Vayishlach

This week we are studying the chapter that deals with the life of Yaacov, our antecesor. Parashat Vayishlach, Genesis 32:4 - 36:42 (the month of Kislev 12 - 18, year 5770)

Yaakov is not an attractive personality. He starts by cheating his twin brother out of his heritage and since then, he lives in permanent terror of his brother. Apparently the fear of Yaakov is unjustified, because when they meet, Esau has forgotten the incident and receives his brother with presents. But Yaakov lives all his life worried and with fear, in a typical Jewish set of mind.

Eventually Yaacov settles near Shechem (today, Alon More) in the high Samaritan valleys, with his large family and household. They think themselves a step above the local Canaanites, and have little intercourse with them. But the Chairman of Shechem's municipal council falls in love with Dinah, Yaakov's daughter, and following local customs he "kidnaps her" (a romantic custom still practiced in Central Asia, more or less consensually) and then sends his relatives to Yaakov to negotiate the marriage and the monetary arrangements.

Yaakov does not dare to say no, so he objects because we are Jews, circumcised, we marry among ourselves, exogamy is not our cup of tea. We love you, say the people of Shechem, we will convert to Judaism and adopt your religion. Yaakov is unhappy with the idea and demands that the males of Shechem undergo circumcision. The locals are absolutely sincere and they submit to the knife. In those painful circumstances, two barbaric sons of Yaakov gather the members of their gangs and the employees of their sheep raising business, and slaughter all the males of Shechem. (One can only imagine what happens to the females).

An early instance of Jewish "excessive use of force" and of "collective punishment", if you want. The sons say they had to over-react brutally, because the house of Yaakov is a small and weak Jewish tribe in the midst of an ocean of bloodthirsty fanatics. It would be suicidal to show mercy towards them, they understand only the language of force. If they smell hesitation, tomorrow they will come to rape our grandmother in her tomb, they may have said.

All this time, God, that of the Bible, is silent. No moral lesson tought through this story. May be Yaakov, our Patriarch, will chastise the gangsters he created? No way. He is too worried (when not?) by the reaction of the Canaanites. They may slightly dislike us, he says to his sons. Abba, we dont give a damn about what the Canaanites may think or feel. The pattern of Jewish history in Eretz Israel has been set.

Illustr.: HaRav Kook.