Vayishlach (32:4 - 36:42)

(Jacob) Sent

Genesis 32:4 - 36:42

Jacob prepares to meet Esau. He wrestles with a "man," who changes Jacob's name to Israel. (32:4-33)

Jacob and Esau meet and part peacefully, each going his separate way. (33:1-17)

Dinah is raped by Shechem, the son of Hamor the Hivite, who was chief of the country. Jacob's sons Simeon and Levi take revenge by murdering all the males of Shechem, and Jacob's other sons join them in plundering the city. (34:1-31)

Rachel dies giving birth to Benjamin and is buried in Ephrah, which is present-day Bethlehem. (35:16-21)

Isaac dies and is buried in Hebron. Jacob's and Esau's progeny are listed. (35:22-36:43)

Reform Judaism

Torah is full of teachings, and in this portion, perhaps it imparts the most important lesson of all: to have the courage to change. It teaches that in order to change, we first have to know who or what we are changing from: We have to know ourselves to be able to confront what may be ugly or painful or shameful within us. But self-knowledge alone is not change. Jacob could be self-aware and still not cross over the river.

We need to take the next step with self-awareness and deal with our failings; we need to cross the river and confront them. We have to be Yisrael, to struggle with our faults and risk experiencing more pain in the process, because life is not lived on this side of the river! Life is not lived running and hiding from the wreckage of our past. Life is on the other side.

Women’s Torah

“Still, not a word about this woman. How did she feel? Was she a willing partner? The clue to her feelings comes from the preposition et, in verse 22, which is used to mean “with” in the phrase “he lay with her.” The word et is not translatable into English, but its grammatical function in Hebrew is to show that the word that follows it is an object—the object of the verb that preceded it. The verb form “he lay,” vayishkav, used of a man with a woman implies a sexual encounter. It is usually followed by the word im, meaning “with.” For example, when this verb form is used to describe the kind of encounter David had with Bathshebah (2 Sam. 11:4 and 12:24), or Jacob had with Leah (Gen. 30:16)—both times seen as either consensual or initiated by the woman—the preposition used after vayishkav is im. Yet when it comes to Bilhah, the preposition et is used, and seems to connote that Bilhah is an object of this act—as in vulgar English slang we might say that “he laid Bilhah.” The use of the preposition et in our text implies[…]”

Excerpt From

The Women's Torah Commentary

Rabbi Elyse Goldstein

A Year with the Sages

“The other matter that bothered Rabbi Judah, a second-century tanna (the early Sages prior to 200 CE) who lived in the Land of Israel, was the Torah’s use of two similar words to describe Jacob’s fear: one from the root “to be afraid” (vayira) and the other from the word for “trouble” (vayetzer). Assuming that each word has significance, he explains that two different things worry Jacob. There can be only two outcomes to his conflict with Esau—either Jacob kills Esau or Jacob is killed by Esau—and he is terrified by either one.”

Excerpt From

A Year with the Sages

Reuven Hammer

Torah Portion by Portion

“Rashi believes that the first messengers Jacob sent to Esau were actually angels from “God’s camp”. Rashi also points out that Jacob chose carefully the best gifts for Esau—Jacob knew how much his brother loved animals, for animals were the riches of the ancient world. And, Rashi says, giving the gifts all at once would be less pleasing than sending them in groups the way Jacob did—making them seem like many gifts instead of one.

Rashbam suggests that Jacob sent the gifts in separate groups for a different reason: to force Esau and his four hundred men to slow down. As soon as Esau accepted the first gift, he and his men were no longer just soldiers; they also had to serve as shepherds, driving the animals in front of them. Every gift slowed them down a little more. As Esau gained animals, Jacob gained time to gather his camp and flee. But, says Rashbam, God did not want Jacob to flee.

Nachmanides sees a mystic or hidden meaning in this story: It shows how we should behave when we know we are in danger. Like Jacob, we should trust that God will send an angel to[…]”

Excerpt From

The Torah: Portion-by-Portion

Seymour Rossel

Held

“In thinking about a Jewish approach to military power, neither Reines nor the elder Kook, on the one hand, nor the younger Kook, on the other, help us all that much. The fantasy that statehood is possible without anyone getting hurt is precisely that—a fantasy, entirely unmoored from this-worldly reality. And yet the full-throated embrace of militarism represents a dramatic departure from normative Jewish ethics as it has been understood for millennia. Having a state means having an army, but that is a tragic necessity rather than a revelation of the holy.”

“Rachel is buried on the road to Efrat,”

Excerpt From

The Heart of Torah, Volume 1

Shai Held

Sacks

Physical Fear, Moral Distress

“The difference between being afraid and distressed, according to the midrash, is that the first is a physical anxiety, the second a moral one. It is one thing to fear one’s own death, quite another to contemplate being the cause of someone else’s. Jacob’s emotion, then, was twofold, encompassing the physical and psychological, the moral and the material.”

“Another reason for Abram’s fear after killing the kings in battle was his sudden realisation: “Perhaps I violated the divine commandment that the Holy One, blessed be He, commanded the children of Noah, ‘He who sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.’ For how many people I killed in battle.”4

Or, as another midrash puts it:

Abraham was filled with misgiving, thinking to himself, Maybe there was a righteous or God-fearing man among those troops which I slew.5”

“There is, however, a second possible explanation for Jacob’s fear – namely that the midrash means what it says, no more, no less: Jacob was distressed at the possibility of being forced to kill even if it were entirely justified.”

“What we are encountering here is the concept of a moral dilemma.6 This phrase is often used imprecisely, to mean a moral problem, a difficult ethical decision. But a dilemma is not simply a conflict. There are many moral conflicts. May we perform an abortion to save the life of the mother? Should we obey a parent when he or she asks us to do something forbidden in Jewish law? May we desecrate the Shabbat to extend the life of a terminally ill patient? These questions have answers. There is a right course of action and a wrong one. Two duties conflict and we have meta-halakhic principles to tell us which takes priority. There are some systems in which all moral conflicts are of this kind. There is always a decision procedure and thus a determinate answer to the question, “What should I do?”

“A dilemma, however, is a situation in which there is no right answer. It arises in cases of conflict between right and right, or between wrong and wrong – where, whatever we do, we are doing something that in other circumstances we ought not to do.”

“Moral dilemmas are situations in which doing the right thing is not the end of the matter. The conflict may be inherently tragic. Jacob, in this parasha, finds himself trapped in such a conflict: on the one hand, he ought not allow himself to be killed; on the other, he ought not kill someone else; but he must do one or the other.”

“A moral system which leaves room for the existence of dilemmas is one that does not attempt to eliminate the complexities of the moral life. In a conflict between two rights or two wrongs, there may be a proper way to act – the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two goods – but this does not cancel out all emotional pain”

Wrestling Face to Face

“It is not we, the readers, who give it this significance but the Torah itself. For it was then, as dawn was about to break, that Jacob acquired the name that his descendants would bear throughout eternity. The people of the covenant are not the children of Abraham or Isaac but “the children of Israel.” It was only with the division of the kingdom and the Assyrian conquest of the north, that those who remained were called generically Judah (the Southern Kingdom), and thus Yehudim or, in English, Jews”

“May God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and increase your numbers until you become a community of peoples. May He give you and your descendants the blessing of Abraham, so that you may take possession of the land where you now live as an alien, the land God gave to Abraham. (28:3–4)

This second blessing is completely different: it focuses on children and a land, the two key elements God had repeatedly promised Abraham. These are the “covenantal blessings” which dominate the book of Genesis, and have nothing to do with wealth or power.”

Surviving Crisis

“Rashi’s grandson Rashbam gives an extraordinary interpretation of Jacob’s wrestling match.2 Fearing the confrontation with Esau, Jacob wanted to run away, and God sent an angel to wrestle with him to stop him doing so. On this reading, God was teaching Jacob how to wrestle with his fears and defeat them. “Who is strong?” asked Ben Zoma. Not one who can defeat his enemies but one who “who masters his impulses.”3 Ben Zoma’s proof text was a verse from Proverbs: “He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules over his spirit than he who conquers a city” (16:22).”

“I will not let you go until you bless me: These words of Jacob to the angel lie at the very core of surviving crisis. Each of us knows from personal experience that events that seemed disappointing, painful, even humiliating at the time, can be the most important in our lives.”

“I will not give up or move on until I have extracted something positive from this pain and turned it into blessing.”

Jacob’s Destiny, Israel’s Name

“Nor is the phrase “one who has struggled with God and with men and has overcome” the most natural characterization of Jewish identity. We can think of others. In Exodus God summons Israel to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Isaiah speaks of Israel as “a covenant for the people and a light for the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). Zechariah gives one of the most concise summaries of the Jewish experience: “Not by might nor by power, but by My spirit, says the Lord Almighty” (Zechariah 4:6). So why Israel, with its implication of ceaseless struggle?”

“Berdyaev, I believe, framed the alternatives sharply and correctly. The classic function of religion throughout history has been to reconcile people to the random brutalities of fate, the injustices of society, the triumph of might over right, the brevity of life itself and the pains and disappointments with which it is fraught. In a thousand different ways, religion has represented an alternative reality, a “haven in a heartless world,” an escape from the strife and conflict of everyday life into the quiet spaces of the soul, or the thought of life beyond death. Religion, faith, spirituality – these words conjure up ideas of peace, serenity, inwardness, meditation, calm, acceptance, consolation, bliss.”

“For we believe that sufferings, evil and imperfections are not the inevitable lot of man; they are not woven into the fabric of the universe that God created and pronounced seven times “good.” Justice, freedom, human dignity, equality of respect, integrity and compassion are to be fought for here, not in heaven. ”

“Judaism is, intellectually, spiritually and emotionally, the great exception.”

“Berdyaev’s view represents the perennial temptation known as Gnosticism, a complex doctrine that can nonetheless be summarized as “this world, bad; the world to come, good.” Ultimately Gnosticism is incompatible with monotheism, for why would a good God create a universe in which “sufferings, evil and imperfections are the inevitable lot of man”? Why create a species, Homo sapiens, in His own image and likeness, only to subject it to inescapable pain?”

“Gnosticism sounds ancient and arcane, yet its appeal is timeless and powerful. It is not easy to reconcile the existence of God and the commands of faith with the world as we know it, fraught with tension and tragedy. Far easier intellectually and psychologically to think of religion and God as belonging to a different dimension altogether: in heaven, not earth; somewhere else not here; in life after death or the immortal soul, in meditative calm or mystical withdrawal. So religion can make us indifferent to the world or reconciled to it: indifferent because this is not where God is found, or reconciled because in some way human suffering is the will of God for which we will be rewarded in the world to come. That is what Karl Marx meant when he wrote his famous line, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people [das Opium des Volkes].”

“And it means struggling with God, as Moses and Jeremiah and Job struggled with God. In no other religious literature – certainly not Christianity or Islam – do human beings argue with God. Recall that it is not heretics who do this in Judaism, but the exemplars and role models of faith. They did so in the name of justice – recall Abraham’s “Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justice?” For if justice belongs on earth, not just in heaven, then we may not accept seeming injustice, we must protest it. Indeed, it was God Himself who empowered Abraham and Moses to do so.”

“No one exemplifies this condition more profoundly than Jacob. Abraham symbolises faith as love. Isaac represents faith as fear, reverence, awe. But Jacob lives faith as struggle. Often his life seems to be a matter of escaping one danger into another. He flees from his vengeful brother only to find himself at the mercy of deceptive Laban. He escapes from Laban only to encounter Esau marching to meet him with a force of four hundred men. He emerges from that meeting unscathed, only to be confronted with the rape of his daughter Dina and the conflict between Joseph and his other sons. Alone among the patriarchs, he dies in exile. Jacob wrestles, as his descendants – the children of Israel – continue to wrestle with the world.

Yet Jacob never gives up, and is never defeated. He is the man whose greatest religious experiences occur when he is alone, at night, and far from home. Jacob wrestles with the angel of destiny and inner conflict and says, “I will not let you go until you bless me.” That is how he rescues hope from catastrophe – as Jews have always done. Their darkest nights have always been preludes to their most creative dawns.”

Excerpt From