Judaism
Vayishlach
“Esau said, ‘I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours’” Genesis 33:9
November 18, 2021 14:41
“Esau said, ‘I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours’” Genesis 33:9
November 18, 2021 14:41Sibling relationships can be so complicated. As a parent of twins, I can attest to the fact that twin interactions are even more complex: two babies, born at the same time, with the same needs at birth, differentiating over time, but always held up for examination against one another.
The story of Jacob and Esau is the story of twins who spend their early lives constantly being compared and contrasted by the Torah: the hairy one, the smooth one. The outgoing one, the one who prefers to stay home. This happens with all siblings but twins may feel it even more acutely.
Perhaps it is no surprise that, after the especially rocky relationship between this particular set of twins, at this moment of confrontation the issue of brotherhood comes to the fore. Esau interrupts his polite refusal of the gifts Jacob has presented to refer to the giver as “my brother”.
Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, a 19th-century Torah commentator known as the Netziv, reads this superfluous familial reference as a pointed message about the nature of giving. There are two kinds of gifts, says the Netziv: one you give to appease someone, as a servant would to a master, and one you give because another is in need.
Esau is not only telling his twin that he doesn’t need the gifts, he is correcting what seems to him like a misunderstanding of their relationship. Jacob’s perception of his brother is coloured by years of separation, by fear and perhaps by guilt. With a single word, Esau protests: I don’t want you to placate me and I don’t want you to patronise me. Whether friends or enemies, we are brothers; on equal footing and equally deserving.
I believe there is a third kind of gift: the one given because you love someone and want them to be happy. Perhaps it is obvious to Esau that this is not that kind of gift and it is hard to say whether he yearns for that connection, or whether, as one midrashic tradition would have it, he secretly hates his blessing-stealing brother.
Similarly, there is no indication that Jacob wants an emotional reconnection with his twin. The simple word achi, “my brother,” opens our eyes to a relationship that might have been, and a reminder not to use physical gifts in place of an emotionally giving relationship.