Avi became Bar Mitzvah on Saturday, December 6. Here’s his thoughtful d’var torah, on Jacob and Esau and their reconciliation.
Shabbat Shalom!
My parshah is VaYishlach (and he went), set in the book of Genesis. And he went refers to Jacob leaving Laban’s house to slowly work his way home again after “being paid” and accruing a lot of wetalth, including loads of goats and sheep from Laban, two wives, a large family, and lots of slaves.
The Parshah is about the Jacob and has three small stories within it:
First, Jacob wrestling with the being, where Jacob bumps into some being in the night and wrestles it. As the day is breaking, the being asks to be let go, and Jacob says he will let it go only if it will give him a blessing. He gets the blessing and the name Israel. By the way my haftorah, Hosea 11-12 references this moment, connecting it to my parshah.
The middle of the parashah describes how Jacob, on his way home after running from Esau twenty years earlier, realizes that he will now have to confront his brother.
The end of the parashah tells the story of the possible rape of Dinah. I am not going to discuss this in my D’rash today, but if you don’t know about it then you should read it yourself. It is interesting and important.
Let us begin with the story of the wrestling. Although it is short, about a paragraph it is a famous story, with many interpretations. One is that the being was an Angel from G-d, sent to set him straight. I think that if this is what the story meant, it could have been a little more literal. Many of the explanations include things such as Jacob wrestling with his own conscience. I find this interesting, and maybe he did become a better person. Or, some suggest that this was a malign spirit, or Esau’s guardian angel who was trying to weaken Jacob on the eve of his encounter with Esau. I completely disagree with this interpretation, because if it was Esau’s guardian angel it would have known that Esau would forgive him, and the malign spirit just doesn’t seem to go with the other ideas about spirits found in the Torah. A more modern interpretation that medieval rabbis didn’t mention is that maybe this was a random guy Jacob ran into in the night. And he was just saying what Jacob wanted him to say so he could get away. This brings it down to earth, and it’s something I could imagine happening to me.
So the next morning when Jacob is about to meet Esau, there’s this tension around Esau and what he will do because of Jacob’s actions 20 years earlier. Jacob, unknowing of what Esau had done while he was gone, sends gifts to Esau to appease him. But why was Jacob so worried? I’ll have to go back two parshiyot to explain it.
At the beginning of the Jacob & Esau story, Rebeccah, Isaac’s wife, is giving birth to twins. As she gives birth, Esau comes out first, with Jacob coming out right behind grabbing Esau’s foot, trying to be the first born. While Jacob was growing up, he was a mama’s boy, always in the kitchen. Esau was a hunter, gathering the meat for the family. One day after Esau is hunting, he comes back and asks for the soup Jacob is making. Jacob says “I won’t give you this red lentil soup unless you give me your birthright.” And Esau says, “Yeah, I’ll give you my birthright. Now give me the soup.”
But the real problem comes later, when Isaac’s eyesight is getting worse. Because he fears he may die soon, he asks Esau to hunt some game and bring him food so he can give him his blessing. Rebeccah tells Jacob that he should steal the blessing. And Rebeccah came up with a plan. And Jacob enacted it. When Esau comes back, he’s really angry at Jacob and Isaac gives Esau a different blessing with what he has left to give. Esau is so mad that Rebeccah asks Jacob to run away to her brother, Laban’s house.
So, 20 years later, this is why Jacob is sending messengers to Esau, for if Jacob comes home and Esau is still holding a grudge, Jacob may be done for. And so Jacob sent his messengers, telling them to tell Esau “To my lord Esau, thus says your servant Jacob: I have stayed with Laban and remained until now; I have acquired cattle, asses, sheep, and male and female slaves; and I send this message to my lord in the hope of gaining your favor.” But when the messengers returned with news that Esau was bringing 400 men with him, Jacob was afraid.
He divided his camp in two so that if one was attacked, the other would be able to run away. Jacob speaks, saying to G-d “you can’t let me die here, because then I can’t make offspring as numerous as the sands of the sea”, trying to remind G-d of the Promise he had made. When Esau comes, he kisses Jacob and they weep, afterwards having a long back-and-forth, with Esau trying to get Jacob to come with, and Jacob refusing his offers, saying that “he’ll follow close behind”. But in the end, for reasons unknown, Jacob turns around and goes the exact opposite direction as Esau.
A lot of my studies were spent thinking about what Jacob and Esau were thinking. Although it’s a lot of guessing and speculation, what they were thinking has a huge impact on how the story is interpreted. The rabbis from the ancient and medieval times have many different views on the brothers. Because he is our patriarch, they tend to side with Jacob rather than Esau. So, in many traditional commentaries, Esau is of course presented as someone who knows nothing of what he’s doing, and is mean and evil. They present Jacob as a person who is able to change and get better, does almost nothing wrong and G-d protects him every time. They say that Jacob gets better after his wrestling. I don’t agree with that because in the Dina story he didn’t behave better. He was just a bystander and didn’t do anything when his sons decided to kill everyone in the village, and he was sitting with them the whole time while they made their plans. So is Jacob really the good guy?
Many commentators question Jacob’s faith, saying that he shouldn’t be afraid of Esau because he has G-d with him. Some commentators commended Jacob, and others attacked him, for saying “my lord, Esau” and “your servant, Jacob” in his speech and in his message to Esau. Was Jacob smart in appeasing his brother who felt that Jacob has robbed him twice, or humiliating himself by lowering himself in his brother’s esteem? I think that if Jacob was truly unsure of Esau’s standing, it was a good move to avoid provoking the guy with 400 man army.
When he meets Esau, the commentaries try to examine every move of Esau. For instance, right after they meet, Esau kisses and hugs Jacob and they weep, but a commentary says that Esau was actually trying to bite Jacob. In the Torah, mysterious dots that appear above the word “and they kissed”, special dots above a few words only appearing 10 times in the Torah. They claim that the dots show that Esau didn’t actually kiss him, but tried to bite him on the neck. And G-d saving Jacob by turning his neck to marble, thereby causing Esau’s teeth to shatter. Then they both weep, Esau because of his teeth, Jacob because of his neck. Really? I think this interpretation is stupid because it seems that Esau has no need to bite Jacob if he was angry with him because, again, Esau has 400 men with him.
Questions for the kahal –
- What impact did the wrestling have on Jacob?
- What do you think about the reunion of Jacob and Esau, their greetings and leaving?
Here is what I thought about these: So, when Esau is about to meet Jacob, after the encounter with the being, Jacob feels more refreshed and ready to meet him because of what happened. In some ways, I think that the struggle with the being, while weakening him physically, strengthened him mentally. Many of the commentaries say that the limping was symbolic of what his soul had been doing before.
Personally I think that when Jacob and Esau reunite, Esau is trying to be gracious but Jacob feels like he still has something to hide and is too afraid of Esau.
Recently, there has been a lot of unrest in the world. And we have had a hard time reconciling deep seeded conflicts: Ferguson, the West Bank, Ukraine, and Syria. Although these conflicts may be harder to resolve, I think this portion, especially its commentaries, can provide some insight into what not to do. I hope we can resolve these conflicts in a way that is better than Jacob and Esau, without leaving awkwardness in their wake.
Thank you listening, I appreciate the comments, and I hope you have a good time listening to the Torah reading, whether or not you have a wire toy to keep your hands busy or not.
