JACOB BECAME VERY FRIGHTENED AND WAS

DISTRESSED; SO HE DIVIDED THE PEOPLE WHO WERE WITH HIM AND THE FLOCKS AND THE

CATTLE AND THE CAMELS INTO TWO CAMPS… I HAVE BECOME

SMALL FROM ALL THE KINDNESSES AND FROM ALL THE TRUTH THAT YOU HAVE RENDERED

YOUR SERVANT, FOR WITH MY STAFF I CROSSED THIS JORDAN, AND NOW I HAVE BECOME TWO

CAMPS.

(Bereishit 32: 8, 11)

Two camps

So he divided the people, to teach you proper conduct that one

should not put all of his wealth in one place. Who do we learn this from? From

Jacob, for it says, So he divided the people, etc. and it also says [Obadiah

took one hundred prophets] and hid them fifty men in a cave (I Kings 18), and he said, "If

Esau comes to one camp and strikes it down" – these are our brothers

in the south; the remaining camp will escape" – these are our

brothers in the Diaspora.

(Bereishit Rabbah 76:3)

…and he was distressed: see Jacob, when

he was given over fully to the whims of Esau, who was coming to him at the head

of an armed force – he divided his people in order to save something as a

remnant.

So our dispersal in exile was also a means

for our survival and success. Esau's sword could never catch all of us together

at one time in one place. When our blood spilled in the west, our brothers in

the east lived in tranquility, and vice-versa. "The Holy One blessed be He

was charitable to Israel

when He dispersed them among the nations" (Pesahim 87b); this is exactly what Jacob did in his time

of trouble.

(Rabbi

S.R.Hirsch on Bereishit 32:8)

The

Price of Suspicion

Ariel

Rathaus

Scripture itself

hints that the mysterious "man" who wrestled all through the night

with Jacob was an angel of God (as Jacob states: For I have seen God face to

face and my life was saved – Bereishit 33:30). The opinions of the Sages were divided in

regard to the angel's identity and the reason for his attack upon Jacob. According

to one view, it was the angel Michael, one of the Holy One Blessed be He's

established messengers to human beings and the purpose of the struggle was

actually to encourage Jacob and to demonstrate to him that he had no reason to

fear Esau: "Michael told him: ‘If you could do this to me, when I am one

of the first among {God's] princes, how can you fear Esau?" (Yalkut

Shimoni, Vayishlah

32:132). According to another

view, the angel was the "Prince of Esau" (Bereishit

Rabbah 77:3), and their struggle is to be understood as an integral part of the

unending conflict between the two brothers and between the human essences and

spirits that they represent (this approach became very popular thanks to its having

been adopted by Rashi).

Whether the angel

came to encourage Jacob or whether he is to be identified with "the Prince

of Esau," there is no doubt that the struggle with him has an important

narrative function in setting up the great surprise to come when the brothers

finally meet. The wrestling match that lasts until dawn and the serious injury

to Jacob's thigh would seem to foreshadow the coming conflict and to imply that

the peace alluded to by the angel's blessing to Jacob cannot arrive without war

and bloodshed. In this way the story again ratchets up our expectation of an

outbreak of violence, which has already grown in the course of earlier

passages. From the very beginning of parashat Vayishlah

we find Jacob struck with fear and anxiety, planning for conflict. He sends

messengers to placate Esau, he prays that God will

save him from his enemies, lest they strike down mother and children alike.

He prepares entire herds of sheep, cattle, camels, and donkeys as a gift

sent to my master, to Esau. He gives his servants strict orders regarding exactly

what they should say to his cruel and terrible brother and how the herds were

to be led.

Behold the wonder!

All of this pent-up pressure pops like a harmless soap bubble. Esau manages to

surprise us – and apparently, to surprise Jacob as well. After all of the

expectations of blood-shed described in many verses, and following the struggle

with the angel, which also contributes to our increasing anxiety, there comes a

simple and succinct verse which turns everything on its head: And Esau ran

to him and embraced him and fell upon his neck and kissed him (Bereishit 33:4). Instead of spilling his blood, Esau kisses

Jacob.

Esau's character

as described in parashat Toldot also sets us up to be

surprised. Of course, it is possible to maintain that Esau is portrayed in Toldot as an impulsive man who acts upon his momentary

inclinations and is thus capable of demonstrating sudden and ephemeral

affection towards his brother. However, we must not in any event discount the

fact that he had planned to kill Jacob, even if he would have to wait until

after Isaac's death to wreak his vengeance. As a result, his treatment of Jacob

in their encounter was not foreseeable nor to be taken for granted. Esau's

earthiness and coarseness do not lead us to expect him to advance at all

spiritually or psychologically; there is a foundation for the derasha that derives his name from the word asuy ["formed"]: Esau was born covered

with a mantle of hair, like a grown man. He was completely "formed"

and assumed his final form from his first day. That form would accompany him

throughout his life (se Rashi and RaShBaM on Bereishit 25:25). Could such a man, one "formed" from his early infancy, be

able to change?

The Torah answers

this question in the affirmative. The important lesson to be learned from the

story of Jacob and Esau's encounter is that one must not rely too heavily on prejudices

– people are liable to change and surprise us. R. Shimon bar Yohai's famous comment on the verse, and Esau ran to

him, etc. seems to be intended to make precisely that point: "It is a

set law that Esau hates Jacob. However, at that hour his compassion overcame

him and he kissed him whole-heartedly" (Sifri, Beha'alotkha 69).

The dictum just

quoted above is often brought as evidence of the eternal and inevitable enmity

of Esau and of the nations in general towards Jacob/the Jewish People, so much

so that that it becomes drained of its meaning and is rendered indistinguishable

from the stance of R. Shimon bar Yohai's opponent in

argument, who claimed Esau's kiss to have been insincere (Sifri

ad loc). The truth of the

matter is that R. Shimon bar Yohai seems to be

teaching us something entirely different, and the dictum simply gives

expression to the surprise felt by any normal reader upon reading the story of

Jacob's encounter with Esau: while prejudice, based upon verses from parashat Toldot, says that it is Esau's custom to hate Jacob, the

reality described in the story's continuation gives the lie to that prejudice,

since when the brothers actually did meet, Esau honestly and truly kissed

Jacob, since he was overwhelmed by compassion for him. Suddenly, Esau behaves

in an unexpected fashion, and this behavior is sufficient to "overcome the

prejudice, for he did kiss him whole-heartedly," as the NeTzIV Mi'Volozhin explains in

his illuminating comments (Emek HaNeTzIV

LeSifri, Jerusalem

5737, pg. 218).

Even someone who

is "formed" like Esau, a man wicked from the womb, can change for the

better – and not just for a short moment. Of course, the unexpected behavior of

someone who changes suddenly from an enemy to a friend would not necessarily

earn our trust in someone usually thought to pose an existential threat. It is

not easy to become convinced that "there is someone to talk to." It

is simpler and surer to continue distrust of the enemy and to be careful of

him.

Scripture attests

that Jacob did in fact continue to be suspicious of his hot-headed brother who

had one promised to kill him; we see him asking Esau and his men to move ahead

of his own caravan, apparently in order to leave him and his household an

escape route in case of surprise-attack. None of us will condemn him for this

natural distrust, but there are some among the authors of the midrashim who count as a sin Jacob's lack of faith in his

wicked brother, a sin for which Jacob and his household were punished. Even

before Esau fell upon his neck, Jacob should have believed in the possibility

of his brother's repentance, but he did not have any faith in it at all: he hid

his daughter Dinah in a closet because he feared that Esau would see her and

ask to marry her. That is why Dinah eventually suffered the events that befell

her, as Rashi writes on Bereishit 32:23: "Jacob was punished for his, that

he kept her from his brother, for she could have returned him to goodness, and

so she fell into Shekhem's hands." (The source of this midrash is in Bereishit Rabbah 76:9) Esau might have repented with Dinah's help,

but Jacob, still wary, prevented that possibility.

The story of Shekhem,

with its humiliations, violence, and bloodshed, came as punishment for Jacob's having doubted his brother's ability to change. At

the end of the day Jacob, who had so feared his enemy Esau, finds himself in an

ever worse situation, surrounded by more numerous enemies, as we hear in his

rebuke of his sons Simon and Levi: "You have troubled me, to discredit

against me, and I and my household will be destroyed."

the events that eventually befell Dinah" (Bereishit 34:30). From here we see that trusting enemies and

the wicked is not always a matter of naïveté, as cynics and those

of little faith would have it. Sometimes wariness carries with it a very high

and even unbearable price.

Dr. Ariel Rathaus is a literary researcher and translator.

What was the Messengers' Answer to Jacob?

and

he is also coming toward you: They [spoke] as if convinced that Esau is

coming only to honor him and protect him on the way. Perhaps this was Esau's

intent, and perhaps they understood from Esau's reply that he had no evil in

his heart or hate towards his brother, and perhaps they also told Jacob all of

the words of peace and fraternity that he had spoken to them. However, Jacob

did not believe all of that because when he heard that Esau was coming to him

with 400 men he became afraid, and Scripture did not want to write at length

about the words spoken by Esau and the messengers since they made no difference

because Jacob did not trust in them. And it appears (as is the opinion of my

student Rabbi Avraham Hai Minchower)

that Esau did not tell the messengers that he wanted to go to Jacob with four

hundred men, rather they understood it from that which they saw and from that

which they heard from his men. Esau was unaware that they thought this and so

he was able to believe that Jacob did not know that he was coming, and that the

herds were being sent to Seir and the people walking

behind the herds did not know him, see verse 17. The word ve'gam

born fruits, for here he is coming to you."

(ShaDaL Bereishit

32:7)

Simon and Levi are brothers

This is problematic, for it would seem

that they had acted with the consent of – and in consultation with – her [Dina's]

father; for they stood before him, and he understood that they were speaking

deceitfully – why, then, was he angry? Furthermore, it cannot be that he

wished to marry off his daughter to the Canaanite who defiled her, and if all

the brothers were partners to the deceitful answer – though Simon and Levi

alone perpetrated the act – why did the father cursed the wrath of Simon and

Levi alone?

The answer is thus: The deceit of all

the brothers lay in their telling them to circumcise all males. They assumed

that all the men of the town would not do so, and even should they obey their

leaders and circumcise themselves, the brothers would arrive on the third day,

when all were in pain, and take back their daughter from the house of Shekhem. This was the strategy of the brothers, approved by

their father. But Shimon and Levi sought vengeance, and decimated all the

men of the town…

Because the people of Shekhem were evil, and they considered blood to be no more

important than water, the sons of Jacob wanted to take revenge by the sword of

vengeance, and they killed the king and all the inhabitants of his city, for

they were his servants, obeying his commands, and the covenant of the

circumcision was considered by them to be meaningless, no more than an act of

obsequiousness to their masters. Here Jacob says that they endangered him, as

is written, You have brought trouble upon me, making me odious; later

on, he curses their wrath because they wronged the people of the town who had

said to them in his presence, And we shall dwell with you and be one people and

they might have turned to God; and they reneged on their word, and perhaps they

and they killed them with no justification, for they [the people of Shekhem] did them no harm whatever, and this is the meaning

of their weapons are tools of lawlessness (Bereishit

34:13).

(RaMBaN 34:13)

…And he was further angered lest

people say that it was upon his advice that the act was done, and this – a

prophet performing acts of lawlessness and plunder – would constitute a

profanation of God's name. This is the meaning of Let not my person be

included in their council – excusing himself by explaining that he was not

aware of their intent as they answered deceitfully, and he was not counted in

their assembly when they came upon the town and murdered them.

(RaMBaN Bereishit 49:6)

…Even the Holy One, Blessed Be He

seems to present a problem, for one might come and claim: The Torah itself

justifies their behavior, for what is written following the incident? The

sons of Jacob. Does not that miracle constitute proof that God approved of

their action?

The Torah

teaches and reiterates that miracles and omens are not proofs of truth. Pharaoh's

magicians also succeeded in their magic… daily and throughout all of human

history we are witness to the victorious arm of falsehood – but none of this

proves anything… for – as a contemporary sage said – among the many and

varied terms employed in description of God's attributes, we do not find the

word "success."

(Prof.

Nehama Leibowitz, Studies in the Book of

Bereishit, 267-268)

Readers

Respond

As

an "obsessive" reader of Shabbat Shalom, I would like to give

a big yeyashar koah

on things that I believe require correction, but it is always out of complete

identification and great appreciation.

A midrash from tractate Ta'anit

of the Bavli is reproduced in the Chayey

Sara issue of Shabbat Shalom. In the context of s discussion of the question, "Is it permissible to criticize the actions

of the righteous?" the midrash

is quoted as follows: "Three made improper requests, two were answered

properly, and one was answered improperly… Eliezer, servant of Abraham, as is

written (Bereishit

24) May it be that the

maiden to whom I say: Pray lower your pitcher etc. Even

if she were to be crippled, even blind!? Nonetheless, he was

answered properly, and Rebecca appeared."

I set the troubling words in boldface; I feel that the editor must

attend to them in some way. Shabbat Shalom is supposed to be an

educational instrument. Thank God, in today's society our attitude towards

physically handicapped people and people with special needs has changed in the

direction of emphasizing their being human beings equal in value to other human

beings created in the divine image. I would expect that especially when the

possibility of criticizing our predecessors is being discussed that the editor

would add a note of dissent from the attitude of the Sages as it is expressed

here in the Bavli. In our view, a lame or blind woman

can be a worthy wife.

Dr. Debbie Weisman, Jerusalem

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat Shalom, comments:

I thank our member Dr. Debbie Weisman for her response and comments.

As for the matter itself: it is clear that if the Sages were prepared to

relate critically to certain actions of positive characters and thus emphasize

their humanity. Thus they relay to us a message that our making certain

criticisms of their own words or deeds does not lessen our appreciation

of the Sages themselves. Rather it makes them very human.

However, I feel that at the end of the day, the term kehogen

understood as expressing the notion of a correct match between what is asked

for and what happens in reality. That is to say – in contrast to Yiftah, Eliezer receives a "proper" response,

i.e., one that matches his expectations, even though he "gambled." While

we find the particular examples offered grating, they are of entirely minor

importance in the context under discussion.