With the arrival of the snowy season, the tenuous balance we had, in my house, around getting everyone out the door in the morning was thrown off. Suddenly, on top of the routine we had nearly mastered, there are concerns of snow gear. Do we need to wear it? Bring it? Is it dry? And by the way, have you seen the other glove? I won’t try to claim that my family’s morning routine was entirely efficient and peaceful until now, but there were a good number of days where everything seemed to work. Now that there is an extra level of readiness necessary, the number of morning arguments between siblings has increased in parallel with the winter gear they need to leave the house.
There is a certain unmistakable sound of sibling disputes. It doesn’t sound like any other kind of conversation. The volume, the tone, the pitch are all uniquely identifiable. Without even being able to make out the words from another part of the house, I can sense the kind of argument that is underway and the role of each child in perpetuating it. Trying to intervene comes with dubious results. Once the pattern of the conflict and each sibling’s role in it is set, the argument has a life of its own and it can take heroic measures to stop, like moving each child to a place where they can neither see nor hear the other.
This week, in Parshat Vayishlach, we find ourselves in the midst of the biblical paradigm of sibling disputes. Jacob and Esau are twins, born fighting, as different from one another as night and day. Jacob has been away from home for over twenty years, separated from his brother after their biggest conflict ever. Each playing out the role that they had come to know so well and to expect of one another, their conflict escalated. Jacob, always the mild-mannered, clever, contemplative, and tricky brother, conspired with his mother to trick his father into giving him the blessing intended for Esau. Esau, always the physically strong, outward-oriented, impulsive brother, found that he had been tricked again and wanted to kill Jacob. Their mother, Rebecca, did the only thing she could to avoid the loss of her children to their pattern of conflict. She sent Jacob away to get married and start a family of his own.
Now, we find Jacob on his way back home to reunite with his family. And all these years later, Jacob finds himself fearful of his brother, anticipating that their conflict may pick back up right where they left it off. Jacob expects Esau to play the role he always has: big, strong, violent and impulsive. And Jacob begins to play his old role as well. He starts strategizing how to use his intellect to get him out of this sticky situation. He divides his family and their belongings into two camps, increasing the chances that one camp will survive an attack, and he sends messengers to Esau to announce his arrival, scout out Esau’s response, and bring gifts to appease his brother’s remaining anger.
For Jacob, returning home, to his brother, triggers fear and sends him back into old patterns. Despite all he has learned, grown and matured since leaving, he is returning home as the same old Jacob, the trickster, born hanging onto his brother’s heel, vying for position in the family.
But on the night before he finally reunites with Esau, he is able to see that he has grown and changed. In the midst of his fear and his planning, Jacob prays, acknowledging the good fortune he has had since he left home. He notes that when he last crossed the Yabok river, he was alone with nothing but his walking stick, and he is returning with two camps full of people, animals and property. He asks for God’s continued protection, trusting that he can depend on God.
After safely seeing his family across the river, Jacob remains on the far side, alone. There, in the dark of night, aware of both how much he has changed, and of his vulnerability to fall into old relationship patterns with his brother, Jacob encounters a “stranger” and wrestles with him all night. Jacob fights fiercely, hanging on until dawn when the stranger demands Jacob let him go. Jacob insists on a blessing before releasing the “stranger”, and he is told that he will no longer be known as Jacob, but Israel, because he has struggled with the Divine and with humans and has succeeded.
Jacob limps away from this wrestling match, his thigh injured in the fight, declaring that he has seen the Divine face to face and survived. His approach to Esau, the morning after the encounter, is straightforward and humble, and Esau receives him with a warm welcome. The pattern is broken. Wearing his new identity as Israel, he is able to step out of the patterns of Jacob, and have a new kind of interaction.
Parshat Vayishlach, of all the parshiyot in which names are given or changed, makes me think about the way that the many names by which each of us are called shape our identity and our interactions. The names children may call one another, the names and descriptions we as parents and teachers may internally and unthinkingly apply to our children and students, may box them into identities and patterns that they wish they could break free of. Jacob, unlike Abraham when his name is changed, does not entirely abandon his old name, but he comes to be known as Israel. His identity grows, encompassing what he has been and who he is growing to be.
This week, the New York Times reported on an executive order, issued by the president, that would applies Title VI protection against discrimination to antisemitism as a form of discrimination based on race and nationality. The way the story came across, American Jews understood it as the government defining us as a distinct “nationality,” rather than a religion. There was an uproar of reaction. Of course, the Torah speaks of us as a “nation,” grown from the children of Israel / Jacob, and in this week’s parsha, they are first referred to in this way as a reality rather than a promise. But this sense of being a nation is not the same as a “nationality.” We are more diverse than that, and our identity is much more complex.
Jews think of ourselves as part of a religion, a people, an ethnicity, a culture, many cultures, many communities, and with a sense of belonging that connects us far and wide, despite our differing understandings of the relative importance of these various elements of identity. But what emerged this week is the deep discomfort so many of us feel at being named and identified primarily in one of these ways from the outside. However we understand and define ourselves, it is on us to do so, not on the government. And while the intent of the executive order may have been our protection, the effect of its announcement felt othering.
Jews have centuries of experience being defined by government powers. Being called our own nationality has been used against us, allowing our non-Jewish neighbors to see us as different, other, not committed to the nation in which we live.
As more information has emerged about the executive order, it seems that it will not change the law significantly. It simply reiterates previous policy, which already allows Title VI to be used in cases where those discriminating against others are motivated by their perception of the other group as a nationality or race, even if they also share a religion. So if the antisemites hate Jews as a people and not just as a religion, the law applies.
So what does this executive order do? There is plenty of commentary on it already written by experts on law and policy, and I will leave it to them to analyze the effects further. But so far, this week, the executive order has raised questions of naming and identity in the public consciousness.
It has triggered our fear (along with other instances of antisemitism in the news and our communities), and sent us into the familiar pattern of conflict that we know well from being defined as separate by government powers in the past. It has reminded Jews of how our naming and identification by governmental powers (Western government powers, in the tradition of Roman democracy, which rabbinic sources often identify as the spiritual descendants of Esau) can influence our lives and the ways our neighbors think of us. It has reawakened our sense that we can and must take responsibility for articulating our own identity, our own names, rather than allow ourselves to be defined by the way others think of us, or the way we believe that others think of us.
Sometimes, at the beginning of a new school year, I’ll ask students to introduce themselves, although I already know their names, and have taught them before. Sometimes there are new kids in the mix, but sometimes those I have known for years will introduce themselves differently, using a new nickname, or their whole name. The opportunity to try on their identity in a new way allows them to acknowledge their growth, maturity and character development over time.
We need to remain open, and teach our children to remain open, to the many names that a person can acquire, adding on to their identity, and reflecting their growth, and allowing for new ways of interacting with others and with the world around them. We may remain Jacob, and may sometimes be triggered into familiar patterns of conflict, while also knowing ourselves and making ourselves known in the world, as Israel.