Kislev 15, 5776/November 27, 2015
After a long day of meticulous preparations, and a sleepless night spent wrestling with a mysterious stranger, Yaakov is at last ready to meet his estranged brother Esau. He has prepared for every eventuality, presenting generous gifts for Esau, hoping to appease him, and dissuade him from carrying out his decades old threat to kill his brother Yaakov; he has armed his people, readying them for war, should that prove necessary; and he has prayed to G-d , reminding G-d of His promise to return him peacefully to the land of his fathers, despite his acknowledged unworthiness.
Yet when Yaakov at last meets Esau a fourth scenario, one that Yaakov had not anticipated, transpires. Esau seems genuinely puzzled by the fanfare with which Yaakovhas greeted him, and asks Yaakov, "What is to you [the purpose of] all this camp that I have met?" And he [Yaakov] said, "To find favor in my master's eyes." (Genesis 33:8) To this Esau replies, "I have plenty, my brother; let what you have remain yours." (ibid 33:9) Yaakov certainly could not have wished for a more amicable conclusion to his childhood dispute with Esau over the birthright and over their father Yitzchak's blessing. Only a moment ago, Yaakov was fearing for his life, and now Esau is embracing him as a true brother, a long-lost companion.
But has anything really changed? "I have plenty" Esau says, in Hebrew, "yesh li rav." Esau is giving a quantitative account of his status in life. I've got plenty, he says, I've paid my mortgage, I've paid my kids college tuition, I've got a thirty six inch LED TV screen. I've got plenty. Keep your gifts. I'm good.
Has Esau really changed at all from the day he came in from the hunt, exhausted and famished, and without a moment's hesitation, renounced his eternal birthright for a bowl of porridge? At the time he reasoned, "Behold, I am going to die; so why do I need this birthright?" (ibid 25:32) Twenty years later, Esau is still living his life by the same code: I've got what I need for now. Never mind tomorrow. Esau has what he needs. His belly is full. He has forgotten old grudges. At it turns out, the angst over the lost birthright and the outcry over the stolen blessing were merely momentary expressions of defeat. Esau is a hunter, and in these two cases, the game got away.
If Esau seems quite familiar to us, and we relate admirably to his current state of cool while greeting Yaakov, this is very understandable. Esau, in his outlook on life, in his attachment to the material, and in his affinity for the temporal as opposed to the eternal, is the very model of modern, western, "secular" man. We are thankful for what we have got, and that is good. But tomorrow is Black Friday and we return to the relentless hunt for more.
Yaakov's response, while cast in the same language as Esau's words, is, in truth, worlds apart: "Please no! If indeed I have found favor in your eyes, then you shall take my gift from my hand, because I have seen your face, which is like seeing the face of an angel, and you have accepted me. Now take my gift, which has been brought to you, for G-dhas favored me with it, and because I have everything." (ibid 33:10:11) "I have everything" Yaakov says, in Hebrew, "yesh li kol." Yaakov's "everything" is not an expression of acquisition or of material gain. It is a statement of a revealed truth that he has experienced; a revealed truth that he has learned to embrace and to live his life by."Everything," in Yaakov's case, is not the ability to successfully juggle his credit cards, but his recognition that G-d plays a role in his life, or, more precisely, that Yaakov plays a role in the world that G-d has created.
Yaakov and Esau couldn't be farther apart. Esau has what's his. He neither offers to share with Yaakov, nor does he want anything from him. Yaakov, on the other hand, insists on sharing his truth, his revelation that we are all the children of G-d , and that we all have a role to play in His world, a task to fulfill, and by dedicating our lives to fulfilling that task, we purchase for ourselves a share in the eternal. Esau's world is a finite world in which we are nothing more than the sum of our possessions, ultimately bound in and chastened by the confines of death. Yaakov's world is a world of light, our lives measured only by our desire to live it in G-d's presence, to aligning our will with His will.
Yaakov and Esau parted and went their separate ways, but today the world has grown too small to do so. Today, the unresolved meeting between brothers has become a full-blown clash of civilizations. Today there is the way of Esau in its most benign form, that of consumerism and acquisition, and there is the way of Esau in its most malignant form, the Islamic worship of death and its endless quest for blood, a hunter whose prey is all who deny its death-cult ethos. The epicenter of the clash is, of course, the Temple Mount, where the children of all nations seek to pray to the One G-d . A Holy Temple, the vision of which Yaakov had in Beit El, this is the gift which Yaakov possesses, and which to this day he longs to share: "Now take my gift, which has been brought to you, for G-dhas favored me with it, and because I have everything."
-The Temple Institute
No comments:
Post a Comment