Even with the tiny kernel of hope this week that a cessation of fighting and aggression might be possible, we are hardened to war around us, both in Israel and beyond.
War is, unfortunately, good at bringing out stereotyping and depersonalising peoples and groups. We have seen a stark increase of hatred and hostility in our lives and experiences this past year or so. The Torah portion this week introduces Jacob and Esau, the brothers positioned against each other in Torah and even more so in rabbinic commentary. Esau is portrayed as an “ish yode’a tzayid ish sadeh,” a skilful hunter, a man of the fields, and Jacob as an “ish tam yoshev ohalim,” an innocent man who sits in tents (Genesis 25:27). Midrash plays on these tropes, Esau as aggressive other/foreigner and Jacob as innocent Hebrew, and it builds on these generalisations of all who come from Esau (Edomites, foreigners, becoming Christians in some versions) to be wary of, whilst Jacob becomes a critical ancestor and even gives us our name.
Rabbi Shimon Bar Yoḥai’s painful pronouncement in the midrash is that “It is a known halachah that Esau hates Jacob” (Sifrei 69:2). This is a very unhelpfully definitive statement. We don’t have to look very far to see the harm of persistent generalisations and how they inhibit a true understanding of others.
On Monday I visited Somerset House and saw Es Devlin’s https://www.somersethouse.org.uk/whats-on/es-devlin-face-face-50-encounters-strangers exhibition Face To Face: 50 Encounters with Strangers, as she paints them and tells their story. All have one thing in common: they have come from somewhere else seeking refuge. It’s a powerful exhibition and a reminder these days how easy it is not to see people as individuals and make assumptions and judgements about them, who they are and what they believe.
It started with our own biblical stories. I welcome the reminder to challenge these assumptions by reading the story of Esau and Jacob carefully, without buying in to a hatred that might just not exist as clearly as we might assume.
London is quite a city and all of us who live here have a story to tell of how that happened. I like the unlikely bedfellows of this week’s Parashat Toldot, this exhibition of Strangers and even Claude Monet’s paintings of the Thames (also there at the Courtauld Gallery).
Shabbat Shalom,
Rebecca
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