This week’s Torah portion tells of the dramatic reunion of Jacob and his brother Esau. Part of the drama is that Jacob worries, with good reason, that his slightly older brother would harm him physically. When last they were together, Jacob had just stolen his brother’s blessing, and Esau vowed to kill him.
The reunion goes more smoothly than Jacob could have imagined, and after parting ways, our Torah tells us that Jacob arrived at his destination, Beer Sheva, “whole (shalem).”
The great medieval sage, Rashi (1040-1105), interprets the word “whole,” from the Hebrew root “shalom,” as follows: “His body was whole; he was cured of his limp. His finances were whole; he had lost nothing by the gift that he had made to his brother Esau. His Torah was whole; he had not forgotten his learning while he was in Laban’s house.”
A contemporary scholar, Aviva Zornberg, notes something profound about this definition of what it means to be “whole.” As she puts it:
“If, however, we examine more closely the midrash quoted by Rashi, in which wholeness—physical, financial, and intellectual—is unpacked from the word shalem, an implicit tension is exposed at each level of the description. Physical health is a matter of having been injured—the limp with which Jacob emerges from his night of wrestling with the man-angel—and of having been cured of his injury. Financial health follows on a moment when Jacob is compelled to sign away a large chunk of his property to Esau; in spite of this, claims the midrash, his holdings suffer no loss. Intellectually, too, the claim is that Jacob loses none of his learning in the course of twenty years in Laban’s house. From all three descriptions, a tension of loss and gain becomes manifest. To be whole, apparently, means to have been in great danger and to have been saved. Jacob’s integrity has been significantly assailed on many levels, but losses have been recouped, injuries healed, the erosion of memory successfully fought.”
What a powerful lesson for us in the way we live our lives. There is brokenness in our world and in our own selves. Can we see what is whole, what is good, what is blessed, amidst what is broken? Can we remember to be grateful for all that we do have instead of constantly lamenting what we have lost? Can we—like our progenitor Jacob, our namesake who becomes Yisrael in this week’s Torah portion—see ourselves, despite our imperfections, despite our brokenness, as “whole”? In this way, may we find peace, wholeness, and Shalom.
With wishes for a Sabbath filled with Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi