After 20 years, Yaakov and Esav (Jacob and Esau) finally meet. The scene is widely regarded as a showdown between good and evil.
Rabbi Hirsch, however, views it very differently.
He sides with the opinion in the Midrash that Esav’s tears upon meeting Yaakov were genuine. “A kiss can be false but not tears that flow at such moments,” he writes. “Tears are drops from one’s innermost soul.”
Indeed, Rav Hirsch maintains that Esav possessed a spark of his grandfather Avraham within him. “Otherwise, how could he have had the ability to domineer the whole development of mankind?” he argues. “The sword alone, simply raw force, is not able to do that.”
And so, when Esav meets Yaakov, a part of him acknowledges the superiority of Yaakov’s path in life. The “principle of humaneness begins to affect him.” And yet, Esav won’t fully acknowledge this truth until the end of days – which is why, writes Rav Hirsch, Yaakov only succeeded in winning his nightlong struggle with the angel of Esav after the sun began to rise.
“As long as night reigns on earth,” writes Rav Hirsch, “as long as the consciousness, the minds of men, are confused and things are not recognized for what they really are… – for so long will Yaakov have to reckon on struggle and opposition.”
But night – both physical and historical – doesn’t last forever. Morning – the last, glorious, period of history – eventually arrives. And when it does, Esav’s angel blesses Yaakov.
Esavs’s descendants will acknowledge “the godliness of Yaakov’s mission” and realize that “it is just in the principles represented and held aloft by Yaakov in the midst of his struggle for existence that their happiness and security lies too.”
Have we seen the fulfillment of this prophecy? Not entirely. But we have seen non-Jews in recent decades accord Jews a respect that would have been unimaginable in centuries past. Could our ancestors have believed that the leader of the most powerful country in the world would one day declare, “Those seeking [the Jewish people’s] destruction, we will seek their destruction”? And yet, an American president uttered those very words just a few years ago.
Much evil remains in the world, and we have unfortunately witnessed a resurgence of anti-Semitism in the last few years. Nonetheless, in the grand scheme of things, we seem to be approaching the day when all of Esav’s descendants will not only recognize Yaakov’s righteousness but bless him for it.
Elliot Resnick,PhD, is the host of “The Elliot Resnick Show” and the editor of an upcoming work on etymological explanations in Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch’s commentary on Chumash.