Vayishlach 2024

Margaret Holub - 12/14/24

Pirkei Avot has much to say about names, and a good name, a shem tov, in particular. “Rabbi Shimon said: There are three crowns: the crown of Torah, the crown of priesthood, and the crown of royalty, but the crown of a good name supersedes them all.” (4:13)

I remember Raven sharing the history of his wonderful name. Mine is maybe not so colorful, but here’s a little. My name is Margaret Ann Holub: Margaret very possibly after my great-grandmother Marguerite, “the Princess” — but she was still alive when I was born, and Ashkenazic Jews traditionally don’t name children after living people. So my parents said they just liked the name. Also that they would have named me Marguerite but they didn’t think I’d be able to spell it. Ann because I was born in the fifties. Holub is my father’s last name. The gentile Holub family in the town where I grew up pronounced it Hoe-lub and said it meant “dove;” my family pronounces it Hah-lub and says it means “pigeon.” I know very little about the Holub side of my family before my grandparents.

My name is also Chayyah Ruchl bat Avraham v’Rizl — the story is that I was born in a blizzard in Indiana, and my grandfather went to shul up in Chicago and had me named with my great grandmother’s name. I didn’t know any of this until I was about to get ordained. I never even knew I had a Jewish name before then. When I became bat mitzvah I was called to the Torah as Margalit, which is the Hebraicized cognate of Margaret. But when it was time for me to have my fancy ordination certificate calligraphed, my grandparents unearthed a document that had my Jewish name on it. The very first time I used it I had another bit of name added to it. That day I became Ha-rav Chayyah Ruchl bat Avraham v’Rizl.

That same day that I was first called Harav, I walked down the aisle at Temple Emanuel in New York City — don’t get me started. I had kicked up a bit of a ruckus by insisting on wearing a red and green striped tallit that I had made and a big, bright red kippah over my black choir robe. Such things weren’t worn in Temple Emanuel. My mom told me afterwards that she heard someone behind her hiss as I walked by, “That one, she’s a communist.” And my mom, who has a long history of standing up for me when other people take digs at me, tried to clear my name. She turned around and said, “She’s not a Communist— she’s my daughter!”

I’m not a communist, as it happens — never have been. But I’m a bit of an anarchist, and so the woman in the pew didn’t have it totally wrong.

Here is a famous poem, by the Israeli poet Rachel:

EACH OF US HAS A NAME

Each of us has a name
given by God
and given by our parents

Each of us has a name
given by our stature and our smile
and given by what we wear

Each of us has a name
given by the mountains
and given by our walls

Each of us has a name
given by the stars
and given by our neighbors

Each of us has a name
given by our sins
and given by our longing

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

Each of us has a name
given by our celebrations
and given by our work

Each of us has a name
given by the seasons
and given by our blindness

Each of us has a name
given by the sea
and given by
our death.

Our portion this week contains one of the most beautiful and redemptive stories in all of Torah. Jacob and Esau, you will remember, were twins, Esau moments older, born to Rebecca and Isaac. As the firstborn Esau was entitled to both the birthright and the blessing of their father. Jacob hoodwinked him and took both. Esau was left weeping. Jacob fled. They both married, bore children, accrued flocks, herds, servants and maidservants.

At the beginning of our parsha ‘vayishlach” — Jacob sent out messengers to Esau. It isn’t clear from the text itself why Jacob did this — we might assume that he knew that he would encounter Esau one way or another, and he wanted to be prepared for what would probably happen when he did. Indeed he heard that Esau was coming his way, accompanied by 400 men.

Much of our parshah this week records Jacob’s elaborate preparations to appease Esau and head off his revenge. He sends all his treasure ahead of him, then his wives and his children. Finally he goes to meet Esau. Chapter 33:8-9 —

And Esau asks, What did you intend by that whole camp that I had met?”

Jacob answers, “To gain favor in my lord’s eyes.”

Esau says, YESH LI RAV ACHI, YEHI LECHA ASHER LECHA: “I have plenty. My brother, let what you have remain yours.”

I love these words so much. How many of us can say these words in any case — I have enough — let what you have remain yours — even in neutral situations, much less when we have been wronged?

There follows a terrible interlude having to do with Dinah, the one known daughter of Jacob, then a bit more of Jacob’s travels, Rachel’s death while birthing Binyamin, Isaac’s death, after which the two sons Esau and Jacob come together to bury him— as a generation earlier Isaac and his separated brother Ishmael had come together to bury their father Avraham. And then a full chapter is devoted to an exhaustive genealogy of Esau, listing many generations of offspring and connecting them to the kingdom of Edom. Our aliyah is the latter part of that genealogy. The last words of our aliyah, and of the Torah portion, are v’hu Esav avi Edom — he is Esau, father of Edom. We could look at the inclusion of this genealogy as a gesture of honor to Esau.

In Deuteronomy, lifetimes later, an aged Moses is giving last words to the Israelites. Among his many instructions he proclaims (23:8) “You shall not reject an Edomite, for he is your brother.”

That’s about all there is of Esau in Torah. A man of the earth, earnest, a bit hapless, perhaps, ultimately noble and generous. A minor character in the saga of the Jewish people, who are, after all, the descendants of Jacob, the younger brother and in many ways the victor. I would say that from the POV of Torah, Esau is crowned with a good enough name. But it doesn’t end there. The rabbis come to see Esau quite differently.

There is a long and convoluted history to the change in attitude among the rabbis about Esau. Some of this comes from the Church Fathers, who began to associate Esau, the firstborn, with the Jews —whom they saw as the older sibling, abandoning the will of God —and Jacob as the new, young, second-born Christian church now favored by God and history.

But clearly the rabbis have their own reasons for wanting to besmirch Esau’s good name. In our very parshah Jacob is re-named Israel. We are b’nai Yisrael, children of Israel — the Jewish lineage passes down to us through Jacob, the younger son, the trickster, the hustler. Reading Jacob as he is described in Torah is awkward. It’s so helpful if his older brother is portrayed as an idolator and a reprobate. And so the rabbis smear his name.

Rashi takes the vileness of Esau all the way back to Rebecca’s womb:

And [the boys] struggled — You must admit that this verse calls for a midrashic interpretation since it leaves unexplained what this struggling was about, and it states [that she exclaimed] “If so, why am I [suffering]?” Our Rabbis explain that the word va-yitrotsetsu has the meaning of running [moving quickly]: whenever she passed by the doors of Torah [i.e., the study-houses of Shem and Eber], Jacob moved convulsively trying to come out, but whenever she passed by the gate of a pagan temple Esau moved convulsively trying to come out [cf. BerRab 63:6].

There are many such passages excoriating Esau, from Rashi and from others.

Meanwhile there is the association of Esau with Edom and Edom with Rome. It was the Roman empire that destroyed Jerusalem and murdered and exiled the Jewish population there. It is possible that some of this association between Esau and Rome also comes from the Church Fathers. King Herod, who was Jewish but associated with Rome, who played a role in the crucifixion of Jesus. Even before then Edom is associated by the biblical prophets with Babylonia, perpetrators of the first destruction of the Temple. So there is this association of Edom, and hence Esau, with the historical enemies of the Jewish people.

The prophet Amos roundly curses Edom. The terrible Psalm 137, which begins with those plaintive words we all love, thank you Jimmy Cliff, “By the rivers of Babylon we lay down and wept…” associates Edom with Babylon. It concludes by saying, “Remember HASHEM for the offspring of Edom the day of Jerusalem…. praiseworthy is he who repays you in accordance with the manner that you treated us. Praiseworthy is he who will clutch and dash your infants against the rock.”

I read all these words about Esau and feel such sadness and indignation. Esau offered some of the most beautiful and generous words in Torah. His gesture of acceptance, his renunciation of revenge — these should be an example and an inspiration to us all. Instead, he is fed into the meat grinder of history and comes out as an idolator and a genocidaire.

We have very little control over our names, even in our own lifetimes. As the poet Rachel says so beautifully, our names come from a multitude of sources. After our deaths our names go wherever they go. This makes me wonder about our obligation to the names of the dead. I wrote a terrible paragraph in here about someone whom I consider one of the worst people ever to live. And then I took it out. I just thought about what is gained and what is lost by passing that loathing forward. And I decided that there was already plenty of dishonor for this person, and I didn’t really need to add any more.

L’havdil, as they say — may the name of this person whose name I am refraining from saying not be in any way confused with the name of Esau, whom I believe to have been a figure of moral nobility.

Each of us has a name
given by our enemies
and given by our love

It feels somehow right and healing to speak the beautiful name of Esau, our uncle, our teacher, the name given by his love.

Today I would like to speak the name of Esau with respect and honor: Esav ben Yitzhak v’Rivka. Zichrono livracha — may the memory of him be a blessing.