Vayishlach 1984

In the Torah portion Vayislach we learn about the encounter that Jacob had with the guardian angel of Esau right before he was to meet his brother.  The Torah does not specify who this person was with whom Jacob wrestled, but in the Prophet Hosea which we read as the Haphtorah this week, it says specifically that Jacob wrestled with an angel.  We learn that as a result of this wrestling, Jacob's thigh is touched and he limps.  Therefore, to this very day we Jews do not eat the sciatica nerve.  What do the laws of kashruth have to do with Jacob's encounter with the guardian angel of Esau? The rabbis teach us that Jacob and the guardian angel of Esau wrestled until "Ala Hashachar" until "daybreak." The rabbis interpret this to mean that "they will wrestle until the Mashiach comes." The Jewish throughout history are locked in a battle with the culture around them in order to see which values will be supreme.  It is a battle which will go on until the end of time.  G-d has explained what it means when it says that Jacob was touched in the thigh.  It means that his children are going to be affected.  Thigh is a euphemism for progeny.  In this struggle that Jacob is going to have with the contrary cultural forces of the world it is his children that are going to be in danger.  If we look through this complete Sedra we can see that its underlying theme is concern for children and their welfare.  In fact, in this week's Torah portion we have the statement, "and Devora died, Rebecca's nursemaid, and she was buried under Beth El, under the oak, and the name was called the Oak of Crying." This is the only mention we have of this Devora in the whole Torah.  The only mention we have is this obituary of her.  She was obviously a very important woman if a place was even named after the weeping that took place at her funeral, but this is all we know about her from the text.  The rabbis say that she was a very important personage.  They ask, where did Rebecca learn to be a righteous woman, a Tzedakess? After all, her father was an idol worshipper.  Her brother was a crook.  The answer, we learn, is from Devora, her nursemaid.  It was she, too, who made sure that Jacob stayed on the right path.  She went with him to Mesopotamia, and it was she who ensured that his children also stayed on the right path.  We learn, too, about the birth of Benjamin, that when he was born his mother, Rachel, died and as she was dying she wanted to name her son "Benuni," "the son of my affliction," but Jacob did
not follow her last wish.  He called the boy instead "Benyamin," "the son of my strength." The reason for this is the same reason why the laws of kashruth are connected to the struggle between Esau and Jacob.  Kashruth teaches us how we are to conduct ourselves in life so that this struggle between cultures and ideas will not unhinge us, will not destroy us.  According to the law of kashruth, there are certain things we can never eat just like there are certain things in life we can never do.  We can never murder. We may kill in self defense but never murder.  We must never act in a cruel and vicious way, etc.  However, there are many, many things which depend upon circumstances whether or not we can or cannot do them.  There are many things that are right in one context but wrong in another.  For example, it is right to sing and dance at a wedding, but it is wrong at a funeral.  The worst kind of Treif if not meat from a pig, but it is when you have a piece of 100% kosher meat and you put a piece of 100% kosher cheese on it. This mixture becomes so Treif that you cannot have any benefit from it.  You cannot even give it to your dog, which is not the case of ham or bacon.  The highest form of Treifkeit is when you have two kosher things and combine them in the wrong way.  Sometimes it is more difficult to know when to do something that is proper in certain instances than to know when you can never do something.  This is a very hard lesson to learn.  Many of our young people fail to learn it.  It is not just something to be grasped by the mind.  Recently a person came to me about starting a halfway house for schizaphrenic people.  We are not talking about retarded people.  Most of these schizaphrenics have an IQ of 140 or 150.  They have attended Rice and Harvard, but something has snapped. They do not know how to relate to the world.  They do not know when to sing and when to dance, when to cry, when to joke.  Intellectually they may understand these things, but emotionally and physically they do not.  A young girl came to see me within the last few weeks who tried to commit suicide.  The reason why she tried to commit suicide was because she just could not cope.  She could not figure out what is demanded of her, when she should do this thing and when she should do that thing.  Everything she did was wrong. We tried to give her help and she got help.  Life is difficult.  We are all engaged in the struggle of competing values, the struggle which will go on until the time of the Mashiach.  Unless we learn the laws of kashruth we will have a very difficult time coping. We have to learn that there are certain things that we can never do, but most things in life we can do but we have to do them the right way in the right time and in the right circumstances.  Unless we learn that we are going to have terrible problems.  There are certain times when certain actions are wholly inappropriate while other times the same action can be very appropriate.  We have to teach our children when things can be done and cannot be done.  That's why Jacob did not want to name his son "the son of my sorrow." A boy should never feel that all life was pain and suffering.  It is true that part of life is pain and suffering but there is also joy and happiness in life.  Strength comes from hard work and sacrifice and anguish, but it also comes from joy.  Jacob wanted his son to have a name which encompassed both aspects of life.  Our children must be touched by the struggle of competing values and we have to teach them when certain values are appropriate and when they are not so they will not be harmed and lose out in the struggle. I am reminded of the story they tell about a man who got on an airplane bound for New York with one stop in St. Louis.  He instructed the stewardess to wake him up when they got to St. Louis.  When they got to New York he woke and found he was in New York and not St. Louis.  He called the stewardess over and really bawled her out.  There was nothing she could say except to mumble an apology.  Her fellow stewardess looked at her as they were leaving the plane and said, "Boy, was that guy mad."  She looked at her friend and said, "You think he was mad? You should have seen how mad the guy was that I put off in St. Louis!" We have to learn to do the right thing in the right time, otherwise we will get into a lot of trouble.

The rabbis all ask the question, why is it that the Torah spends so much time telling us about Esau's geneology?  The Torah does not go into the geneology of other peoples after we learn about Abraham. Why should here it spend 43 verses telling us about the descendants of Esau?  The rabbis explain that when Yaacov met Esau, he bowed before him 8 times and, therefore, Esau had 8 kings before we Jewish people had one.  We remained a loose confederacy of tribes and did not become a united people until Esau had 8 kings.  Many rabbis are very hard on Jacob for bowing down.  They did not like him to grovel before his brother, and because he groveled before his brother, complete Jewish sovereignty was delayed.
It says, after Jacob made peace with his brother, "and Jacob came Sholaim, whole, to the city of Shem."  Jacob did not go to see his father who lived in Chevron, not in Shem.  Instead, he went whole to Shem.  The rabbis say that one of the meanings of "whole" is that he went "with his integrity." He had fought with the angel and, although in between he did grovel before his brother, he determined that from now on he and his children would be whole Jews, Jews who had integrity and dignity who would not grovel before anyone.  He did not want to go see his father, Yitzchok, at this time because his father, Yitzchok, was a groveling Jew.  Every time Yitzchok had a confrontation he yielded.  When the servants of Avimelech plugged up his wells, he did not say anything.  He just left and dug other wells.  He was not a Jew who stood up for himself, who had integrity, who was macho.
Jacob went to Shem and there a terrible thing happened.  His daughter, Dena, was raped by Shem Ben Chamor, the son of the head of the city. Later he wanted to marry her.  In the text it says "and the sons

of Jacob came from the field when they heard, and they were very saddened and very angry because a vile deed was done in Israel and so it ought not be done."  The rabbis all ask, if it was a vile deed that was done to rape Dena, why does it say afterwards that it should not be done?  This is a redundant verse, and they explain that when it says "and so it should not be done" it means that even according to the laws of the city of Shem and of the people around such a thing should not have been done.  It not only violated Jewish norms, it violated the norms of the larger community.  What's more, because the people of Shem did not punish the perpetrator of this deed, it was as if they were in cahoots with him.  Shimon and Levi then devised a plan.  They decided that they would agree to Dena's marriage if all the men of the city were circumcized.  They then, after the people had circumcized themselves and were still in pain, entered the city and slew everyone.  When Jacob heard this he said to Shimon and Levi, "Achartemosee, you have troubled me, Haveesheini, to make me stink among the inhabitants of the land."  Jacob did not like what they did and on his deathbed he did not forgive them, and he cursed them by making sure they would not have territory of their own in Israel, and they would be scattered among the tribes.
He may have been initially afraid that Shimon and Levi's act would provoke hostile action from the people around them and cause the Jewish people's destruction, but this did not happen.  It says "and the fear of G-d was on the city around them, and they did not chase after the sons of Jacob."  The people around realized that Jacob's sons had punished the perpetrators.  It was according to their own law but this still did not satisfy Jacob.  He still did not forgive them.  In fact, if we look at the expression he used, Achartemosee

Haveesheini, we can translate it another way.  We can translate it "You have made me gloomy because you have made me like everyone else. You have made me like another Eesh."  Jacob did not like what had happened because his children were acting like everyone else.  He had thought that if he made his children into macho-type Jews it would be better but, by so doing, they just became like everyone else.  They no longer were bearers of the unique message.  They were going to be prone to violence and counter-violence, but, what's worse was, not only did they use violence and take the law into their own hands against the city of Shem, but he knew once they started using violence and taking the law into their own hands, they would use it against their fellow Jews.  They would be like everyone else. That they later did.  Shimon and Levi were the ringleaders in wanting to kill Joseph and in eventually having him sold into Egypt.  They had become like everyone else.
Rabbi Kahane is not unique.  In France there is a man named Jean
Marie Lepenne who claims, based on statistics supported by the newspaper
"Figaro", that unless something is done about the Arabs in France,
by the year 2015 the Arabs will outnumber the Frenchmen and Islam
will be the religion of France.  He. wants to kick all the Arabs out
and cut off all their social benefits.  It is not unique for a person
to get up and yell, "Jews, dogs, and leftist Fascists." We Jews
have been different because we have limited what we can do in response
to provocation.  There are certain things Jews did not do.  The spy
case, too, is an example where we Jews are doing things which we
never would do before.  Everyone knows that the CIA is all over Israel.
America has spies all throughout Israel.  It may be according to
the law, but we have to weigh whether or not this is really in our

interests.
Jacob was afraid here that Shimon and Levi had made him like everyone else.  Once you unleash these type of passions you cannot control them.  All the rabbinic literature which discusses Kahane and the underground today is afraid that unless these forces are stopped now, they will turn against fellow Jews and it has already happened. A newspaper on the West Bank has already stated that if Israel gives any inch up of the West Bank, the Israelis should take up arms against the government.  And the left wingers have said that if Kahane gets any more Kinesset seats, they should take up arms against the government and oppose him.  Once violence is unleashed it cannot be stopped. It is true that we live in a real world, and it is true that many times we have to use methods we would rather not use; however, there are certain limits we cannot go beyond.  The world is a dangerous place.
I remember the story they tell about an American and a Russian.
The American said to the Russian, "When I go to work I take a Chevrolet,
when my wife goes shopping she takes the Oldsmobile, and when we
go to Europe we rent a Volkswagon."  The Russian said, "Well, that's
almost like us.  When I go to work I take the subway, when my wife
goes shopping she takes the bus, and when we go to Europe we take
a tank." Maybe Israel's security needed the information about Arab
preparedness and Soviet assistance; however, it seems a high price
to pay to even jeopardize American support.
There are certain things, though, we Jews can never do.  Jacob knew this after this incident, and he immediately took his family to Beth El.  He made them hide all their foreign gods under a tree by Shem

before he left.  He then went to see his father.  A Jew should be proud and have self-respect, but it is not bad to sometimes grovel either.  Yitzchok is not always wrong.  So Esau had 8 kings before we had one?  But Esau is not here and we are contributing mightily to civilization.  The highest value is not to grovel but to be a moral, caring human being.  Unleashing violence to substantiate a macho image is not a Jewish way.  When Jews do that they substantiate Jacob's fears and become just like everyone else.