I so looked forward to writing on Vayishlah. What could be more appropriate for today than the message of reconciliation embodied in the embrace of Esau and Jacob (chapter 33)? From its rocky start in Rebecca's womb (chapter 25), their relationship reaches the pits of the desperate sale of the birthright (ibid), Jacob's stealing of the blessing (chapter 27), and Esau's double death wish (ibid, for Isaac as well as for Jacob), but finds a dramatic breakthrough after 20 years of separation; and, towards the end of the parashah (chapter 35) , the brothers reunite to bury their father.
With such a past as Jacob's, it's hard to see him as an ideal role model, but I had high hopes of tracing an unambivalent refinement of his character as he grows older. I've always celebrated his clear stance against the violence wreaked by Simeon and Levi against the people of Shechem (chapter 34). Sadly, this week I came to realize that the text won't yield such a simple reading.
Shall I share my recent journey? I obviously thought I knew the route, but, for additional inspiration, I scanned the weekly email I get from MyJewishLearning to see what others had written. Almost all the vorts were upbeat, as expected, but I found myself flabbergasted reading...the summary of the parashah! I had not learned chapter 35 that way, so I went back and read it with the traditional commentaries, and took a closer look at chapter 34 as well. I had somehow forgotten that after killing all the circumcised males, Jacob's sons looted the city, "taking their sheep, their cattle, their donkeys, whatever was in town and in the field, their possessions, all their children and their women, everything in their homes (34: 28-29)." Could Simeon and Levi have done this on their own?
The summary, renders the beginning of chapter 35 thus:
Later, God said to Jacob, “Go to Beth-el and live there and make an altar to God.” Therein, Jacob had all the captives purify themselves, change their clothes and bring him their foreign gods. Jacob buried these gods under the oak tree...
Seems like Jacob was rather complicit! Well...with a quick phone call (last week, when I was visiting my parents, all I had to do was holler), I was shown that this passage finds a parallel in chapter 17; in both cases, in order to engage the Divine, the entire household undergoes a drastic purge: there, it was the removal of the foreskins, here, it is the removal of the family idols (e.g., what Rachel took from Laban). My hunch is that the description of the looting of Shechem, resembling as it does other parts of the Bible, is an editorial gloss; I believe the reference to the captives in chapter 35 in the traditional commentaries, and therefore in the summary on the website, is inferred by language similar to the rule of the captive woman (eshet y'fat to'ar) of Deut. 21.
However, even if Jacob comes out "clean" in this parashah, by the end of Genesis he has made his peace with the aggression, and even takes ownership of it: on his deathbed, he gives Joseph "an additional portion (shechem), which I took from the Amorites with my sword and my bow (Gen. 48:22)." I am only consoled by the tradition (Rashi, Midrash Rabba) that spiritualized this violence, and reads "mitzvot" for "sword" and "prayer" for "bow" (the latter works better in English than in Hebrew!).
What did Jacob actually bury under the oak tree? Back then, people worshipped idols. And today? There's still a lot to bury.
posted for Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom
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