This week’s Torah portion begins when Jacob returns to meet his estranged brother Esau after many years apart. After tricking his father, Isaac, into giving him Esau’s blessing, he fled to avoid Esau, who wanted to kill him in revenge. The night before their meeting, Jacob encounters a mysterious being/angel with whom he wrestles through the night. Jacob prevails but comes away limping. Being Jacob, he demands a blessing and the angel responds by giving him a new name, Israel.

      Neither brother knows what to expect after so many years. Is your brother your enemy and betrayer or is he your brother? How do you prepare for the encounter in a way that will make you feel safe? Esau brings an army with him. Jacob brings evidence of his success---his many possessions and his many children. He sends on ahead his herds of animals as a gift to Esau hoping to propitiate him.

      In the climatic scene of their meeting, Esau approaches with his 400 followers. Jacob bows down to Esau seven times as he approaches. It is enough. Though Jacob never apologizes, Esau runs to greet Jacob, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him  “and they wept.” As the aggrieved party, Esau needs to be the one who forgives, yet he needs a sign that Jacob seeks a reconciliation. They both need to come to this uncertain moment feeling safe but for the reconciliation to occur, each needs to know that the other wants to repair the relationship. Jacob needs to bow and Esau needs to close the physical distance and embrace and kiss. Together they weep at the loss of those many years and cry with relief for regaining one another.

       The Torah portion also contains the story of massacre, rape and deception. The story of Dinah begins with her rape and leads to the revenge massacre of the inhabitants of the town of Shekhem by Dinah’s brothers. No one comes out innocent in this tale except perhaps Dinah. She is silent in the story or perhaps, in another wrong done to her, she is silenced. Her feelings and motivations are seemingly unimportant to the narrator. This is a story without any sense of reconciliation.

      The reconciliation between Esau and Jacob is short lived. Esau travels south and Jacob, after promising to join him, heads north. I always thought it was Jacob’s inability to trust Esau’s good intentions that caused him to go north. I now wonder whether he was actually wise enough to understand that years of anger and doubt cannot be easily erased. Perhaps it was better to create some breathing room between them rather than deciding to live together.