Synagogue Sermon
The Ways of Esau (1960)
At the beginning of this morning’s Sidra, we find Jacob awaiting the fateful confrontation with his brother Esau. Jacob is apprehensive – even terrified – as he prepares for Esau who is advancing upon him with four hundred armed men, with vengeance and murder in his heart. At this point, Jacob decides to divide his retinue into two separate camps. His reason, according to the Torah, was that should Esau destroy one camp, at least the other would escape and survive. Allow me to bring to your attention an additional reason for Jacob’s strategy, one suggested by the eminent Hasidic master, the author of the Sefat Emet, in the name of his renowned grandfather, the Kotzker Rebbe. He bids us read a bit further, when Esau and Jacob finally do meet. Esau ran towards Jacob, embraced him, fell upon his neck – va-yishakehu, and he kissed him. The word va-yishakehu is written with a series of dots on the top of it. This is rare in the Torah, and when it does occur, it indicates that there is a deeper meaning that must be searched out. That our Rabbis did, and Rabbi Yanai taught: melamed she-lo bikesh le’nashko ela le’nashkho – Esau did not intend to kiss Jacob, to give him a neshikah or kiss. He did intend to give him a neshikhah – a bite, a mortal wound. He embraced him, and then fell upon his neck in his characteristically wild, bestial manner in order to kill him. But, by a miracle, Jacob’s neck turned hard as marble, and so Esau – kissed him. It was a hypocritical kiss; a kiss not of love but of death, not of affection but of affliction.These are the two ways Esau always tries to overcome Jacob: the ways of neshikah and neshikhah. Sometimes Esau acts directly and openly like a wolf. At other times he is devious and sly – like a fox. At such times the neshikah hides the deadly neshikhah, and honey drips about the inner poison.Jacob, knowing of the approaches by Esau, therefore divides his own camp into two, training each of them how to cope with one of the alternate strateg…
