Vayishlach: The Fruit of Reconciliation

By David Ginsburg, delivered Nov. 23, 2002

The parsha begins by describing Jacob’s return to his homeland after his self-imposed exile. You may remember that 20 years before, he had fled in fear of Esau’s anger after his having stolen his birthright and his blessing. He anticipated a confrontation and tried to avert it by propitiating Esau with gifts, by preparing for war as best he could, including the secreting of his family in a second camp across the river, and by praying to G-d for help and reminding G-d of his promises to him “that he would surely do him good.”

That night, while alone, he wrestled with a stranger until dawn. The next day he met Esau who, contrary to his expectations, “embraced him, fell on his neck and kissed him; and they wept.” After the reconciliation Esau returned home, inviting Jacob to accompany him. This Jacob declined with a number of pretexts and he chose instead to settle in the City of Schechem in the land of Canaan. The parsha then describes the rape of Dinah, his daughter, and its consequences and concludes by recording the deaths of Deborah, Rachel, and Isaac, and by listing the descendants of Jacob and of Esau by their various wives and concubines.

How might we construe these events? I sought help from the internet and it is intriguing in these regards. There are a myriad of interpretations depending upon the vantage point of the writer. There are those who see Esau as duplicitous and who believe that when he fell upon Jacob’s neck it was not to kiss it but to bite it. Catastrophe was averted, they claim, by Jacob’s neck turning to marble with Esau weeping then, not from emotion, but from the pain of his broken teeth. (“Thou hast broken the teeth of the wicked” – Psalm 3 – refers to this episode).

These authors would ascribe much of Jewish misfortune, from Haman through Rome, Hitler and the present day torment in Israel, to the descendants of Esau. They counsel suspicion and circumspection when dealing with them, based on Jacob’s unwillingness to accompany Esau on his return. They look to the Haftorah where Obadiah prophesies “saviours shall come up on mount Zion to judge the mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.”

And there are those who liken the struggle with the stranger to the brute force of heathens who would wrestle Jews to the ground, either physically, intellectually, or emotionally. I found the observations of Rabbi Lewis John Eron, who is the Jewish Community Chaplain at the Jewish Geriatric Home in Cherry Hill, N.J., especially appealing and reflecting a point of view that I should like to recommend to our little Emily at her naming today. Rabbi Eron begins by noting that few conflicts are as significant in our lives as our struggles with those who are closest to us – the members of our family; that a basic theme in the Book of Genesis is that of conflict and reconciliation between brothers – between Isaac and Ishmael, between Jacob and Esau, and between Joseph and his brothers.

Each generation of brothers was torn apart by feelings of jealousy and anger. He suggests that the predominant theme of this week’s Torah portion is the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau; and he notes that such reconciliation goes hand-in-hand with spiritual maturity and emotional growth, which he believes is the symbolism of Jacob’s struggle with the divine being the night before he was to meet his estranged brother. Our Torah, he says, teaches us that with effort we can mature, put our anger, our rivalry and our conflicts aside, and realize the true depth of the family bonds that sustain us and keep us together.

Rabbi Howard Cohen from the Congregation Beth El, Bennington, VT, notes, in this context, that the message of the Haftorah from Hosea, in contrast to that of Obadiah, is that reconciliation is better than revenge. The similarities of these opposing points of view with current Middle-East attitudes and events are obvious, disconcerting, and painful.

For me, a resounding concept deriving from today’s reading is that even the most revered amongst us is not perfect, is capable of malice, cunning, deceit, and undue expectations, and indeed all the sins of commission and omission noted in the Al Chait. If G-d can forgive these in Jacob, and in us, then surely we must forgive them in others, and more particularly, in ourselves, as we also strive to overcome our flaws just as Jacob did his, in his struggle with the Messenger.