Shabbat Vayishlach
Written by Charley Baginsky Tuesday, 27 November 2007
You must remember this,
A kiss is but a kiss,
A sigh is just a sigh,
The fundamental things apply . . .
As time goes by.
These lyrics struck me as I was contemplating this portion. I found myself sitting on the couch staring at the portion and humming this song: “You must remember this, a kiss is but a kiss, . . . as time goes by.” Ah, “Casablanca”. Ilsa Lund stands in the bar trying to remain calm when she discovers Rick Blaine is the owner of the bar. She composes her voice and says: “I wasn’t sure you were the same. Let’s see, the last time we met. . . .” Rick finishes the sentence for her “Was the Belle Aurore.” Behind their words and polite smile the audience realizes that so many other words are being said. Max Steiner's “As Time Goes By” provides the backdrop for the tension between Ilse and Rick. “A kiss is but a kiss” a kiss is never just a kiss. The audience know they have something hidden in their past and in their hearts. For us, as the watchers spying on this poignant moment, we are excited by the ambiguity of their relationship, once passionate and now distant.
No a kiss is never just a kiss. I am not sure I should be admitting this – especially when I know this is being published on the LBC website – but when I was two and a half, perhaps three, I kissed a boy at Kindergarten and he fell off his chair and banged his head. It was not an attack, but that’s what it ended up as.Perhaps like Jacob I came to bite but found that the kiss was just as efficient. Neshika or neshicha – a kiss or a bite – or perhaps in one is found the other.
Earlier in Genesis we are told that the two brothers have maintained a distance for many years because so great was the hatred of Esau towards Jacob that he desired to kill him. Finally at the centre of the parashah Vayishlach we find the meeting of the two brothers again.
וַיָּרָץ עֵשָׂו לִקְרָאתוֹ וַיְחַבְּקֵהוּ, וַיִּפֹּל עַל-צַוָּארָו וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ; וַיִּבְכּוּ.
And Esau ran to him and embraced him and fell upon his neck and kissed him and they wept (Gen. 32:4) and there, above every letter of the word וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ, is a dot. “A kiss is just a kiss. . . .” Rashi notes the Midrash that Esau really wanted to bite Jacob but his neck turned to stone and Esau was not able to bite him and instead was left to kiss him. The Pardes Yosef (a commentary on Pentateuch by R. Joseph Pazanovski, Lodz, 1937) tells us that Esau was believed to have said: “I won’t kill Jacob with bows and arrows, but with my mouth and teeth.” Which we might understand to mean, I will kiss him to death. And who could blame him? There he stands face to face with the brother who stole his future, the brother against whom he had had years to imagine his revenge. There would seem no better deception than to move forward for the kiss, to take him in his arms – then when he is at his most vulnerable - sink his teeth in.
There are other examples within the Torah of the dots acting as an indication of pretence or deception or at least as a recognition that what is happening in the external world does not parry with that of the inner world.
When the three angels visit Abraham, they inquire “of him” where his wife is and he tells them that she is in the tent (Gen. 18:9). In this story the dots appear on the word אליו, “of him”. Some commentators claim that the angels know very well where she was, after all they were the all knowing angels of God; the dots indicate their attempt to disguise who they really were.
When Joseph is sold by his brothers, we read: “and the brothers went down to graze את צאן אביהם, their father’s sheep in Shechem” (Gen. 37:12). Over the word et (indicating the direct object) we find dots on both its letters. Commentators tell us that this is because while it would seem on the surface that their intention was to help their father, really they were acting on selfish motivations, using the opportunity of being away from home to drink and be raucous.
But it should not surprise us that Esau might be a master of deception. He has had years to ponder his own demise as a result of his brother’s deception of their father. Perhaps more surprising is that Jacob would fall for any fraudulent action, having been bitten by a kiss before when he was conned into marrying Leah before Rachel. Yet the truth is I cannot see Esau as all bad, as the progenitor of all that we have to fear. Were the kiss intended as a bite, even were it premeditated, I could understand. After all I too am the eldest child who has suffered at the hands of a younger brother! Furthermore I struggle with why Jacob is chosen and Esau is, in many ways rejected. Jacob is deceitful and selfish, arrogant and opportunistic.
Perhaps the key to understanding lies in this parasha. Jacob has, suggests Professor Ze’ev Falk, struggled with his treatment of Esau and it is not until the point when Jacob sees the face of God that his conscience is finally cleared. He says: “Jacob does not hide this experience [of seeing God] and he uses it both as a means of giving honour to his brother Esau and a way of expressing his fear: “for having seen your [Esau's] face is like seeing the Face of God and you have accepted me” (Gen. 33:10). It also expresses his sense of security standing before his brother Esau" (Falk, Divrei Torah Ad Tumam, 75). In other words Jacob comes to his meeting with Esau having confronted his inner demons. He reconciles himself with himself and thus with his brother, he understands the baggage he is bringing to the encounter. Indeed, Kevin Snapp ("Parashat Va–Yishlah, Jacob and the Gentile Problem," Conservative Judaism, Volume 55, Fall 2002, 38—55) argues that his night-time encounter is with his inner Esau.
Esau on the other hand is unaware of his inner Jacob. I believe he does not know he intends to bite until the moment comes. If the Midrash is to be believed, then it is only on the encounter with the marble of Jacob’s neck that he realises his own intentions and weeps with his brother. How often has the same been true for us? Even when we think our inner world is buried deep it manages to find a way to express itself. Martin Buber tells the Hasidic tale of Rabbi Schneur Zalman, the Rav of Northern White Russia, who was placed in jail because he had been denounced by his enemies. He sat in his cell waiting for trial when one day the chief jailor enters and asks him about passages from the Bible. Finally he asks him why, if God is all knowing, does he ask Adam in the garden where he is. Well, answers the Rabbi, do you believe that the Scriptures are eternal and that in every generation every person is included in them? Of course, answered the chief jailor. Ok, said the rabbi, so in every generation God calls to every person and asks them “Where are you?” in your world. For example he would ask you: “You have lived 46 years, how far along are you?” The chief of the police began to tremble, for he had heard his age called out loud. And while he composed himself before the rabbi his heart was troubled.
In a verse in Deuteronomy that reads : “The secret things belong to God, Our God, but the revealed things belong to us, and to our children forever.” (Deut. 29:28) one again finds dots over two of the words. All that is secret may belong to God, but it is up to us to examine what we are bringing to a situation. Given the chance will we bite? Is our kiss just a kiss, have we really forgiven a hurt or are we still seeking revenge? Jacob and Esau should not be for us merely twins, one called to be our ancestor and the other our enemy; rather, they should cause us to examine the Jacob and Esau within our own lives.
As time went by perhaps Esau thought his kiss was just a kiss but he did not call himself to account, he did not wrestle with himself in the night. Perhaps he thought there were no demons and for this reason his actions surprised him. Yet one might suggest this is the reason that Jacob becomes Israel and Esau remains Esau. Had Ilse Lund said to Esau rather than Rick, that infamous night in Casablanca: “I was not sure you were the same,” he would have had to answer, Yes I am still the same, but my kiss is surely not just a kiss!
