Lavan repeatedly deceived and manipulated him, have changed him. Unable to triumph over Lavan, Jacob has adapted, learned patience, and outgrown his youth as the trickster-prince favoured by his doting, protective mother Rebecca. When he leaves Haran to return home and meets Esau, Jacob has a new sense of who he is and how he must behave. He is strong, capable, and wealthy, and his success is entirely the product of his own intelligence, persistence, and hard work. But while traveling to meet Esau, Jacob reverts to some of his old habits: he feigns humility, fabricates excuses to avoid extended contact with Esau, and strategizes to avoid candid interaction between them.
Is it possible that what Jacob fears is not that Esau will murder him? What may frighten him is that, despite their differences, Esau still knows Jacob better than anyone else and remembers him as he once was. What if Esau demands that he apologize for the hurtful acts from their past? Even worse, what if Jacob were to lapse into old behaviours and habits, showing his wives, children, friends and their entire retinue from Haran that the Jacob they have known these twenty years is merely a façade? Perhaps Jacob’s greatest fear is that Esau will show him how little he has really changed.
Esau, on the other hand, is apparently unafraid. Maybe he is not as complicated as Jacob. All Esau seems to want is reconciliation and friendship; he offers companionship and protection to Jacob, but Jacob simply cannot shake his mistrust, and evades his brother’s overtures.
Interestingly, the rabbinic Sages, living after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and Jerusalem, did not trust Esau. They saw his behaviour as a strategy to deceive Jacob, his joyful welcome only a sham. Rabbinic tradition says that Jacob rejects living near Esau out of fear that being neighbours will lead to assimilation into Esau's paganism. Jewish tradition further colours this picture by declaring Esau the symbolic ancestor of Rome, which conquered the Jews and forbade them to practice Judaism. Rabbinic tradition admires Jacob for limiting Esau’s influence: Jacob is the precursor of future Jewish strategies for avoiding assimilation and defying tyranny.
Although rabbinic symbolism and allegory is fascinating, there is enough richness in Jacob and Esau’s interaction to justify setting aside the rabbis’ interpretations and treat the story as an archetype. We see brothers whose life might have been blessed by mutual support split by parents who choose favourites and encourage insensitivity and rivalry. Twins grow up in the same household but do not share the same values; neither one has the well-being of the other in heart. Resentment and fear fill places in the spirit where respect and mutual support might have been. And generations to come will repeat this catastrophic family model.
Seen this way, the reunion of Jacob and Esau in Vayishlach is painful to read. Jacob fled his brother two decades earlier, and now must leave him again because he cannot escape the memory of past deeds. He cannot fashion a renewed relationship to Esau, which would entail admission of wrong. He and Esau are fated to remain separate and at odds; true brotherhood will elude them forever. In this way of reading the Torah portion, we are given a startling portrait of the lonely gulf that grows between human beings when they miss a crucial opportunity to forgive each other and reconcile their past differences. For some, guilt, anger, and bitterness never fade away.
The genius of the Torah is that it reveals imperfection and asks us to do our best to avoid these human failings. If we are only partially successful, at least we should have faith that some goodness will survive our fumblings.
Shabbat Shalom. |
