• • •

Yes, we know the place, we repeat the story—over and over. Somewhere in the valley the last shadows withdraw, rending the night and the silence. Dawn is breaking.

For the second time a man crosses the river Jabbok, listening to its murmur. He seems calm, calmer than before, yet tense. What if all this was only a dream? He seems melancholy but determined. He may have to fight. And kill. And die.

But he is no longer alone.

PARABLES AND
SAYINGS IV

It was to protect Jacob that his mother Rebecca sent him to her brother Laban.

She knew Esau: capable of anything, the worst. Better that Jacob go away, hide. Else Esau will kill him and—thought the mother—I will lose two sons at the same time.

Question: Assuming her fear was justified and Esau killed Jacob, would she not in fact have lost only one son, not two?

Answer: Were Esau to kill Jacob, she would wish him dead. For a mother, a murderous son is as dead as a son who has been killed. If not more.

A Midrashic saying: Esau’s strength and good fortune and that of his descendants can be explained by the respect Esau showed to his father.

Another: Jacob and Esau both knew how to make others obey them. Jacob by his voice, Esau by his arm.

And this one: Like Abraham and Isaac, Jacob was chosen by God. But God did not draw him close. It was Jacob who, of his own volition, sought to come close to God.

Said Rebbe Menahem-Mendl of Kotzk: When Esau discovered that he had fallen victim to Jacob’s deceit, he uttered a cry that seemed to come from the deepest recesses of his heart, and in front of his petrified father he shed three tears.

For these three tears Israel was to suffer the throes of exile. But, said the rebbe after a long sigh, there is a limit, there will have to be. Over the centuries we have shed so many tears, enough to make the oceans overflow, enough to flood the heavens. There is a limit, Lord, there must be a limit.

A Midrashic saying: Abraham is symbolized by a mountain, Isaac by a valley, Jacob by a house.

Why did Isaac’s sight weaken? To enable Jacob, disguised as Esau, to come and gather the blessings.

In Jacob’s vision of the future, he wept together with his persecuted descendants. And this was how he addressed God: In Your Book, it is written that one may not slaughter an animal and her young on the same day. This law shall not be observed by the enemy; he will kill mothers and their children in each other’s presence. I shall not ask You who will observe Your Law; I shall simply ask You to tell me who will study it.

In his dream Jacob saw a ladder whose top reached into heaven. It still exists. There are those who have seen it, somewhere in Poland, at the side of an out-of-the-way railroad station. And an entire people was climbing, climbing toward the clouds on fire. Such was the nature of the dread our ancestor Jacob must have felt.