Vayishlah (Midrash)

“And a man struggled with him ‘til dawn”

One of the central scenes in this week’s portion is a classic example of how certain Torah passages fairly cry out for midrash elaboration. In Gen 32:24ff. we find Yaakov, on the eve of his anxiety-fraught reunion with his brother Esau, alone on the shores of the brook Yabbok. There he encounters a mysterious figure, described only as a “man,” who wrestles with him till dawn. The written Torah text does not state who this figure is, the purpose of this sudden assault upon Jacob’s person, nor even whether he is a human being or a denizen of some other, perhaps spiritual dimension. All we are told is that: a) Jacob does not allow him to go till he blesses him, and that the latter announces the change of his name to Yisrael; b) that as a result of a blow to the hollow of his thigh Jacob limps after the encounter, and hence Jews are proscribed from eating the corresponding part in animal flesh; and c) that after the encounter Jacob says, “I have seen God face to face and been saved” (v. 30). This lacunum leaves a wide berth for midrashic commentary.

Best known, of course, is the view that this figure was the “prince” of Esau. The full text appears in Genesis Rabbah 77.3:

R. Hamma b. R. Hanina said: He was the prince of Esau, he is the one of whom it is said: “Therefore I see your face as one sees the face of God, and favor me” [Gen 33:10].

First, a technical point: this midrashic idea is so familiar that it is often overlooked that this homily, like so many others, is based upon a specific turn of phrase—namely, that when Yaakov meets the real Esau, his face reminds him of the figure with whom he had struggled the previous night.

This may be compared to an athlete who was standing and wrestling with the king’s son, when he raised his eyes and saw the king standing over him; immediately he threw himself down in the dust before him. Of this is it written: “And he saw that he could not overcome him” [32:25]. Said R. Levi: “He saw” in the Shekhinah “that he could not overcome him.”

Again, it is characteristic of midrash to be sensitive to the use of a seemingly extraneous word. “He saw” implies the sight of something unexpected: and what would that be if not the Divine Presence? (In classical Rabbinic thought, the Shekhinah is not yet the female apotheosis of a specific aspect of the Divine, as it becomes later in Spanish Kabbalah, but simply a personification of God.)

Said R. Berachiah: We do not know who won, whether the angel or Jacob? From what is written: “And a man struggled with him,” we may conclude: Which of them was filled with dust? The man who was with him.

Said R. Hanina bar Yitzhak: The Holy One blessed be He said to him [the angel]: He came to you with five charms in his hand. His own merit, and the merit of his father and that of his mother, and that of his grandfather, and that of his grandmother. Measure yourself if you are able to stand up against his merit. Immediately: “He saw that he could not overcome him.”

Here, there is invoked the familiar theme of zekhut avot, the “merit of the fathers,” the idea that the virtues of the pious and God-loving ancestors of the Jewish people somehow tip the Divine accounting in our favor. What is strange here is that Esau, too, was the son of Yitzhak and Rivkah, and the grandson of Avraham and Sarah. Perhaps what is implied or understood is that, after the sale of the birthright and the giving of the blessing, Yaakov became the exclusive, rightful heir of the covenant with God.

This may be compared to a king who had a wild dog (agriyon), and a domesticated lion (imeron). And the king took his son and trained him against the lion, so that if the wild dog would come to fight with him, the king would tell him: The lion could not stand against him, and you wish to fight with him? Thus, if the nations of the world come to fight against Israel, the Holy One blessed be He says to them: Your prince was unable to defeat him, and you wish to pair off against my sons?!

The metaphor here is a bit strange: the prince’s reputation as a fighter is to be built up through successful combat with a domesticated lion, against whom victory was somehow assured.

In any event, the point is clear: this struggle is seen as a harbinger, or even a symbolic anticipation, emblematic of the entire future history of the Jewish people in relation to the other nations. Esau was known as the progenitor of the nation of Edom, or the Idumeans, who lived in the steppes of Transjordan and later in the mountains of the Negev; they were in turn the forebears of Rome and, from Constantine on, of the Christian Church; and, by extension, came to symbolize the entire non-Jewish world, or at least European civilization. Edom/Rome/Christianity was also the last of the four great kingdoms who shall subjugate Israel—i.e., Babylonia, Persia/Medea, Greece and Edom/Rome—and from whom it shall ultimately be redeemed. (This idea, first mentioned in Daniel 7, 9, etc., in ubiquitous in the midrashim; see, e.g., Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 35, quoted in Ramban to Gen 28:12, on the symbolism of the angels in Jacob’s dream ascending and descending the ladder.) Edom, the last of these four, will be especially fierce and all-pervasive, but he too will eventually get his comeuppance.

The all-night struggle between the two, in which they are almost equally balanced, and both are injured, expresses the ongoing, eternal nature of this struggle. Edom cannot destroy Israel, but neither can Israel defeat him: they are destined to live at odds with one another for all of history. This same idea is already expressed in the image of the two twins in their mother’s womb, struggling “over the inheritance of two worlds” (Rashi to 25:22): “When one is in the ascent, the other descends; when the other ascends, that one descends.”

“And he touched the hollow of his thigh” [v. 26]. Against the righteous men and women, the prophets and prophetesses who are to come from him in the future. And who are these? These are the generations of the Destruction [i.e., the Hadrianic persecutions]

This last paragraph is a kind of tragic coda: even though “Esau” can never entirely destroy the Jewish people, it can still cause it great harm, specifically to the most sensitive, and precious, element within them—i.e., the spiritual leadership of the Jewish people. This is identified by the midrash with the Ten Martyrs, the series of great scholars and saints murdered during the Hadrianic persecutions. And, as Mirkin adds, similar and worse things have befallen us in other, later generations.

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On a deeper level, the age-old conflict of Jacob and Esau is not a simple conflict between light and darkness, between good and evil. According to a motif appearing in a number of Hasidic texts, both figures, in their very different way, are seen as having tremendous spiritual potential. What then went wrong? Or, to transfer the question from the symbolic archetypal level to the concrete, historical one: Why is the Jewish people always at odds with the world? Why the persistence of anti-Semitism, which gets in the way of fruitful interaction and mutual fructification between Israel and the world?

According to this midrashic line of development, Yaakov and Esau were originally meant to complement one another: the former was entirely inward-turning, transcendent spirituality, the other a kind of world-affirming (but non-atheistic) secularity. The one sanctifies through withdrawal, separation from worldly things, an intense focusing of forces upon the holy, upon knowledge of God; the other affirms God through sanctifying the mundane. But somehow this complementary relationship went askew—it’s not quite clear when or where or how.

Perhaps this can be understood more clearly by mentioning the third figure in this triad: Ishmael, the patriarch of the Arab peoples, the fierce, nomadic, desert people whose culture is based upon an intense focus on a few fundamental truths, one in which there is little room for the softness, comfort and indulgence of urban civilization. (Again, speaking archetypically; medieval Islam certainly had much sophistication, as well as much that was luxurious and aesthetic.) They affirm the One God, often in a fanatic, zealous, even violent and murderous way—in the spirit of the desert itself. In short, like Osama bin Laden. Their culture carries feminine modesty to a fanatic extreme because women, as the bearers of children, symbolize the future, and such cultures are extremely protective of their own boundaries, of their own traditions—and thus of the future.

Esau represents the diametrically opposite force: that of total openness to the world, a kind of acceptance, of expansiveness. If you like, it is a kind of parody or exaggeration of Abraham’s Hesed: only here the expansiveness is not only one of giving, but also wishing to take from the world, to experience as much as possible, without limits.

In today’s world, I believe that this Esau force, in its original, positive sense—the affirmation of the world as seculum, the celebration of the worldly, and at least on the surface untainted by the violence and hatred of the old evil fourth Kingdom—is expressed in American civilization. But the USA is a new type of Esau. Because it has been such a successful nation, enjoying unprecedented wealth and creature comforts, not only for a tiny elite, but for a very large portion of its population; because it has enjoyed immunity from invasion and from suffering the ravages of warfare on its own shores, (with the exceptions of its own Civil War, and Pearl Harbor, which was on a remote Pacific outpost), its national character has been marked by an unusual optimism. It is marked by a type of naivete, a lack of the tragic sense of existence found in European and other old cultures, which have drunk deeply of suffering. There is also a paradoxical insularity to its culture: because it is so wealthy and powerful, it can try with considerable success to remake the world in its own image (Baywatch on Indian television; the ubiquity of Coca Cola and Macdonald’s), without even noticing that this is resented, and being genuinely surprised to discover that there are people out there who actually hate her for it. (Not all nations are as enthralled with US culture as secular Israel seems to be, which at times seems to be still fighting the battles of the Haskalah, embracing the regnant non-Jewish culture so as to reject old-fashioned Yiddishkeit.) It remains to be seen whether September 11 will mark a watershed, a drastic change in this culture, or whether it will be integrated into a basically trusting, almost naive, world-affirming culture.

It is in this light that we need to understand the encounter of Judaism with American civilization, which in recent decades has born interesting and variegated fruits. Notwithstanding the high rate of intermarriage and assimilation, this is also a time of great creativity. Among some, there has been a revival of Jewish religiosity and spirituality, which often takes new and highly syncretistic forms. Witness some of the energies in the Jewish Renewal movement, combining meditation techniques from Eastern religion or from Sufism, elements from Native American culture, of African-American music, group exercises taken from the human potential movement, New Age sensibility, ecology, feminism, Kabbalah bereft of halakhah, etc., etc. All this is surely very dynamic and exciting, but there are certainly dangers of it mixing too deeply and uncritically into the “Esau” element—or is this precisely the aim: to create a post-modern, post-particularist Judaism?

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At the end of last week’s discussion I touched very briefly (due to the extreme lateness of the hour) upon some very important issues. Both because of their inherent importance, and in order to correct possible misunderstanding, I would like to expand upon these now. But first, I wish to clarify that my use of the symbolism of “Esau,” even qualified as “the good side of Esau,” in connection with what may for want of a better term be called “the non-Orthodox movement towards Jewish spirituality,” was in no way intended as a put-down or blanket condemnation. I have close friends within that world; I greatly value the work of such individuals as Arthur Green, Yaqub ibn Yussuf and Jonathan Omer-Man; indeed, one of my major life concerns, which I have tried to express here now and again, is the creation of a positive synthesis between the world of halakha and tradition and that of these more free-wheeling movements.

To return to the beginning: the more I reflect upon the midrashic interpretation of Vayishlah, the clearer it becomes to me that this is a seminal text for Jewish self-understanding, in the sociological-historical sense. For, alongside Torah and mitzvot and fundamental religious beliefs about God’s existence and Oneness, His covenant with the patriarchs and with us, an essential element of Jewish/Judaic consciousness is a basic sense of the existential situation of the Jewish people in the world. There is a deep-rooted perception of Knesset Yisrael (the “Congregation of Israel“ or “Jewry Eternal”) as engaged in a perpetual struggle with the world; the idea of being “a nation that dwells apart.” This idea carries many implications and spin-offs: the central role of Jewish martyrdom, of Kiddush Hashem, in our scale of values; the traditional suspicion of, or at very least strong reluctance, to accept converts; the strange marriage of nationhood or folkhood with religion, so that even the most secular, agnostic Jew is accepted as part of the community, and that a variety of national and ethnic movements are part and parcel of the broad spectrum of Jewish culture. Although many, if not most, religionists may have an ideological quarrel with secular Jews, there is a feeling that it’s ultimately “all in the family.” Indeed, it is axiomatic that Jewry cannot be adequately described as either a “religious” or an “ethnic-national” community, but as some unique, strange fusion of the two; hence, my hesitation above over use of the adjectives “Jewish” or “Judaic.”

In mythic, midrashic terms, the starting point for this consciousness vis-a-vis the outside world lies in the age-old conflict between Jacob and Esau. As mentioned earlier, poor old Esau, that simple, inarticulate, Bronze Age hunter, not only had to pay dear for a simple bowl of lentils, but 3600 or 3700 years after his death continues to carry on his shoulders responsibility not only for the Edomites, but also Rome, Christianity, Europe, and who knows what else! (and now Chipman comes along and lays America on him as well!)

But speaking seriously: one of the interesting contrapuntal themes here is that all this could have had a different, more harmonious, complementary outcome; one in which the two of them might sit, like Antoninus and Rabbi Judah Hanasi, debating philosophies, or enjoying a constructive symbiosis like Issachar and Zevulun. Esau was destined to inherit the world, Jacob/Israel the spirit. Instead, traditional Jewish historiography envisions a continual, pendulum-like struggle, where each side alternatively enjoys a period of ascendancy, until Israel’s ultimate vindication at the eschatological end. Meanwhile, as a Talmudic dictum has it, “It is a halakhah [in the sense of a law of nature]: Esau hates Jacob.”

What would led to this unfortunate turn of things? Was Esau to blame, for making worldliness a goal without any admixture of spirit? Or Yaakov, who became immersed in an exaggerated spirituality, without real roots in corporeality? Or perhaps both?

First of all, experience shows that worldly, secular power, such as that possessed by (archetypal) Esau, seeks not only to serve God in the world, but creates a natural dynamic that desires power and hegemony as an end in itself. This lust for power includes the desire to subjugate others, to bend others to ones will—particularly the “other,” the “different,” the one who marches to a different drummer. And who more so than the homo religiosus, the man of God, and particularly the Jew, whose focus is, if not on another world, certainly on another source of value. Precisely his indifference to the trappings of worldly fame, power, luxury, etc., are what so infuriate the man of the world. In this context, especially with Hanukkah just around the corner, it is worth recalling how the wrath of Antiochus—and later, that of such Roman leaders as the Emperor Hadrian—was directed particularly at such “innocuous,” non-worldly, basically symbolic activities and institutions as the study of Torah, Sabbath observance, circumcision, Jewish refusal to bow to idols, and the autonomy of the Jewish calendar. These symbolized the inner, spiritual independence of the Jewish people, however downtrodden might be their political or socio-economic situation.

On the other hand, as humble and holy and self-effacing the man of religion may try to be, there is often a reverse kind of arrogance. By the very rejecting of the more obvious worldly temptations of power, money, opulence, women, and fame, a person or group may project a feeling of pride and arrogance; a collective feeling of superiority, that and because that one possesses the truth in an exclusive way. To return to the story of Esau and Yaakov: the best possible construction that can be put on Yaakov’s trickery and deception in Parshat Toldot is that he was driven by a sense of destiny and that “the end justifies the means.” We can certainly understand Esau’s sense of pain and anger at what happened. Then, when the brothers meet again after twenty-two years: Esau seems willing and interested, at least on the level of a straightforward, peshat reading, in reconstituting truly fraternal relation with his long-lost brother (albeit the Masoretes pointedly place dots on the word vayishakehu [“and he kissed him”] in 33:4, which is generally seen as indicating the scheming, hypocritical nature of Esau’s embrace). He suggests that they travel together, but Yaakov rejects the offer “so that I may go at my own slow pace, lest the flocks be pressed too hard” (vv. 13, 14). This sounds like a lame excuse, as if he is keeping polite distance. Interestingly, the Midrash reads “until I come to Seir” as saying, not that they will meet again in a little while, but alluding to the distant eschatological future when “redeemers will go up Mt. Zion to judge Mt. Esau” (Gen. Rab. 78.14).

Having said all that, let us now turn to our own situation, and particularly to that of American Jewry. It would not be an exaggeration to say that a cardinal belief, or even gut feeling, of most American Jews is that “America is different.” There is a massive presence and acceptance of Jews in American culture: in government, in business, in the professions, and especially in both the popular media (TV, newspapers, movies—Jews practically founded Hollywood) and in the “high culture” of the universities (especially in certain critical disciplines such as sociology and psychology, where Jews were in the forefront of creating the modern sensibility).

There is widespread sense that anti-Semitism is on the wane, in the US and in the enlightened world generally, and is largely irrelevant. Jews can participate fully in the life of their communities as citizens, and feel safe enough to even laugh publicly at their own foibles in the general media (as in the very Jewish, but thoroughly secularized and American, New-York-Jewish neurotic personified by Woody Allen in film after film). Just one year ago, only a few thousand ballot flaps in Florida separated a practicing Orthodox Jew from the Vice Presidency of the United States. Even such a strictly Orthodox Jewish leader as the late Lubavitcher Rebbe spoke of America as a malkhut shel hesed—a “kingdom of kindness” to the Jew. Thus, the dream of the Enlightenment seems to have been fully realized in the United States.

In light of this, two questions nevertheless need to be asked regarding the “smiling face of Esau”:

1. Assimilation: The most obvious point is the (non-intended) trade-off of the absence of anti-Semitism for assimilation and intermarriage, which in its own way poses a very real threat to Jewish demographic survival, except among the small numbers of Orthodox and other traditional elements that remain essentially endogamous. My question to the New Age Jewish spirituality, with all due feelings of warmth and respect to many of its teachers, is whether its openness and syncretism may not ride too easily the American tide of assimilation. Or have some of their rabbis made a conscious, ideological choice to be what might be called “post-particularistic”? After all, if Judaism is perceived first and foremost as a spiritual path, as a means of attaining God consciousness—and one affirms that God, as He is known in truth and in depth, isn’t “Jewish” (i.e., that He is the God of the world), a point that as such I would surely accept)—and that all paths ultimately lead to the same one truth, than logically there is no real reason not to welcome interchange, including intimate personal relationships, with seekers from other paths. At this point I suspect that one must fall back on a deep, almost intuitive Jewish ethnic commitment, which is ultimately more cultural and historical than theological in origin.

Second, of course, is the old bug-a-bear of anti-Semitism. Is it really dead? Is it not possible that the question of ”Jewish destiny” will reemerge with a vengeance during the course of the 21st century. Certainly, the events of September 11 suggest at least a possible scenario by which these things may begin to happen sooner than anyone expected.

In general, I believe: a) that the 21st century will no longer be “the American Century,” unless there is an unexpected revival of creative, moral forces within the country. These, I suspect, will not come from the “liberal,” “progressive” forces with which so many urban American Jews have instinctively identified, but more with the religious, even fundamentalist elements. This is because the US today suffers from a type of decadence, an emphasis on pleasure and even hedonism, a type of extreme autonomy of the individual, that signal the decline of any civilization. b) the notion of “Jewish destiny,” of the Jews somehow being different, being singled out, will become emergent once again. c) If one is already speaking the unspeakable: I find myself thinking that one of the classical ideas of Zionism, or at least the mainstream of secular Zionism, namely, that the return of the Jews to nationhood would bring in its wake normality and acceptance in the family of nations, has been given the lie by the way the Palestinian-Israel conflict has developed. I only wish that I will be proven to be wrong. But as things look now, my children and future grandchildren are bound to have a rougher time living in the world as Jews, in or outside of the State of Israel, than I have thus far.