This week the dreaded encounter between Jacob and Esau finally materialises. After two decades, the twin brothers who are anything but identical square up.
Jacob, who fled the wrath of Esau as a young man, is returning home with a large family and much wealth. Esau is fast approaching with 400 desperados armed to the teeth. Will it be all-out war, or will they make peace? Jacob prepares for all eventualities, and sends a message to his hostile brother.
“Im lavan garti. [I have sojourned with Lavan].” Rashi interprets the message of Jacob to mean that though he had lived with a notorious trickster for all this time, he had “not learned from his evil ways” and remained a righteous Jew committed to the G-dly way of life.
But wasn’t this boastful of Jacob? The same man who will soon be praying for deliverance and say kotointi, claiming that he has been humbled by all G-d’s kindnesses to him, now seems to be pointing proudly to his piety, telling Esau how religious he has been?
The Chofetz Chaim offers a novel interpretation. He explains that Jacob’s words shouldn’t be understood as a boast but rather as a lament. “I sojourned with Lavan, but didn’t learn from his evil ways” means that Jacob didn’t learn from the way Lavan did evil. How did Lavan do evil? Enthusiastically! With vim and vigour! His wicked ways were undertaken with a passion and energy, and Jacob was bemoaning the fact that his own good deeds weren’t performed as passionately as Lavan’s evil deeds.
If the good guys were as incentivised as the bad guys, crime would be dramatically reduced. If the police and justice systems of the world operated with the same commitment and drive as the drug lords and hijacking syndicates, we would all be better off. The trouble is that the forces of evil are enthusiastic and motivated, while the forces of good depend on public servants who are overworked and underpaid.
Nikita Khrushchev was once addressing a large public meeting in Russia during the anti-Stalinist period. He was blasting Stalin’s cruel and unforgivable atrocities, when a voice in the crowd suddenly spoke up and asked, “If Stalin was such a villain, why didn’t you do anything about it then?”
“Who said that?!” thundered Khrushchev. There was absolute silence in the hall. Not a sound, not a movement. People froze in fear.
“Now you understand why I didn’t do anything,” was Khrushchev’s convincing answer.
This interesting interpretation of Jacob’s lament reminds us that the voice of morality must be at least as loud as the voice of evil. Too often, the voice of justice is soft and still while the voice of corruption and degeneracy is loud and bombastic.
Who will amplify the sweet, silent sound of goodness?Let’s strive to become as passionate and assertive for the cause of goodness and G-dliness as the other side is for evil and injustice. The world will be better balanced, much nicer, and a lot safer.
