Even if you encounter an Esau-like Jew, remember that he or she is really a Jacob, only dressed like Esau.
Martin Lewis converts and becomes a priest.
He gives his first Mass in front of a number of high ranking priests who came for the occasion. At the end of the new priest's sermon, a cardinal goes up to congratulate him.
"Pastor Lewis," he said, "That was very well done, you were just perfect. But next time, please don't start your sermon with, "My Fellow Goyim..."
Isaac grows old and his eyes become dim. He expresses his desire to bless his beloved son Esau before he dies. While Esau goes off to hunt for his father's favorite food, Rebecca – the mother -- dresses Jacob in Esau's clothes, covers his arms and neck with goatskins to simulate the feel of his hairier brother, prepares a similar dish and sends Jacob to his father with the food.
Jacob receives his father's blessings for "the dew of the heaven and the fat of the land" and mastery over his brother. Jacob, dressed in Esau's clothes, has taken Esau's blessing.
One question cannot be ignored: Is this the proper way for a woman to behave, to contrive a scheme to outsmart her husband's planning? If Rebecca had a good reason as to why Esau was undeserving of his father's blessings, why couldn't she communicate it directly to Isaac? Indeed, Rebecca had a good argument against granting the blessings to Esau, one that Isaac would certainly understand.
The Bible attests that Jacob was "a wholesome man, a dweller of the tents of study," in contrast to his twin-brother Esau, who is described as a "skilled hunter, a man of the field." Rebecca favors Jacob for good and just reasons. Jacob's descendants became the nation of Israel, who granted the world the vision of ethical monotheism.
So why would Rebecca not share this insight with her husband, instead of manipulating the situation?
I would like to share with you a moving idea by one of the great Chassidic masters of Jewish thought.
Rebecca, he suggests, knew that Jacob’s grandchildren may one day strip themselves of their grandfather’s garments, and don the cloths of Esau. The matriarch of Israel was aware that the day will come when the Jew might be compelled to replace Jacob’s dress with Esau’s: Inside he will be Jewish, but on the outside he will seek to appear like Esau.
Rebecca understood – as only a mother could understand – the confusion and ambivalence that might consume her descendants following thousands of years of a tumultuous history. The identity crisis of the Jew in the modern era, craving to integrate, sometimes even assimilate, among the other nations and cultures.
Rebecca could have persuaded her husband to grant the blessings directly to Jacob. But then, these powerful spiritual energies would have been transmitted to the Jacob of old, the Jacob who looked like Jacob from within and without; the wholesome Jacob, the dweller in tents. How about the Jacob who would one day in history become entrenched in the glittering embrace of secularism, and appear like Esau, would he or she be lost to the blessing? Would he or she become disconnected from our people? Would this completely modern and secular Jew belong any less to Torah and to our faith?
No way! They too are an essential part of the blessing and the covenant; even the Jacob who looks just like Esau is an integral part of the covenant, of the legacy of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
The moment Rebecca dressed her son Jacob in Esau’s clothes to receive Isaac’s blessings, she insured that the spark of Judaism, the essence of the Jewish soul, the fountain of Jewish faith, would remain embedded in the hear of every single Jew forever, even the Jew that so many others dismiss as merely an Esau.
I will share with you a story 100 years old. It is about a Jew named Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), an influential Jewish theologian and philosopher in Germany, recorded in his book, The Star of Redemption.
Franz Rosenzweig was a totally secular and assimilated Jew. He was a prolific author and a great philosopher, but living in Germany in an age when modern philosophy and science presented themselves as a rational alternative to the sham of religion. In 1913 he was preparing to convert to Christianity.
It was Yom Kippur night. October 11, 1913. Franz Rosenzweig, then 27 years old and already one of the brilliant philosophers of his time, walked into a Berlin Synagogue with the intention of making that his final act as a Jew. After those 24 hours were over, he would enter the church where his sponsor, Rudolf Ehrenberg, awaited him for baptism to Christianity. Alone and unknown to anyone that Yom Kippur Eve, the prospective convert went to Berlin, to a shtible filled with pious, observant and sincere Jews.
And something happened to him. Franz Rosenzweig walked into the synagogue just to see what it was like, out of curiosity. He walked out of there a Baal Teshuvah, a "returnee" to Judaism. He became a fully engaged Jew. Kol Nidre – and the subsequent 24 hours – where enough to completely transform this young Jew. After Neilah, he wrote a long letter to the cousin who was to sponsor his baptism. “I am sorry to disappoint you, but I am remaining a Jew.”
Now, this was not in America in 2013 where it is a common phenomenon for Jews to become Baalei Teshuvah, or to begin celebrating some Mitzvot, but in Germany in 1913, where it was almost unheard of for a secular Jew to become observant.
What did it? What was it? It was the same as with many more Jewish people today. He was exposed to holiness. A person who is totally secular, or even anti-religious, or even a person who is prepared to adopt another religion, who goes to a shul -- not to pray and not to participate, but merely to observe... Someone who is merely exposed to such a place of holiness, on such a night of holiness -- that can do something to a person's soul. It can change a person.
Because holiness is real. G-dlioness is real. Torah is real. When a Jew says “amen yehay shmay raba” with his whole heart it is real. Through his exposure to a moment of G-dliness, Rozenzweig became a different person. It just takes a minyan of honest Jews praying sincerely to the Master of the World. That can change a man forever.
When Rebecca donned the clothes of Esau on her son Jacob, she ensured this truth for all of eternity. Even if you encounter an Esau-like Jew, remember that he or she is really a Jacob, only dressed like Esau.
Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,
Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky