VAYISHLACH | Is It a Kiss or a Bite?

וַיִּשְׁלַח יַעֲקֹב מַלְאָכִים לְפָנָיו אֶל־עֵשָׂו אָחִיו אַרְצָה שֵׂעִיר שְׂדֵה אֱדוֹם׃

Jacob sent messengers ahead to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom

Genesis 32:4

וַיָּרׇץ עֵשָׂו לִקְרָאתוֹ וַיְחַבְּקֵהוּ וַיִּפֹּל עַל־צַוָּארָו וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ וַיִּבְכּוּ׃

Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept.

Genesis 33:4

וַתִּדְבַּ֣ק נַפְשׁ֔וֹ בְּדִינָ֖ה בַּֽת־יַעֲקֹ֑ב וַיֶּֽאֱהַב֙ אֶת־הַֽנַּעֲרָ֔ וַיְדַבֵּ֖ר עַל־לֵ֥ב הַֽנַּעֲרָֽ׃

Being strongly drawn to Dinah, daughter of Jacob, and in love with the maiden, he [Shechem] spoke to the maiden tenderly.

Genesis 34:3

 

This week's Torah portion thrusts us into two dramatic encounters, one between estranged brothers Jacob and Esau, and one between Shechem and Dina, ill fated lovers or predator and victim. The meaning we make of these stories, what we even consider to be the "facts" of the story, are shaped by how we view the world, what we want the world to be and how we ourselves want to be seen as standing for in the world.

Torah, like all spiritual texts and like the world we inhabit, is a mirror reflecting how we see and experience "reality." We see this clearly today in the cultural war between the "pro VAX-ers" and "anti VAX-er's." We see it when Israelis and Palestinians point at each other and say, we have no partner in peace. We experience this in our own families, when someone chooses to not even speak to us, saying, “You don't respect me; your values betray everything we stand for.” People and groups experience the present moment through the filters of their cultures and history. Our perceptions are shaped by individual, cultural, and ancestral experiences.

When I asked Buddhist teacher Thich Nhat Hanh why there is so much violence and hatred in the Torah, he replied that religions express their truths the way they do because of historical conditions. "Your job," he continued, "is to go deeply into your root tradition and find the mindfulness there."

This view and approach helps me understand traditional Jewish teachings that  interpret Esau's kiss on Jacob's neck as a bite. When ancient Israel was dominated by the Romans, Esau stood in for the Roman oppressors. During the Inquisition's terrorizing and expulsion of the Jews from Spain and Portugal, continuing through pogroms in Europe and the Holocaust, Esau stood in for the oppressors within the countries we lived. Survival was at stake and kisses could not be trusted.

Rabbi Akiva (c. 50-135) first glosses the ambiguous statement of the blind Isaac at the time of the blessing of the firstborn son (when he says “The voice is the voice of Jacob but the hands are the hands of Esau”) as being a description of the anguished voice of the Jews/Jacob crying out against oppression perpetrated against them by Rome/ the hands of Esau. And in the middle of the second century Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai famously commented that “it is a Halachah/well established tradition that Esau hates Jacob” (Sifre Numbers 69).

— Rabbi Sylvia Rothchild, Vayishlach: a kiss or a bite, it is all in the reading of it

When Trauma Leads, It is a Bite.

What happens when the historically-coded meaning of the narrative is lost and the narrative turns into a thread of xenophobia and racism throughout the culture? When the interpretation that Esau bit his brother in the neck poisons any hope of peace and reconciliation?

One outcome is that the wounded people of the narrative never look inside themselves to heal the trauma that has been passed down and amplified. The trauma is used by opponents of peace to instill deep suspicion toward "the modern Esau."  In the Torah story, Esau's marriage to the daughters of Ismail is used to reinforce a view that the Palestinians are the modern enemies. The reconciliations that are actually recounted in the Torah, between Isaac and Ismail when they bury their father Abraham and Jacob and Esau when they bury their father Isaac, are overlooked. In the West Bank, time after time, I have witnessed Palestinians extend themselves with warmth and hospitality towards Jews, only to be met with complete suspicion, as if their kiss is truly a bite.

A few years ago I participated in an NVC training with Israelis and Palestinians in Bethlehem in the West Bank with a traditionally religious Jewish friend who had gone there with me from Sefad (Heb. Svat) in the north of Israel. At one point the facilitator asked the group to share what we were thinking about as we sat  together in a very mixed group of Jews and Christian and Muslim Palestinians. My friend whispered to me, “I'm thinking that they all want to kill me.” I said to him, “Please share that.” “No way,” he responded.

The tradition continues to reinforce the ancient midrash (words that fill in the Torah text) that turned Esau's kiss on Jacob's neck into a bite. This changes the story away from being an inspirational guide to healing Jacob's and Esau's shared trauma as twins who almost suffocated in their mother's womb and experienced rejection and favoritism from their parents. That separation, and the unhealed trauma, threatens the existence of two peoples to this very day.

Similarly, the story of Shechem and Dinah opens the possibility to interpretations that reject the cautionary tale of Jewish assimilation. Some, not all, rabbis in ancient times used the story to warn against the dangers of Hellenizing the Jews, of assimilation and intermarriage. Dinah is portrayed as a victim of foreign male predators. I shudder to imagine how this was used in the while supremacist history of my own country.

In the Torah story, Dinah, daughter of Jacob and Leah, goes out of her family's camp to meet the other women of the region. She is a boundary crosser and enters the other people's camp . The prince of the other camp falls in love with her and "takes her." Dinah's brothers respond by massacring him and all the men of the town. In the world today we call this "an honor killing." We never hear Dinah's voice — did she too love him, or was she "defiled"?

Which interpretation do we want to hold up today? I don't know the political solution to the conflict between Jews and Palestinians, between Jews and the entire world. I do know that unless we examine our narratives and stories, heal the trauma that is passed on and on, and risk sharing and communicating our feelings,  beliefs, our pain, fears and truths, the bite will never turn back into a kiss.

Healing Collective Trauma and Cultures of Violence

This applies to our individual lives as well as to how our narratives are held in the collective.

Today, when the tables have turned in the ancient land of Israel, the unexamined past interpretations that live in our physical and spiritual bodies prevent us from seeing the present clearly. Blindness falls upon the one who controls resources and sits on the throne today. Every kiss becomes a bite, held in suspicion and at arms length. And imagined bites really do hurt. This is where compassion is so important. The embodiment of trauma means that the pain of the past is felt over and over. Empathy and compassion are needed to create the safety that leads to healing.

I dream of a Torah, and interpretations of Torah, that provide needed empathy and compassion so that the hearts of those who benefit from the systems of domination, in the words of Torah, are circumcised/unsheathed, and can recognize a kiss.

In Nonviolent Communication we call this the work of transforming enemy images. We work together to look deeply into how our thinking and conditioning is creating alienation and separation from parts of ourselves and from others. Rather than judging this thinking as good or bad, we hold it with tender compassion and connect with the feelings, experiences, and needs that are so painful they are showing up in the form of hatred and violence toward others.

The process of discerning what is happening in the very present moment from the voice of frozen trauma inside of us creates the possibility for new connection and healing.

A Personal Story

I had an experience of a kiss turning into a bite and then turning into a kiss again. I was sitting with my mother in the garden outside her skilled nursing facility. There was always a tense moment going out the door, into the garden. My mother had a bracelet with an alarm that would go off every time she went outdoors. So I tried to always make sure the alarm was disabled before we went through the door to avoid that humiliation.

We were sitting outside in the very lovely garden when my mother, pretty far into Lewy body dementia, looked at me and said, aren't we lucky that we can communicate the way we do.

Waves of emotion flooded through my body. Pain from the years when I yearned for any kind of communication with my mother. Pain from all the unspoken words and thoughts, the hidden feelings, the shame and blame. I took a deep breath and felt into all the emotions because I knew this was an exquisite moment for me and an exquisite moment of healing for me and my mother. I needed to bring myself into the present to take it in.

While I was breathing this way, my mother leaned toward me and cupped my chin in her gnarled shaky hand,  looked at me and said, "you've changed."

The kiss had turned into a bite.

Again I felt a flood of emotions through my body. Fury, rage, pain. I could hardly breathe. And I kept breathing deeply, deep grounding breaths into my belly, feeling the air in and out of my nostrils, just one or two breaths. And in those breaths I realized that my mother had just seen me in the way that I had yearned for her to see me. She was seeing me as the person I had grown to be, she was seeing and witnessing and appreciating the fruits of my practice with mindfulness and Nonviolent Communication in particular. Through my practices I had learned to lean in and listen to her with empathy. Through my practices I had learned to take care of my disappointment and fury and anger because I knew I wanted something different before she died. I wanted this very moment of connection. I wanted to be seen and appreciated by my mother as the skillful and compassionate woman I had become.

Because of a painful past, I almost missed the moment of connection that I had been yearning for, the moment when I could turn her bite back into a kiss. This flood of emotions, breath and insight , all happened in a moment. My response to her was, "yes we are very lucky."

 

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Stairway to Heaven
Led Zeppelin

There′s a lady who's sure all that glitters is gold
And she′s buying a stairway to Heaven
When she gets there, she knows if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for

Ooh-ooh-hoo, hoo-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

There's a sign on the wall, but she wants to be sure
′Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook there′s a songbird who sings sometimes
All of our thoughts are misgiven

Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder

There's a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking

Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, really makes me wonder

And it′s whispered that soon, if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forests will echo with laughter

Oh-whoa-whoa-whoa-whoa-ho-oh

If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don′t be alarmed now
It's just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by
But in the long run
There′s still time to change the road you're on

And it makes me wonder
Oh-oh-ho

Your head is humming and it won't go - in case you don′t know
The piper′s calling you to join him
Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow
And did you know your stairway lies on the whispering wind, oh

And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all are one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll

And she's buying a stairway to Heaven

Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Robert Plant / Jimmy Page
Stairway to Heaven lyrics © Flames Of Albion Music, Inc.

 

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Nonviolent Communication Practice:
Transformation of “Enemy Images” as a Way of Staying Present!  

“Enemy Image”: a fixed idea or story you have about someone — or a part of yourself — that affects how you respond to them.

• Think of someone who has let you down or did something that you feel scared, angry, disappointed or irritated about.
• Now imagine them asking you to do something connected to how you already feel in relation to them. How does your body respond? What thoughts and feelings do you have? Is there an “enemy image” of them?
• In pairs or journaling on your own: talk about “enemy images” you have of people –what are they, where do they come from, how do they affect you? Then apply this to the person you thought of.
• Now imagine if instead of an “enemy image” you stayed present with that person and focused on your present feelings and needs?
• How do you respond to them and what is your request from them?

Using the Feeling or Judging Words Handout:

Can you respond to that person without using these words?

These are words we use when we have judgments of people — think of a time you used those words, or they were used toward you — what are the feelings and needs behind the messages?

 

Practice for the Week

As you go through the week, pay attention to when you become automatically agitated. Can you identify the thoughts, ideas and concepts you already had about that person or ”people like them”? Did you miss any actions that might support a different experience of that person?

Caution! Do not judge yourself! This is a learning exercise.

 

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Continuing reflections from Roberta on Vayishlach, Jacob, Dina, Shechem and Healing: https://torahattheintersection.com/vayishlach-healing-of-shechem/