Have you ever looked forward to something, even prayed for the day when it could happen, and then once you had the chance to do the thing that you were waiting for and praying for, you didn’t take advantage of the first opportunity? I will leave you to contemplate an example from your own life and draw your attention to Yaakov.
When he first leaves his home to seek his fortune and while fleeing his brother’s anger, Yaakov dreams of a ladder reaching to the heavens and wakes up from his dreams and makes a vow:
וַיִּדַּ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב נֶ֣דֶר לֵאמֹ֑ר אִם־יִהְיֶ֨ה אֱ-לֹהִ֜ים עִמָּדִ֗י וּשְׁמָרַ֙נִי֙ בַּדֶּ֤רֶךְ הַזֶּה֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר אָנֹכִ֣י הוֹלֵ֔ךְ וְנָֽתַן־לִ֥י לֶ֛חֶם לֶאֱכֹ֖ל וּבֶ֥גֶד לִלְבֹּֽשׁ׃ וְשַׁבְתִּ֥י בְשָׁל֖וֹם אֶל־בֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑י וְהָיָ֧ה ה לִ֖י לֵא-לֹהִֽים׃
And Yaakov took an oath וַיִּדַּ֥ר יַעֲקֹ֖ב נֶ֣דֶר לֵאמֹ֑ר saying, if God will be with me and protect me on this journey on which I walk and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, וְשַׁבְתִּ֥י בְשָׁל֖וֹם אֶל־בֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑י and will return me in pecae to my father’s house, then Hashem will be my God.
The climax of Yaakov’s hopes and prayers as he reflects for the first time in his life on being alone and vulnerable is וְשַׁבְתִּ֥י בְשָׁל֖וֹם אֶל־בֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑י that I return in peace to my father’s house. He wants to go home.
After twenty one years in Lavan’s home, after marriage and fatherhood and the acquisition of a vast fortune, Yaakov invokes the fear of his father Yitzhak when he swears a final oath of peace with Laven:
וַיִּשָּׁבַ֣ע יַעֲקֹ֔ב בְּפַ֖חַד אָבִ֥יו יִצְחָֽק׃
What happens when Yaakov finally manages to return to Eretz Canaan? He has a dramatic encounter with his brother Esav. Yaakov is frightened. Yaakov is distressed. He prepares to fight. He sends gifts of appeasement. He prays. But after the two brothers meet and embrace, they separate – at Yaakov’s insistence – and Yaakov does not go meet his father.
He moves to the area of Shechem. He goes to Beit El. the nursemaid Devorah dies. Rachel dies and is buried. And only then – at the end of our parasha – months, or even years, after Yaakov returns to Eretz Canaan, does Yaakov return to his father’s house:
וַיָּבֹ֤א יַעֲקֹב֙ אֶל־יִצְחָ֣ק אָבִ֔יו מַמְרֵ֖א קִרְיַ֣ת הָֽאַרְבַּ֑ע הִ֣וא חֶבְר֔וֹן אֲשֶׁר־גָּֽר־שָׁ֥ם אַבְרָהָ֖ם וְיִצְחָֽק׃
And Yaakov came to Yitzhak his father in Mamre, Kiryat Arba which is Hevron and is where Avraham and Yitzhak lived.
He delays his reunion with his father. Yaakov delays his reconnection to the family homestead.
Why?
I’ve echoed many times before the teaching of Rabbi Yehuda Brandes, that Judaism is not a religion primarily for children, but is instead meant for adults. In children’s stories there are clear heroes and clear villains. And the heroes win. So often Judaism confronts us with a conflict in values and a conflict, not between right and wrong, but between right and right.
Yitzhak and Rivka had an irreconcilable dispute about parenting their twin sons Yaakov and Esav. Yitzhak believed that the spiritual heritage of the family of Avrham and Sarah could become Yaakov’s responsibility while giving responsibility for feeding and protecting the family to Esav. Rikva believed that the physical survival of the family had to be in the hands of the very same person entrusted with the family’s spiritual mission. There is no obvious right or wrong answer to a dispute of that kind. Rivka was successful in having her vision instantiated in the life of her family and Jewish history followed her vision. But Yaakov lived the rest of his life knowing that his role in the family was contrary to his father’s wishes and that he only attained his position through subterfuge.
Yaakov delayed reuniting with his father because they had unresolved conflict.
There are other examples in Sefer Bereishit of conflict that is never resolved, or resolved tragically late.
Next week we will hear about Yoseph and his brothers, on its surface a dispute about jealousy, but in actuality a dispute about the destiny of the family and its very survival. Yoseph’s dreams are dreams of agriculture. His dreams are dreams of Egypt, the breadbasket of the Ancient Near East. Yoseph’s dream was a challenge to the family’s traditions as shepherds in the hill country of Eretz Canaan. Yoseph’s dream represented a challenge and also an opportunity: famine is coming to this land. We will die unless we adapt to the times. We need to become farmers. We will need to orient ourselves around Egypt.
From the perspective of Yoseph’s brothers, Yoseph’s dreams were a threat to the family’s way of life. They were a challenge to their values and to their traditions. From the perspective of Yoseph, his brothers had their heads in the sand and their inflexibility would doom the family to starvation and death. There is no obvious right or wrong answer to a dispute of this kind. I think they were both correct. But it was obviously wrong for the brothers to treat one another as threats, rather than as brothers.
And this conflict, as we will be reminded over the coming weeks as Sefer Bereishit concludes, is never fully resolved. Yoseph ends up as second-in-command to Pharaoh and never sends word to his family that he is alive and well (did Yoseph think his own father was complicit in the plan to sell him down to Egypt?). The brothers and Yoseph are seemingly reconciled…until Yaakov dies and the brothers fabricate a story which they unconvincingly tell Yoseph about a deathbed command from their father to Yoseph to forgive his brothers.
What is it that prompts Yaakov to finally visit Yitzhak at the end of Parashat VaYishlach? Rabbi Amnon Bazak suggests that the episode in the Torah, immediately prior to Yaakov’s reunion with Yitzhak is the disturbing story of Reuven’s sordid affair with Yaakov’s concubine Bilhah. In the aftermath of that episode, Yaakov realized that he could never expect to have a functional family life without…a functional family life. He could not expect his son Reuven to have respect for Yaakov’s status as Reuven’s father, if Yaakov himself kept delaying and delaying his confrontation with his own father. When we don’t address conflict, it doesn’t go away. It can fester and it can sublimate or manifest in other ways which may be even more threatening and harmful.
I believe a cloud of this sort hangs over our community. Since the arrival of the covid pandemic, the stakes of our disagreements have been life and death – literally. And in the crucible of the tension of those disagreements, we too often saw one another as threats instead of seeing one another as brothers and sisters. Those with only slightly different degrees of Covid precaution were, either engaging in reckless endangerment of human life, or were cavalier and careless about the preservation and continuity of our very way of life. On the merits, everyone was correct, just as Yoseph and his brothers were correct on the merits and just as Rivka and Yitzhak were correct on the merits.
But we sometimes saw one another – I saw others at times – as threats rather than as brothers and sisters. And I am deeply sorry and sincerely apologize for those whom I hurt or embarrassed or whose needs I neglected..
In contrast, we hosted the first Shabbat dinner in the shul last Friday night followed by a lecture by a visiting scholar. The dinner was warm and joyous with good food and beautiful singing. And then, we opened the doors of the shul to those who might not feel comfortable eating indoors with others, but are willing and eager to sit masked and to learn Torah in this large space. Together we filled the room with a true kol-Torah, the beautiful din of Torah study, and that was only possible because those with different levels of comfort and different sense of risk and different priorities were nonetheless able to come together when and where we can, rather than emphasize the differences that remain.
And even though Covid has heightened the frequency and salience of this sort of dynamic, conflict has been with us since the days of Sefer Bereishit and we all have more experience than we sometimes remember overcoming conflict by finding common ground.
I’ve shared with you before the wise observation that everybody has a frum cousin…and if you don’t, it’s because you are the frum cousin. And of course both are true for some of us depending on which branch of our family we focus on.
Some years ago we planned a Thanksgiving dinner with my first cousins who desperately wanted to bake and serve a chocolate mocha pie. The pie had sentimental significance – I think the recipe was from one of our mutual ancestors. But the recipe was dairy. Our cousins don’t keep kosher and we felt threatened. We didn’t know if we would be able to share a table with them. The conflict over the pie threatened to break apart the meal. But we all wanted to be together with our aging grandmother and that common love and common desire to honor her pushed us towards compromise.
Our cousins shared the pie recipe with us and we purchased certified kosher ingredients. We substituted pareve ingredients for dairy ingredients. They had no interest in undermining the kashrut of the meal. We had no interest in preventing them eating their chocolate mocha pie that had sentimental meaning to them. In fact, we had a mutual interest in eating the pie. And it was delicious. Wishing you all a Shabbat Shalom and a Happy Thanksgiving.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 