All in the Family | Rabbi Stewart Weiss | Beit Midrash

Torah Portion and Tanach
Vayishlach

קטגוריה משנית

"Esav ran to greet Yakov & he hugged him; he fell upon his neck & kissed him. And then they cried." (33:4).

The cataclysmic Battle of the Brothers, so feared by a trembling Yakov - who had dreaded this confrontation for 22 long years, since the day he wrested the birthright from his twin Esav – never materialized. It was a dud; a boring, uneventful non-event. It lasted even shorter than the celebrated 1965 Muhammad Ali-Sonny Liston fight, when the champ knocked out his opponent with the infamous "Phantom Punch," just 1:44 into the first round. In our sedra, instead of KO’s, there were kisses.

Was Esav truly sincere in his embrace of Yakov? The mysterious dots above the word, "Vayishakayhu – and he kissed him" – are interpreted by some as quote marks, implying this was not your typical love-smooch. They read the word instead "Vayinash’chu, & he (Esav) bit him," adding that Yakov’s neck miraculously turned as hard as alabaster so that he avoided any deadly injury.

But others maintain that this kiss was genuine, that Esav really wanted to make amends & reconcile with Yakov. Rashi quotes Rav Shimon bar Yochai saying that while it is indeed a given maxim that Esav (read: all Gentiles) hate Jews, in this case the emotion of love was real. And Rav S. R. Hirsch points to Esav’s crying as conclusive evidence that the embrace was genuine; tears, he says, cannot be faked. Esav grasped his lineage & affirmed that he was, after all, a grandson of Avraham Avinu.

Flash forward to the present. How often do witness the constant enmity of others for the Jewish People & Israel; the defamation, lies & curses that are cast upon us, & throw up our hands in desperation. "They hate us!" we declare, convinced that there will be eternal conflict with the world at large, with only the rarest of exceptions.

But then along comes a remarkable event, such as the establishment of ties between Israel & the Arab Emirates, & their amazing outpouring of friendship towards the thousands of Israeli visitors to Dubai, that stops us in our tracks & makes us wonder if maybe, just maybe, there can be a comraderie & cooperation between our peoples.

Think about it: the vast majority of our troubles involve our own relatives: Yishmael, Esav, Amalek, Lavan, Moav & Ammon are all the fruit of our generational family tree. So, even though intra-family fights can be the most caustic, maybe we will someday come to the realization that we share the same DNA, the same genes, the same blood. Maybe hope will someday replace hopelessness.

Vayishlach