Sermon: A Kiss or a Bite (Rabbi Dow Marmur – Vayishlach 5773)

Written by Writings & Sermons by others — 22 March 2015

The Occasion

 

I’m deeply touched by the occasion that brought me to this place today and the gracious introduction by Rabbi Goldsmith. To be present at my granddaughter Leone’s Bat Mitzvah in the congregation where her mother, aunt and uncle celebrated similar events in the course of the 14 years that I served as its rabbi fills me with boundless gratitude.

 

However, even on this most personal occasion I’m enough of a disciple of my teachers many of whom were themselves students of Leo Baeck, the first President of this congregation, to try to go beyond the personal. Baeck is said never to have used the first person singular – the I – in his sermons.

 

That’s not the style nowadays, especially not on the continent where I’ve lived for the last three decades. Nevertheless, I’d like to reflect on today’s Torah portion from a more general perspective as an antidote to the temptation of continued self-exposure.

 

The personal will, of course, dominate. The so-called post-modern way of looking at literature in general and Scripture in particular suggests that there’s no reading without a reader; that we can never come to the final or “true” meaning of a text, because the prejudices, interests, opinions, and ideology coupled with the situation in history of each interpreter will colour, indeed determine, the interpretation. It’s impossible, it seems, to go behind the text, as it were.

 

That’s why regular worshipers can be treated to different angles of the same Torah portion year after year. In the words of Ben Bag Bag in Mishna Avot (“The Ethics of the Fathers”): “Turn it [the Torah] and turn it, for everything is in it.”

 

With this as background let me now turn to a part of the story of Jacob and Esau as we heard it this morning and try to read it in at least three different ways: (1) from the point of view of realists who see themselves as victims; (2) from the perspective of those who’d describe themselves pessimists and critics; (3) from the vantage point of  optimists who see the brothers not as adversaries but as friends and collaborators.

 

(1) Realists/Victims

 

The text tells us how, after years of separation and much “unfinished business,” Jacob and Esau are together again. Jacob, bearing in mind that he had to flee in haste because he had stolen his brother’s birthright, moves cautiously to greet Esau, but, as our text has it, “Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, vayishakehu, he kissed him.”

 

Jewish tradition normally sees Esau as the archetypal non-Jew; Jacob whose name God changed to Israel is, of course, the quintessential Jew. That’s behind the six dots to which Rabbi Goldsmith referred earlier. The dots serve here as a kind of footnote suggesting that the word vayishakehu, “he kissed him,” should really be read vayishaCHu, “he bit him.“ Jewish realists who see themselves as victims of Gentile persecution cannot imagine that a non-Jew would kiss a Jew. What appeared as a kiss must have been a bite.

 

You and I know many Jews today who would argue that this is the most authentic interpretation of the text. They say that Jews must always be on guard because even seemingly friendly gestures by non-Jews may turn out to be hostile acts. Some even take comfort in a later gloss to our text that a miracle happened at the crucial moment: Jacob’s neck turned to marble, and Esau broke his teeth. It’s the sick comfort of the victim.

 

(2) Pessimists/Critics

 

But that’s by no means the only way in which our text can be read, especially in our time when Jews are being encouraged to look critically at their own tradition. They’d point to the encounter between the brothers that preceded this one, when Jacob deceived his blind father by pretending to be Esau and obtained the blessing of succession under false pretenses. In this scheme of things, Jacob is a cheat (as even his name may indicate) and Esau (as Arnold Toynbee, the British historian once described him) – a gentleman.

 

These critics are likely to ignore the traditional understanding of the story as an example of how God rewards merit rather than the accident of birth. The fact that Esau was born before Jacob shouldn’t entitle him to be the bearer of the tradition. It’s a theme throughout Scripture: Ishmael was born before Isaac, and Joseph was younger than virtually all of his brothers, etc. It’s meritocracy, not aristocracy.

 

Moreover, so tradition has it, Esau had, in fact, sold his birthright to Jacob for that famous bowl of soup.

 

But the critics will have none of this. They insist that unless we recognize the flaws in our forbears we won’t see them in ourselves and Judaism will stagnate. Reform Judaism, born out of the modern stress on critical reading, is much about that, though its antagonism was less directed against the Bible than against the Rabbinic body of interpretation and legislation. Even if the critical approach compromises piety, so the argument goes, it enhances integrity and the quest for truth which are more important to God than conformity.

 

Both approaches that I’ve tried to allude to are present in contemporary Jewry: on the one hand, the ostensibly realistic stress on victimhood often linked to the experience of the Holocaust; on the other, the need to clean up tradition in the service of truth, even if it leads to pessimism.

 

(3) Optimists/Collaborators

 

However, neither way is an adequate response to our reading. Despite our experience of being victims – because we’re Jews – and notwithstanding the self-criticism that our exposure to the secular world imposes on us, it behooves us to try to transcend both.

 

Which brings me a third way of reading the text: as optimistic collaboration between Jacob and Esau. But not being able to cover the whole range without turning this address into a discourse, let me concentrate on interfaith collaboration. Think, for example, of the new Pope and his deep friendship with leading rabbis in his native Argentina. He’s no Esau bent on biting Jacob but a true friend of our people and as such a faithful servant of God. And he’s not alone.

 

Not only is there ample evidence of Christian-Jewish cooperation in our time but also between Muslims and Jews. I believe that only recently members of this congregation broke bread with Muslim neighbours and celebrated Shabbat together as a manifestation of this new spirit of togetherness.

 

And think of the pioneering efforts of Alyth’s, indeed the Reform movement’s, own Sir Sigmund Sternberg as the distinguished champion of interfaith in general and the founder of the Three Faiths Forum, an organization that has had a great impact on the religious scene in this country and beyond.

 

Last April I met people connected to the Forum at a conference in Doha, Qatar. And in recent weeks I’ve attended two meetings with Muslim leaders in Canada. A week ago yesterday I also addressed a congregation of worshipping Muslims at a mosque in Toronto: it was the first time I preached wearing only socks.

 

Krister Stendahl

 

The late Krister Stendahl, former Bishop of Stockholm and Dean of Harvard Divinity School, was arguably the most significant theologian of interfaith dialogue. One of the rules in his oft-quoted formula for such dialogue is: always compare your best with their best, not your best with their worst.

 

In the context of this address let me suggest that those who can only see others as bent on biting our necks are prone to compare their worst with our best. One of the most common distortions is to identify all bad aspects of the other faith and use it as an argument against any relationship with it.

 

One can always find illustrations. Terrorists who describe themselves as ardent defenders of Islam for which they’re prepared to kill and maim – their own as well as aliens – are often cited in this context. The fact that the majority is different is usually conveniently ignored. Their worst is being compared with our best.

 

But the opposite also happens. There’re Jews who specialize in finding the worst among us to compare with the best of others to show that Jacob deserves to be bitten. Old-time assimilationists and contemporary opponents of Israel alike belong to this category. Though I don’t like the term “self-hating Jew,” it may be appropriate in this context.

 

Champions of good relations with other faiths are Stendahl’s disciples. They seek out the best in others and compare it with the best in ours. Not only does this enable them to find much common ground but it invariably strengthens their commitment to their own faith. Stendahl speaks of “holy envy.”  By getting to know another religion you find there aspects you wish you could find in your own.

 

This approach has come to shape and renew Judaism through the ages. For example, Jews exposed to Islamic thought and literature in the Middle Ages came to incorporate many aspect of it into Jewish law and other forms of Jewish writing. What we today describe as normative Orthodoxy reflects this influence. Similarly, Reform Judaism has come to incorporate many Church practices which have enriched our religious life and for which we’ve no reason to apologize.

 

Interfaith is, of course, only one aspect of a wide spectrum of encounters between the descendants of Jacob and the descendants of Esau. Despite anti-Semitic incidents in Europe and elsewhere, and notwithstanding anti-Jewish innuendos in Britain of the kind we’ve been reading about of late, we’ve reason to paraphrase Harold Macmillan’s famous words and affirm that as Jews we’ve never had it so good – precisely because Jacob and Esau do embrace each other.

 

Notwithstanding the bad neighbourhood in which Israel is situated, the Jewish state is blossoming on almost every level while Jews in the Diaspora live in comfort and occupy positions of responsibility and national prominence. Another reason to respond to Esau’s embrace in good faith!

 

Leone

 

Which brings me to Leone who’s the reason why I’ve been given the honour of standing here today. Rabbi Goldsmith has spoken to her with warmth and sensitivity. Let me therefore say a few words about her in the context of this address.

 

She stood before you today as a member this congregation and as a graduate of Akiva School that helped shape her Jewish identity and equipped her with basic Jewish knowledge. She’s now a pupil of a very English establishment. I see her as being at home in both worlds, not as a victim of Esau or one who seeks to distance herself from Jacob but as a true child of Israel who lives happily with her non-Jewish neighbours as an equal and accepted partner.

 

I’d like to think that being Jewish is for her and her family a source of strength that combines roots with wings. That Judaism of today at its best. I hope that she and we all will always be able to read the text as it stands without having to worry about the dots.