06 Dec NEITHER YOUR BITE NOR YOUR KISS

 Guarding Against Esav the ‘Biter’ as well as Against Esav the ‘Kisser’

This week’s parsha teaches us how Yaakov has to deal with Esav in order to survive in Galus [exile].

We read the story of Yaakov, who, with great trepidation, was meeting Esav for the first time after all these years. Yaakov offers a prayer to Hashem: “Please save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esav…” [Bereishis 32:12].

Yaakov’s prayer contains an apparent redundancy — “the hand of my brother, the hand of Esav.” Shouldn’t Yaakov have said, “save me from the hand of my brother, Esav?” However, the pasuk [verse] seems to indicate a prayer to be saved from two different people — from his brother and from Esav.

Rav Shlomo Breur gives a very nice insight into this ‘redundancy.’ Rav Breur says that there are in fact two individuals about whom Yaakov is worried. Yaakov is worried about Esav — the rough sibling who is out to kill him. But Yaakov is also worried about being saved from the hand of his ‘brother.’

Esav can have two faces. He can be the Esav who will kill you, have pogroms against you, try to throw you out of his country and have Inquisitions against you. We certainly have to be saved from this Esav.

However, there is another disguise that Esav uses, and that is the loving brother. This is not the Esav that kills you, it is the Esav that loves you. But the Esav that loves you is sometimes as dangerous as the Esav that will kill you. If we have lost hundreds and thousands and even millions of Jews to the Esav that kills us — we our losing hundreds of thousands of Jews to the Esav who loves us, the Esav that wants to marry us, marry our sons and daughters, and who offers us “salvation through love.” This is Yaakov’s prayer. Save me from Esav and save me from my brother.

The Pardes Yosef comments on a later pasuk [33:4], where the Torah says that Esav kissed Yaakov (vayishakeihu). The word ‘vayishakeihu’ has dots on top it. Rash”i explains that Esav really wanted to bite Yaakov, but the Medrash says that Yaakov’s neck turned to stone and Esav wasn’t able to bite him, so instead Esav kissed him.

The Pardes Yosef quotes a Yalkut that Esav said, “I won’t kill Yaakov with bows and arrows, but with my mouth and my teeth…” In other words, I will kiss him to death. That is to say, Esav tries two approaches. First he tries biting; but if biting doesn’t work, then the other approach is kissing. A Jew can be literally kissed to death.

This is what Chaza”l are telling us — we need to be on guard against both the Esav who wants to shoot arrows and against the Esav who wants to stretch out his hand.