Thanksgiving, Betrayal, & Vayishlakh

Years and years ago, I heard a stand-up comedian tell this joke: “I miss my family so much, and I can’t wait to see them for the holidays. But five minutes at home and I remember why I moved so far away.”

My husband and I never forgot the joke, and we love to retell it every year around the holidays.

This year for us on Thanksgiving (like all Thanksgivings), there was a fair amount of drama in our family. I can’t give all the juicy details, but it’s basically about betrayal. There were conversations overheard and recorded on a phone that didn’t get hung up, the spreading of rumors, the cutting off of relationships (again). Very sad, because the sisters at the center of the story might never speak again, now that they’re in their later years of life.

Something similar happens in the biblical story of twin brothers, Jacob and Esau: a fair amount of betrayal. Esau is manipulated by Jacob into selling his birthright. Jacob then “steals” his brother’s blessing by pretending to be Esau when their father is on his deathbed. Jacob runs away to avoid being killed by Esau. All this to say, It’s enough for the brothers to never speak again.

There’s more betrayal further on in the story when, after falling in love and having one woman promised to him in marriage, Jacob’s father-in-law switches one daughter for the other on their wedding night. Enough to tear a family apart, and indeed, Jacob eventually leaves with his wives and children and grandchildren. There’s been too much heartbreak.

As the story unfolds in this week’s Torah reading, Jacob and Esau have gone decades without any communication, they’ve gone on to make their own lives and communities, built their own wealth, moved on. But they are about to meet again.

You can imagine the trepidation and fear of this moment. Jacob sends gifts ahead of him in his caravan, hoping to appease the brother he is sure still wants to kill him. But it all turns out to be for naught, and there’s a surprise ending; Esau, the one robbed of his birthright, has left all that behind. When they finally come face to face, Esau runs to Jacob, falls onto his neck, kissing him, and they cry in each other’s arms.

The brothers do end up going their separate ways, but a healing has happened.

We might think it’s better to live apart, like these brothers, and better if they never meet again, stay away from toxic relationships; nobody bothers you. you don’t bother anyone else. Happily ever after.

But the consequences are dire. Families are living far from each other, the family is spread out across the country and continents. In general, their communities have shrunk and continue shrinking.

This week, I heard an episode on the Ezra Klein show about how we’re losing the practical ability—and the skill—in our modern lives of “hanging out.” The conversation on the podcast began with our failed modern experiment of the nuclear family, leaving us on our own to raise our children away from community. It went on to discuss the physical distance widening in our society, and how the pandemic has only exacerbated the loneliness epidemic, with people not going back to work in a physical space, not to mention how cell phones and social media have changed our lives.

On the one hand, technology connects us over long distances, like me being able to talk to my daughter on WhatsApp for free from across the world. On the other, it leaves us feeling more alone than ever. EarPods may be a convenient way to control our world and keep out unwanted, awkward, even potentially dangerous interactions, but they also deprive us of spontaneous conversation with strangers.

For all the complications of living in community, being part of a family, the lack of control one feels because of this or that annoying person, our modern way of living apart is having catastrophic consequences for individuals and society as a whole. At what point does our protection of our personal space take us too far from each other?

The lesson from the story of Esau and Jacob is that we can grow and heal. Sometimes the healing needs a lot of work to make it happen, sometimes simply the passage of time is enough.

I never did move very far from my family, but I sure can relate to the joke I heard from that stand-up comedian years ago. Family relationships are hard. There’s always some drama or other. and sometimes relationships are too toxic to continue. Other times, it’s worth it to continue to try to rebuild ones that have been severed. Our modern isolation is a societal problem that has been accompanied by a mentality of “personal freedom,” and it’s decades in the making, I can’t solve it alone, but maybe together we can.

I like the fact that the brothers in our biblical story find healing in the end. I hope the sisters in my family can do the same before the end of their lives. May we all continue the work of healing relationships where possible, and creating new community when necessary, despite the annoying people in them.

May it be so. Shabbat Shalom.