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December 13, 2024 - 13 Kislev 5785 Parashat Vayishlach - To Bury the Hatchet
Dear Friends, At tomorrow’s Shabbat service, I am delighted to welcome a friend of mine to share some thoughts and perspectives with us. Rabbi Dahlia Bernstein is the Senior Director of Jewish Engagement and Care Services at the JCC of Mid-Westchester and last month, Rabbi Bernstein traveled with a group of local interfaith clergy to Israel on a UJA-Federation sponsored trip. In place of tomorrow’s sermon, I will have a conversation with Rabbi Bernstein on both her experience in the Holy Land and her thoughts on how CBIOTP can best engage with Israel in the coming months. I hope you will join us for what should be an insightful discussion. If you join us for the service, I hope you will stay for the Kiddush, which will be sponsored by Gary Miller, in honor and memory of his grandfather, John Miller, and his stepfather, Harry Gips. We thank Gary for sponsoring the Kiddush and I encourage everyone to sponsor a Kiddush, be it to honor, celebrate, or remember someone. As in Gary’s case, it is a Mitzvah to honor one’s parents and sponsoring the Kiddush is another great way to support the synagogue. When we were in middle school, my best friend, Jared, and I used to make radio shows in my basement. My big brother, Adam, had an entire DJ setup with turntables, tape decks, a CD player, and a microphone. We would introduce and play our favorite songs, attempt to be funny on-air personalities, give sports updates, and even pretend to be "callers" into the show via speakerphone. As we obviously weren't professionals at any of it, one of the jokes that emerged was how every song we would introduce, it seemed, was "my favorite song," which obviously, couldn't literally be true… not if the last song we played - and the one before that - was also "my favorite song." Sometimes I feel like that as a rabbi. Especially as we roll through Genesis, each week I seem to find myself saying, "And this is one of my favorite parts of Torah." But, if you asked me to choose just one part of Torah, one verse that is my absolute favorite, it's in this week's Parasha, Vayishlach. The drama is high as Jacob and Esau are about to confront each other for the first time since Jacob stole their father's innermost blessing, which was intended for Esau. At that point, Esau swears revenge on Jacob, and so Jacob understandably flees home. Now, here we are, twenty years later, and Jacob's spies report to him that Esau is approaching him with 400 men, understood to be nothing less than a small army. In his fear, Jacob prays to God, reminding God of the promises made to Jacob, to protect him in this moment of incredible vulnerability. That night, Jacob wrestles with an unnamed man, assumed by tradition to be an angel, who gives him the new name Israel because Jacob, "Has striven with beings divine and human, and you have prevailed." In the morning, the drama continues to build, as Jacob approaches Esau cautiously, graciously, hoping to appease Esau and assuage his anger from years prior by offering gifts and bowing low to the ground seven times. Frightened that Esau may physically attack him and his family, Jacob does not know what to expect or what will happen. And, in what I consider to be the most beautiful moment in all of Torah, rather than attacking his brother, Esau runs to greet Jacob, embraces him, and even kisses him. To think about the tension and terror that builds to a crescendo, and then to see it all dissolve into something as pure and simple as brotherly love is, for me, breathtaking. While the text of Torah is often terse and moves slowly, five of the nine words in this verse are verbs: "Esau ran to greet him, embraced him, fell on his neck, and kissed him. I love this so much! If Jacob and Esau, set up as diametrically opposed rivals, literally from the womb, can bury the figurative hatchet and come together in peace and love after all they have been through and all that Esau has endured, then why can't we? This passage is meaningful to me on both a greater scale of peoples and nations being able to make peace between themselves, as well as on the interpersonal level. It always breaks my heart when people tell me they have siblings, parents, and children to whom they refuse to even speak. With the stark differences between Jacob and Esau - in their characters as well as how they were raised - their reunion in this sentimental scene is, to my mind, nothing short of a miracle, an example from which all of us could, and probably should, learn. Extending a hand in peace and friendship, opening your arms to the embrace of an estranged loved one - these are ways we can be a light in the darkness that sometimes pervades our lives. We can be like the small flames we will kindle in our homes in celebrating Chanukah, so that our reaching out to loved ones will call to mind Shakespeare's words in Merchant of Venice: "How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world." May we be inspired by Jacob and Esau's reunion to make peace where there is strife, to forgive where we have been wronged, and to be a beacon of light when it is needed most. Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Joshua Strom
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