Waging Peace and Esau's Kiss - A Christmas & Hanukkah Wish
A hopeful message during this week of holidays and hope. If Jacob and Esau could forge peace, then why not us? What we can learn from the Torah's "Dots of Disbelief."
Why are there diamond-shaped dots over this word?
The answer to that question provides a hopeful message during this week of holidays and hope. Perhaps peace can be achieved.
The word, from Genesis 33:4, translates to "And he kissed him," referring to how and when Esau ended his blood feud with Jacob. If peace could break out between these mortal enemies, could it happen with anyone, anywhere?
The medieval commentator Rashi explains that the reconciliation did not come easily, but it was genuine.
Some explain the dotting as meaning that Esau did not kiss Jacob with his whole heart, whereas R Simeon the son of Yohai said: Is it not well-known that Esau hated Jacob? But at that moment his pity was really aroused and he kissed him with his whole heart.
The Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 78:9) presents a less benign opinion of Esau’s intent:
Esau ran to greet him. [He embraced Jacob and, falling on his neck,] he kissed him; [and they wept.](Gen. 33:4). [The word] ‘kissed’ is dotted [above each letter in the Torah’s writing]. Rabbi Simeon ben Elazar said . . . it teaches that [Esau] felt compassion in that moment and kissed [Jacob] with all his heart. Rabbi Yannai said to him: If so, why is [‘kissed’] dotted? On the contrary, it teaches that [Esau] came not to kiss [Jacob] but to bite him, but our ancestor Jacob’s neck became like marble and that wicked man’s teeth were blunted. Hence, ‘and they wept’ teaches that [Jacob] wept because of his neck and [Esau] wept because of his teeth.
So was Esau's smooch a fraternal "true love's kiss" or a “kiss of death?” Was it the result of a long, drawn-out negotiation, as the chapter in Genesis hints, or was it spontaneous? Or perhaps a little of all of the above. Which raises the question whether every kiss is a synthesis of love and hate, a little “suck face” and a little “suck the life-breath right out of that face.”
Pointedly, the Hebrew word for kiss is neshika - נְשִׁיקָה - and the almost identical word neshek, נשק means weapon. A kiss or a weapon? A smooch or a smack? There is a very fine line separating love from hate, which, in a more positive framing, means that just as war can happen by happenstance, war can also turn to peace on a dime.
But really, are we reading too much into this brotherly smooch? Or, as they might say in Rick’s Cafe, is a kiss just a kiss?
We so yearn for peace and yet few of us believe that the most intractable conflicts that we face will ever be resolved. Until they are.
In the past century, we’ve seen the most bitter enemies reconcile, from Ireland to South Africa to Vietnam. Even for Israel, reconciliation has taken place, remarkably, with Egypt, Jordan and their partners in the Abraham Accords, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. And now, quite possibly some sort of accommodation may be possible with Lebanon and a newfangled Syria, once the dust settles. That’s still a long shot, but this is the week when so many of us celebrate long shot miracles.
For sure, there will be no reconciliation with Hamas, even when, God willing, we find a way to end the fighting in Gaza and get the hostages home. But peace with other Palestinians is possible and it can actually begin to happen soon, if stars continue to align leading toward a “Grand Bargain” with the Saudis.
Think I’ve been guzzling down too much latke-nog? Hard to imagine Israel’s current government signing on?
True, but it was equally hard to imagine the government of Menachem Begin making peace with Egypt in the late ‘70s - a deal that forced Begin to accede to Sadat’s demand that Israel relinquish “every inch” of Sinai. And Begin pledged, in the Camp David Accords, to grant Palestinians autonomy during a five-year interim period followed by the possibility of sovereignty after the interim period expired.
No one could have predicted that Began, the far right ex-Irgun leader, would accept those ideas, and warmly hug the Egyptian leader with the embrace of Esau.
That peace with Egypt has held to this day. Perhaps it hasn’t been the warmest of reconciliations, closer at times to Esau’s aborted kiss of death than true love’s smooch, maybe half-hearted and half-baked and but those diamond-dots over the text have held up, and so has the treaty.
Israel and Egypt are still at peace.
And when the peace treaty was signed on the White House lawn, President Carter said, “Today we celebrate a victory, not of a bloody military campaign, but of an inspiring peace campaign.”
Maybe the diamond-dots symbolize the hope for peace. The rabbinic collection Avot of Rabbi Natan (34:5) suggests that Ezra the scribe (6th century BCE) inserted dots above ten words or phrases in the Torah that he thought may not belong there, in the hopes that when the Prophet Elijah returns, he could clarify whether or not they do. They were like ancient post-it notes or bookmarks. Elijah, traditionally considered the Messiah’s advance man, is also thought to be the final authority who would rule on all unresolved intellectual and legal conflicts.
So in this case, it seems that even Ezra could not bring himself to believe that Jacob and Esau had actually kissed. The dots, which unlike all other punctuation marks appear in every Torah scroll, are a sign of skepticism, but in the many centuries that have followed, neither the word nor the dots have disappeared. The kiss is still a kiss, despite Ezra’s doubts.
These Dots of Disbelief remain there as a defiant diamonds in the rough, waging peace to the end, refusing to give up on the idea of reconciliation.
Carter, Begin and Sadat didn’t give up either. They waged peace, at a time when Israel was still reeling from the trauma of the Yom Kippur War. Like this current war, Israel turned the tables and was able to achieve a significant military and strategic victory, but only after overcoming the shock of a stunning and brutal surprise attack. And yet still, even though he was responsible for 2,656 war dead (more than Israel has lost in the current conflict, though far fewer noncombatants, on both sides), the Israeli public gave their mortal enemy Sadat a hero’s welcome when he landed in Israel only four years after those October guns fell silent.
I believe that can happen again.
Peace can happen. When people are exhausted from war, it is even more likely to happen, as long as the pieces are in place and the leaders are ready to make game-changing decisions.
Carter, the last survivor of that triumvirate, is living proof that it can be done - even in the Middle East.
In a packet I assembled on this topic a few years ago, "Waging Peace," the late Rabbi Mark Loeb presents a step-by-step approach for doing just that, based on the saga of Jacob and Esau, who fought even in the womb and legitimately hated each other. Here’s how Loeb says Jacob and Esau arrived at the kiss.
Loeb wrote this at a different time and I admit that it seems rather off-the-mark now, given what we’ve seen and who remains in charge. It’s fair to argue that none of the four steps he envisioned is anywhere close to happening. Vulnerability has led not to humility, but greater defensiveness and less trust.
How can this gulf of enmity be overcome? Perhaps if we can share a moment of humanity together.
In the few weeks since Assad’s fall, the depth of his depravity has begun to be fully revealed. Last week, a mass grave outside Damascus was uncovered, where over 100,000 are said to be buried.
There are so many mass graves right now, so many killing fields, across the region and all over the world. When the time is right, and the leadership is willing, a group of Israelis, Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians and others - maybe Ukrainians too - should visit some of these places together and pray for the victims and the survivors.
We’re close to the end. Many will call me foolishly naive, but I can feel it. I’ve serious concerns about whether the leaders are up to the task, but the people are ready for the killing to end and to put the finishing touches on a plan for peace.
They are ready to dot that “i” - and finally remove those Dots of Disbelief over Esau’s kiss.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and Joyous Holidays to all!
You too, Anna. Thanks so much!
Thank you, Mike. My optimism comes and goes. Figured today was the right day to share it. Have joyous holidays.