Extreme Peacemaking

By RABBI DAVID ROSENN

Parashat Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9)

As children of God, we are always faced with the alarming reality that our greatest enemy—no matter who she or he might be—is also our brother. That makes every act of peacemaking and reconciliation a family reunion as well. Nowhere is this point is made more vividly than in the sibling rivalries of the book of Genesis, including the tragic competition between Jacob and Esau recounted in this week's reading, Parashat Toldot.

Jacob and Esau don't even wait to emerge from the womb before they begin to antagonize one another. No sooner are we told that Rebecca is pregnant then the Torah informs us, "the children struggled in her womb." (25:22)

This struggle continues as the boys grow older, reaching a horrible climax when Jacob steals the blessing that their father Isaac intended for Esau. Furious at his younger brother, Esau vows to kill him as soon as the period of mourning for their father has passed.

Jacob flees for his life, and spends the next twenty years of his life in exile from his family and his homeland. When Jacob returns, the brothers meet again. Esau's murderous rage has had time to cool, so there is no actual fighting. But the wounds between the two are never fully healed.

In fact, traces of the conflict between the descendants Jacob and Esau can be found in events that transpire hundreds of years later, when Moses and the Jewish people are just about to cross over into the promised land. One of the last legs of the forty-year journey involves a trip through territory held by the Kingdom of Edom. Moses sends messengers to the Edomite King asking for safe passage and explaining that "We will not pass through fields or vineyards, and we will not drink water from wells." But the King refuses the request, warning, "You shall not pass through [at all]. If you do, we will come out against you with the sword!" (Numbers 20:17-18) It may seem curious that the Edomites would behave with such hostility towards the descendants of Jacob. But any reader who has paid close attention to the genealogies of the Genesis narratives knows that Edom is populated by the descendants of Esau (Genesis 36).

Here, the hatred between two brothers has widened, threatening to engulf hundreds of their descendants in a needless war. Hatred of this kind, which lasts for so many centuries, can harden into an inheritance that no amount of healing or peacemaking can overcome.

Nevertheless, the Bible enjoins us to seek peace (Psalms 34:15), and it contains the pathways of peace within it (Proverbs 3:17). Consider the following simply worded commandment: "You shall not abhor the Edomite, for he is your brother." (Deuteronomy 23:8)

Despite a long history of animosity, by commanding us not to revile the Edomites, the Torah calls upon us to remember our common connectedness. Of course, there may be good reasons to harbor a grudge, but doing so is forbidden precisely because of the way that grudges threaten to sever even our closest relationships: "Do not hate your brother in your heart; do not bear a grudge." (Leviticus 19:17-18) If our ancestors could not make peace among themselves, then it falls to us, their children, to do what they could not.

Admittedly, there is difficulty here. In same place that the Torah directs us not to abhor the Edomites, it says this about the Ammonites and the Moabites: "You shall never concern yourself with their welfare or benefit as long as you live." (Deuteronomy 23:7).

How can the very same Torah that commands us to seek peace with our most ancient rivals instruct us to ignore the plight of these two peoples? Perhaps the difference lies in the fact that Edomites, while enemies were nevertheless our blood relations, descendants of our Father Isaac, whereas the Ammonites and Moabites were not. Or maybe because Ammon and Moab actively harassed the Israelites, whereas Edom only threatened violence, the former are treated with special disdain.

But Edom is not the only nation that the Torah warns us not to revile. Deuteronomy 23:8 also states: "You shall not abhor the Egyptian, since you were a stranger in his land." The Egyptians are no blood relatives of ours, and the cruelty and oppression of Egyptian slavery certainly exceeds anything that Ammon and Moab may have done!

The Egyptians enslaved and afflicted us. They drowned our children in the Nile. There is no lack of reasons why we should be justified in harboring an eternal hatred for the Egyptian people. The fact that we are forbidden to do so coveys a powerful lesson. The mitzvah of peacemaking runs throughout the Torah, challenging us to overcome even our deepest, most justifiable hatreds. In the words of the Rabbis: "The whole Torah exists only for the sake of peace." (Midrash Tanhuma, Shoftim 18)