Healing the Divide

Rabbi Yoel Kahn of Beth El Berkeley (Torah Queeries): Jacob is a 'mama's boy', a naif (ish tam) - the femme to Esau's butch (Jemma note: Though I looked into the concept of Esau as a repressed femme last year!).

Rabbi Zelig Golden (also in Berkeley, at the Urban Adamah): While still under British rule, the early colonist leaders sought a system to govern the 13 conflicting colonies. Benjamin Franklin became an intimate student of the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois Confederacy) and their Great Law of Peace. At the 1776 signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Haudenosaunee sent a delegation to commend the Founding Fathers on adopting the Great Law of Peace and to warn them of two fatal flaws: 1) changing consensus decision-making to majority rule, and 2) failing to give women voting power. Not only did Haudenosaunee women have a voice in governance, but their clan mothers exercised the ultimate authority to unilaterally remove leaders whenever their conduct became unfit for leadership. They warned that these changes would establish a crack in our foundation that within seven generations would split the young nation into two irreconcilable parts.

Rabbi Kahn sees this as Jacob/Israel's coming-out story - he sees the ladder, sees himself anew - and asks for new clothing and food - not like the hunter's clothing and red meat of his brother, but rather bread, and new clothing that suits him.

Or, as Rabbi Kahn puts it, Jacob's own internalized 'Esau' - the masculine identity that did not suit him.

Again, Rabbi Kahn sees the coming-out nature of the story, with Jacob gaining a new name. Rabbi Golden agrees with the characterization of Jacob/Israel as representative of the feminine - rather than the masculine - presence of God. At a time of great division in the U.S., Rabbi Golden looks to the shekhinah (feminine aspect of God) as a way to heal the divide - to follow the advice of the indigenous peoples of our land about the role of that part of humanity in decision-making.