Parashat Vayishlach (Genesis 32:4 - 36:40)

by Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith

Summary

Jacob’s life certainly doesn’t get any easier in Vayishlach.  While we may most strongly associate Jacob’s physical struggle with the angel with this sidrah, there are other significant trials worthy of our attention, too.

At the end of the previous sidrah, Vayetze, Jacob settles an old score with Laban, his father in law.  Jacob may have once been the ‘trickster’ but it was Laban who forced his son in law to endure many years of abusive servitude.   Laban is exposed as unscrupulous and is forced to acknowledge Jacob to be an equal.   A formal peace treaty is made between them.  Jacob is now free to begin a new chapter in his life as he leaves Mesopotamia to return home to Canaan.

But Jacob’s sense of calm is very short lived for as he journeys home he must face up to the chief victim of his own misbehaviour:  Esau.   A troubled and fearful Jacob prepares rigorously for this encounter with his dubious past.  He has to face Esau as a retreat in a safe direction would violate the terms of his treaty with Laban.   Anyway, he can’t flee rapidly from an attack by his brother as he has children and livestock with him.   Fearing the worst, Jacob turns to prayer and diplomacy.  

Jacob organises magnificent gifts with the aim of softening up Esau.  Servants take the gifts to Esau.  Waking up in the middle of the night, an edgy Jacob moves his entire household to a defensive position across the River Jabbok.  Left alone, he is attacked by a mysterious being and they wrestle until dawn.  Jacob, it seems, prevails in this struggle and his assailant blesses him.  Jacob is now to be known as ‘Israel’.

Jacob rushes to meet his brother.  Esau must have been moved by Jacob’s offerings and the expression of total submission.  With great emotion, Esau accepts Jacob’s gifts as atonement for the past.   Jacob remains uneasy, however, but they part in peace. (They shall never meet again but at least the active fear and hostility between them has abated,)

No sooner has Jacob returned to Canaan but an unfortunate event occurs:  his only daughter Dinah is raped by Shechem son of Hamor.   This is considered a terrible crime against the honour of Jacob and his family not to mention Dinah’s dignity.  Hamor tries to buy off Jacob and his family so that Shechem can marry Dinah.  As a condition, Jacob’s sons demand that Hamor and all of the males in his tribe be circumcised.  They readily agree because Schechem is hopelessly infatuated with Dinah.

 Jacob’s sons Simeon and Levi take advantage of the pain of the enemy and slaughter them and rescue Dinah.  Jacob’s other sons seize the enemy’s wives, children and property.   But Jacob is anxious and fears the revenge of other Canaanite tribes for his sons’ act of vengeful trickery.

God then tells Jacob to return to Bethel  --the place where he first dreamt of divine protection while fleeing the wrath of Esau--  and to build another altar there.  God blesses Jacob and promises the land to him and his clan; renewal and security. 

Meanwhile, Rachel’s nurse Deborah dies; another connection to Jacob’s life in Mesopotamia is lost.  Then, traumatically, Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel dies while giving birth to Benjamin.  She is buried near Bethlehem. 

Afterwards, Jacob’s oldest son Reuben then has sexual relations with Bilhah, Rachel’s maid who is a concubine to Jacob and who bore two sons during Rachel’s long period of infertility.  It may well be that Reuben engaged in this incestuous act so as to assure the political status of his mother Leah and fortify his own position with respect to inheritance.   (Reuben’s plan will later backfire.)

After all of these violent family traumas, the sidrah ends with a summary of Jacob’s lineage, the death of Isaac as well as a long account of the descendents of Esau and their wanderings. 

Commentary

Jacob certainly doesn’t have an easy life as a mature adult.  Thinking about his conspicuous inaction during the episode of the rape of his daughter Dinah and, in the next sidrah, his weakness if not obliviousness when it comes to the acrimonious relationships between his sons, I wonder if Jacob is somehow weary of a life beset with family rivalry and conflict?  Or, does Jacob’s seeming retreat from the forefront mark the passing of real power to the next generation however fractious?  After all, the main actor in the rest of the Torah is Joseph and Jacob’s journeys to Egypt are as an old and frail man.  And, yet, Jacob will live to be reunited in joy with his long lost favourite son Joseph and be strong enough to offer his blessings –and blunt character assessments--  to his heirs before he dies in Egypt.

Perhaps, this is reductive and much too harsh. Perhaps, in my own mind, I am unduly influenced by Philip Roth’s latest book, Exit Ghost, in which fearful, world-weary, prostate-cancer survivor Nathan Zuckerman has retreated to his remote two-room cabin.  After eleven years as a virtual hermit, he comes back to Manhattan for a week of interpersonal aggression and to confirm the sheer futility of exercising his sexual desire not to mention being pursued by a self-seeking young trickster-careerist.   I’m not sure if he more avoids or actually confronts his own sense of past failure in his relationships.  It’s all exhausting and emotionally draining and, of course, reflective of the fact that life simply doesn’t get any easier as one gets older as a painfully self-knowledgeable and highly imperfect human being.

Another way to think about it is that Jacob is a strong survivor as Sforno (the 16th century Italian-Jewish commentator) discusses Jacob’s conduct when he meets up with Esau decades after having cheated him out of the birthright.   Jacob does demean himself as he bows to Esau.  But, like the reed that bends in the wind, he survives.  The oak and the cedar are mightier and stronger but much less flexible.  They are uprooted during storms.  (Sforno is also playing with the idea that the name Jacob symbolizes Israel as a nation and how it has survived somehow even when defeated.  Much stronger empires have come and gone and their identities have been lost.)   

Survival for the sake of survival isn’t everything but, at least in the instance of his encounter with Esau, Jacob didn’t shirk from the distressing knowledge that he was in a position of moral weakness.  He was capable of the internal struggle to find the way to initiate a reconciliation to end many years of ill-feeling.  The importance of that physical and/or spiritual wrestling at the River Jabbok does continue to dominate my thinking about Jacob. 

Rabbi Frank Dabba Smith

Harrow and Wembley Progressive Synagogue