Friends - this week seems to be a great week for family reconciliation.
And family reconciliation seems nearly impossible. Because each member of the family goes beyond the individual person into the archetypal realm, each member of the family represents to us so much - our failures, our dependencies, our power struggles. Our past, our patterns. Ya'akov himself was NAMED after Eisav, meaning he was called "Ya'akov" because his hand was fixed to the "eikev" - heel of Eisav his older twin brother. And we don't even know how intense it was for Ya'akov to dress up as Eisav and steal the brachot-blessings that were apparently intended for Eisav. We know that when Eisav failed to turn toward righteousness, Ya'akov had to, as it were, "take on" his brother's job as well as his own. And here he comes, and he may be really upset and want to kill me. That's a lot of stuff to deal with.
So what does Ya'akov do? He splits himself in two - "two camps". A perfectly understandable defense mechanism. we all do it all the time - we actually spend most of our time split in two - we have our real deep selves, deep down, that in us which has integrity, where we know who we are, what we need. That's the self which knows how to pray, how to ask, how to speak. Dancing comes easily, poetry slips off the tongue, the Torah makes sense. And then there's what we show the world - tough, cool, stylish, funny. But deeper, hurting, needing attention, turning elsewhere for justification of self-love (if she thinks I am good, then I must be good).
For Ya'akov, who is "ish tam" - a man of deep, deep integrity, it may be a bit harder to split like that. But he does it on purpose. That's the big difference. No different than putting on Eisav's clothes to steal the blessings, he knowingly puts up a front - puts out a lame duck, so to speak, that if Eisav comes and smashes it, he will allow himself to be smashed, but the deeper self, as yet uninvested, will escape unharmed. What Ya'akov knows he cannot do is to be totally invested in the encounter - because he knows he may very well be completely disappointed.
This is an amazing mechanism to avoid being hurt - NOT to be invested. And perhaps this is something he has learned from being with Lavan. We saw Ya'akov being abused by Lavan constantly, because Ya'akov is the nice honest-boy, naive, yeshiva-bachur guy, and Lavan is thr worldly wily one who tosses him around at his will. So Ya'akov had to learn eventually not to be dishonest, but to be careful. To be aware that there is something damaging on the horizon.
This is the wisdom of sending "shluchim" - messengers. I thank Amichai S. for this lesson that he taught me -stay awake! See what's in front of you! You really can prepare for what is about to meet you - not 100 % , to a significant degree. And you should. We do want to live moment to moment - but we also have eyes and minds, we are also able to figure out probabilities and read faces, and sense moods, and know which way the wind is blowing. This is not a contradiction to simplicity or integrity - it is the addition of a life skill called preparedness.
This is also called wisdom. When you know someone, you can lure them out in a fairly predictable way - I know, because I have fallen for it so many times, and been drawn out so many times, and fallen for it so many times. Ya'akov has fallen for it a bunch. But now he has the courage to change and learn and become a warrior in the world. So may it be for all of us.
Good shabbes.
Rav Gavriel Goldfeder
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Rav Gavriel Goldfeder is one of the first semicha recipients of the yeshiva. A graduate of Drew University in Religious Studies, he came to Bat Ayin after stints in other yeshivot and found a spiritual and intellectual home. Here he met his wife, Ketriellah, who was a student in our short-lived Women's Yeshiva. Upon graduation, Gavriel took the position of rabbi of the Aish Kodesh Congregation in Boulder, Colorado and together with Ketriellah and their growing family, they are busy creating (in Gavriel's words), "a community infused with Torah values, passion for learning and prayer, consideration of one another, and action, as well as deep celebration of the joys of life." |