Dvar Torah on Parshat Vayishlach

As the deadly knife/car/stone/and gun attacks against Israelis continue, and in the wake of ongoing atrocities committed by ISIS, Boko Haram and other radical, racist, Islamic groups, one hears, quite understandably, comments about the intractable and immutable nature of the xenophobic, triumphalist, tribal hatred that exists in the Arab/Muslim world, and elsewhere. One of the Rabbinic statements that is often used in this context appears in a Rashi in this week’s parsha.

The story goes like this: Yaakov, after running away from his brother Esav, who wanted to kill him for stealing their father’s blessings, is now, after a 20-year absence, returning to the land of Israel, and knows that he must face his brother. Happily, when they do meet, all goes well, and the interaction is nervous but peaceful; in fact, loving. We are told that Yaakov is deferential to Esav, giving him generous gifts and bowing to him. Esav responds positively: he runs to greet Yaakov, “and he embraced him, and fell on his neck, and kissed him, and they wept.” As happens a number of other times in the Torah, we have a tradition to place dots over the word “and he kissed him” when it is written in the Torah.

What these dots over a word mean is a matter of some discussion by the Rabbis of the Midrash. Broadly, the general understanding is that they serve as a kind of an asterisk, telling us that the word needs further explanation and interpretation – it does not  mean what it seems to say. A well-known halachic example is the dot which is placed over the letter ה at the end of the word רחוקה – “far away”, which appears in the verse exempting people who are far away from the Temple in Jerusalem from having to offer the Passover sacrifice on Passover – they can do it a month later. The dot over the last letter is understood to mean that by “far away” we do not really mean very far, it can, in fact, just mean outside of the Temple area. The dot over the word is meant to tell us here, and in other cases, not to take the word literally, or too seriously; the dot attenuates the message.

Here, in our story, the dots over each letter of the word וישקהו -“and he kissed him”- are understood to mean that this was not a simple kiss. Usually, as the song goes, “a kiss is just a kiss”. Here the Rabbis interpret it in a number of contradictory ways. One says that Esav did not kiss Yaakov whole-heartedly. Another says it means he actually tried to bite him, and that Yaakov was saved by his neck miraculously turning to stone. Famously - and this is the statement which is quoted (partially) quite a lot these days, as an explanation for the intractable nature of Islamic terror - Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: “It is a halacha [matter of law] that Esav hates Yaakov, however, on this occasion, his loving, merciful side took over, and he kissed him whole-heartedly.”  The first part, about it being axiomatic that Esav detests Yaakov, is often used these days to explain our enemies. There is nothing we can do, it’s just the way they are, Esav hates Yaakov, and always will. 

However, even the casual reader will understand that this is a funny way to use this statement by Rav Shimon bar Yochai, as he immediately goes on to say that, in this case at least, Esau felt differently towards Yaakov, and kissed him as a sign of real affection.

And that is the crux of the matter. Esav, who has been presented to us as the archetypal enemy of the Jewish people, is hard to understand. The Torah puts dots over every single letter of “and he kissed him” to tell us just that. We are hard put to determine Esav’s real feelings and motives. They are dynamic, they change; he reacts and responds in different ways to Yaakov and his actions, and how he really feels is not clear to us.

If we want to go with Esav as the ultimate enemy of Israel, then the lesson here is quite complicated. Maybe he meant it when he kissed Yaakov, maybe not, and maybe he was actually attacking him. If this is the way our enemies behave, then the statement “it is axiomatic that Esav hates Yaakov” loses a good deal of its impact, because, in spite of this implacable hatred, he can, perhaps, be moved to real emotions of love and concern for Yaakov. The hatred may be hard-wired, but it is not necessarily the only dynamic between the two brothers and, by extension, the two nations.

This makes any attempt to reduce our enemies to implacable haters of Israel a non-starter. After all, if the statement about the endemic hatred Esav feels for Yaakov is followed by a disclaimer – but here his feelings of mercy and love overcame him – than I guess the hatred is not that implacable. And if other Rabbis, looking at the same interaction in our story, argue as to whether Esav really kissed, or, in fact, tried to bite Yaakov, then how in the world are we ever supposed to know the true motivations of our contemporary enemies?

That’s the challenge that Parshat Vayishlach leaves us with. Yes, there is an Esav, and he hates. But that fact is somehow not absolute, not immutable. It is up to us to try, as Yaakov did, different approaches towards our enemies; to be ready for war and try to make peace; to try generosity and understanding, as well as dissimulation and military tactics. To be clear-headed about the very real hatred that exists there, and to also know that it can, at times, be turned into a more positive emotion. I don’t pretend to know precisely how to do this, but I do know that anyone who offers a monolithic, one-dimensional response to the very real horrors we are witnessing is missing the message of the parsha. 

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix