Vayishlach Drash

Presented at the Library Minyan of Temple Beth Am

November 27, 2004

     In her as yet unfinished novel, Esau’s Daughter, Rachel Rubin Green develops an intimate work of historical fiction based on Genesis, Chapter 35, verses 27-29:

         “And Jacob came to his father Isaac at Mamre, at Kiriat-arba – now Hebron – where Abraham and Isaac had sojourned.  Isaac was a hundred and eighty years old when he breathed his last and died.  He was gathered to his kin in ripe old age, and he was buried by his sons Esau and Jacob.”

     The story of the death and burial of Isaac is told by the fictional character Nahal, Esau’s youngest daughter.   Her mother is Mahalath, the daughter of Ishmael and wife of highest rank. She is therefore descended from Abraham through both her parents.  It is her mother’s wish that Nahal accompany Esau to Jacob’s camp, to witness the death of her grandfather Isaac, be present at the funeral and burial, care for her father throughout the mourning period, and then remain in the camp of Jacob and marry one of Jacob’s sons.  Through the eyes of Nahal,  the reader experiences the four-day journey from Seir to Mamre, learns the family legends, and meets Jacob and Isaac.

     The first interpretive premise of this story, based on a comment by Rashi, is that the death of Isaac occurs twelve years AFTER Joseph has been sold into slavery.  Therefore, when Nahal and Esau arrive at Jacob’s camp, Isaac is dying, Jacob’s mother Rebecca and his favorite wife Rachel have already been dead for several years, and his most loved son Joseph is presumed to be also deceased.  In contrast to the Jacob that Nahal expected to meet, the one envied by his brother, the brilliant, clever, powerful man that her father had spoken of for many years, the uncle that Nahal meets is a worn out, exceptionally sad, and emotionally exhausted old man.  Not like her energetic, robust father at all.

     During the ten-day time span between their arrival and Isaac’s death, Nahal spends several days in the women’s tent.  The daily activities of  the women’s tent are supervised by Jacob’s daughter Dinah,  a gaunt, middle aged  woman who had never married. Here Nahal meets several of the wives of Jacob’s son’s and develops friendships with Yael, the wife of Asher, and Shoshana, the second wife of Gad.

     While in the women’s tent, Nahal absorbs the stories she hears like a sponge.  She learns of the massacre that followed Dinah’s brief love affair with Shechem, the prince of the town near where Jacob’s family had camped.  Nahal muses, “No wonder she could not marry after that; no one who heard the story would dare to come near the sister of Shimon and Levi”.

     Nahal is troubled by the stories she hears of  Reuben, Jacob’s eldest son, and Bilhah, one of Jacob’s wives. Her friend Yael tells her,

        “No matter what else you hear, Reuben slept with Bilhah.  None of us know why Reuben is still living here, why Jacob didn’t insist he leave the camp.  Bilhah hasn’t left her own tent in years.  She only was able to stay because her own sons, Dan and Naphtali, pleaded with Jacob for her life.”  

 However, Nahal hears from Shoshana that Reuben never actually slept with Bilhah, that Reuben simply moved Jacob’s sleeping couch from Bilhah’s tent to Leah’s, that Jacob was angry at Reuben, and that everyone in camp spent months and months gossiping about an event that really never occurred.  According to Shoshana, Bilhah had not left her tent in years because sun exposure causes her skin to have ugly and painful lesions, so she stays inside.    

     When she leaves the women’s tent, Nahal dutifully reports what she has learned to her father.  Esau, keenly sensitive to issues of status and primacy, is troubled by these stories.

     As Isaac continues to decline, Nahal overhears a conversation between Isaac, Jacob and her father at Isaac’s bedside in which the brothers pledge “to love each other in mercy and justice all the days of their lives”.  The content of this conversation is directly lifted from Ginsberg’s Legends of the Jews.  However, Isaac’s instruction to the brothers to arrange a marriage between Nahal, his granddaughter whom he has just met, and her choice of one of Jacob’s sons, as a symbol of peace between the families, is a fictional construct. 

     After the death and burial of Isaac, Jacob and Esau observe a seven-day period of mourning, which bears a striking resemblance to the post Biblical ritual of sitting Shiva.   In a chapter cleverly titled “The Black Tent”, Nahal describes her own role in the mourning process:

         “It was my role during this time to bring my father his food each morning and evening, to clear the dishes after he ate, and to bring him a pitcher of water and a basin in which to wash.  While I could stay to talk and often did, most of the conversations that I heard, the expressions that I observed, the information that I gathered, was in the context of my constant entry and exit from the black tent. “

     As Esau and Jacob mourn for their father, their conversation ranges from the death and burial of Rebecca to the binding of Isaac to the incident of the stolen blessing to the disturbing stories that Nahal heard in the women’s tent.  What emerges as a core issue of their discussion is the question of forgiveness.  Who can forgive whom and for what? The author credits Rabbi Shlomo Riskin for suggesting that the reason Reuben was not forced to leave his father’s camp after having approached his father’s wife was because Jacob needed to forgive his son before he could ask his own father Isaac for forgiveness for the lies he told his father in stealing his brother’s blessing many years earlier.  The author also notes that after the Shechem massacre several years before, both Shimon and Levi remained in their father’s camp.  So if simply not being thrown out into the wilderness, as Esau says he would have done if this event had happened in his family, constitutes forgiveness, then Jacob did indeed model it.  However, full forgiveness involves a larger emotional investment, a reestablishment of a previously existing intimacy or sense of connectedness.  Did Jacob actually forgive Reuben?  Did Jacob experience forgiveness from Isaac?  Most crucial to this particular story, can Esau, now an old man, wealthier, more successful, and happier in his own life than either of his parents had dared to imagine, forgive his brother Jacob?  I will not spoil the novel for the reader by revealing these answers here.

     While Esau and Jacob wrestle with these major issues, Nahal spends her time outside the black tent in discussion with her women friends, and comes to an entirely different explanation of Jacob’s behavior.  According to the gossip she hears, Jacob stopped making any major decisions after Joseph died.  All day to day decisions affecting the camp are made by Leah, sometimes in consultation with Reuben and Judah, sometimes alone.  Decisions about the planting of crops or pasturing of flocks are made by each son individually.  Jacob has spent the past few years only caring for Isaac.  His management activities are restricted to agreeing to whatever Leah recommends.  Nahal, having noted Jacob’s sadness upon her arrival, sees this as the reason that Jacob has not pushed Reuben and Bilhah out.  Jacob is simply too depressed to do much of anything.

     After Esau and Jacob conclude their time of mourning, there is much to do.  Esau selects some sheep and goats from Isaac’s flocks to take with him to Seir, and Jacob gives Esau an agreed upon sum of money for his share of Isaac’s lands.  Isaac’s household items are distributed, and each of his grandchildren is given an item to remember him by.

     A conversation between Nahal and her father reveals yet one more insight.  In comparing the reality of Jacob’s camp to what she remembers her father telling her when she was a child,  Nahal asks,

         “Father, what about your life made you envy him so much, made you hate him.  He is a wealthy man, as are you, and chief of a large camp, as are you.  He is also a very sad old man who can barely keep discipline in his own household.  He has none of your energy, none of your enthusiasm; I just do not see why you have spent so much of your life being angry with him.”

 Through this conversation, the content of Isaac’s blessing to Esau, that the elder brother is to serve the younger, that Jacob is to be master over Esau (Gen 27: 37-40), is revealed. While Nahal’s empathy for her father’s lifelong feeling of rejection is evident, she says,

         “But father, that is not the life that you have led.  I was not raised in the household of a man who was a servant to his brother.  I was raised as the daughter of a free man, a founder and leader of his clan, who has much to his credit.  Your father’s blessing has not come to pass, at least not so far as I have witnessed.”

  Esau, who has never dared to articulate this thought, weeps in recognition of the truth of his daughter’s words. 

     The author recognizes that the characteristics of Esau presented in this novel are not those presented in the majority of Rabbinic commentaries about him.  To the Rabbis, Esau, and the Edomite People he founded, became symbols of the Romans and other peoples who have oppressed Jews throughout history.  It is the goal of the author in creating this story to humanize Esau and to view the Jacob-Esau conflict for what it is, a deeply painful and personal issue between brothers.

     The novel concludes with the marriage of Nahal to Jacob’s son Asher, the husband of her friend Yael.  After the week of celebrations, Esau departs the camp of Jacob in Mamre to return to Seir, where he spends the rest of his life.  Before leaving, Esau blesses Nahal and prays that her children be granted health and long life.  Nahal stays in Jacob’s camp with Asher and later gives birth to two of his children, Beriah and Serach.  She becomes one of the nameless wives and daughters who journey with Jacob and his family to settle in Goshen, where she dies.

     Another novel in the “Daughters of Abraham” series, based on the life of Serach, is under consideration by the author.