Parashat Vayishlah
Genesis 32:4 – 36:43
“And Jacob sent messengers before him to his brother Esau, to the land of Seir, the fields of Edom. And he charged them saying: ‘Say this to my master, Esau: “So says your servant, Jacob: ‘I have sojourned with Lavan and I was delayed until now.'” (Gen. 32:4 – 5)
The awkwardness of the text conveys Jacob’s state of mind and his difficulty in expressing himself. Again and again the verb “say” is used as if to tell us how hard it is for Jacob to say what he felt needed to be said.
Why is Jacob so shaken? The clear answer is that he is nervous to meet his brother, Esau, who, some 20 years earlier had threatened to kill him. But I believe that it is not only worry over his uncertain future that undermines Jacob’s confidence. One can hear in his first words an emotion-laden review of his past. Jacob cannot get over that he has stayed with Lavan, his uncle, for over twenty years. That stay he terms a “being-delayed.” He is not only saying that he is late in returning home. He is saying that “by continuing to stay with Lavan, I was in a state of delay, of being late, of deferral – until now.”
Imagine someone who escapes a dangerous situation, or is freed from prison, or survives a catastrophe. Even though the person may be safe now and grateful for their escape or rescue, they may still be very shaken and unsure. They may wonder at themselves – “How did I survive so many years in that dark place? Was that really me who had the strength to endure it?” Jacob is shaken in the same way. In order to survive, Jacob had accustomed himself to waiting, to deferring his hopes, to putting up with a present that, for twenty years, he yearned would be finally turned into a past, over and done with.
What was it like to live with Lavan for an extended period of time? Last week I tried to give a graphic portrayal of Lavan as a narcissistic, amoral bully. Lavan had no respect for people or God, and no respect for the truth. What was it like to live in close contact with him for years? Rashi offers a comment that recognizes the challenge inherent in such a situation. He says that Jacob is claiming that, although he lived with this insidiously evil person who controlled his daily life, he did not abandon his commitment to keeping God’s ways. He somehow maintained his moral integrity.
How did he accomplish this act of resistance? Rashi notices that Jacob used the word “I sojourned – garti.” Rashi explains that Jacob describes himself as a ger a soujourner, a stranger. He did not use the word “lived” or “settled,” because that would have meant that Jacob had reconciled himself to dwelling with Lavan. It would have meant that Jacob had “normalized” an evil situation. But Jacob tells Esau – and us – that the key to surviving under such a horrible person of power is to refuse to normalize the reality that Lavan wished to impose. To stay decent one must resist evil. It is not possible to get comfortable with evil and then hope to escape it. If one is forced to live with evil one must do so as a ger – an alien stranger. (In this light it is possible to read Jacob’s words “va-ehar `ad `atah” to also mean “I maintained myself as an Other – aher – until now.”) One must maintain one’s moral vision and remind one’s self that this is a time of delay, of deferred hope. Such resistance is very hard, but it is the only way to make sure that the delay not last forever.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi David Greenstein
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