Dear Friends,
“Have you not saved a blessing for me?” It’s one of the most heartwrenching verses in the Torah, and it’s uttered in this week’s parshah by Esau, bereft, to his father, Isaac, when they both realize that Esau’s brother Jacob has taken his birthright and blessing, leaving Esau with a radically different future than he had ever imagined for himself. Esau is left, materially and practically, with nothing. Jacob, who has to flee his brother’s rage, is left without family and community. No matter how you read the story, no matter with whom you identify among its characters, you have to acknowledge the trauma that everyone in this family must have suffered as a result of this messed up system. Why can’t there be a blessing for both Esau and Jacob? Why can’t Isaac split the resources equally between his sons? You can argue that Esau was stupid, that Rebecca and Jacob were immoral, and that Isaac was incompetent… or you can focus on how stupid, immoral, and incompetent the system itself is, and feel awful for each one of the all-too-human souls involved.
I’m having big feelings after the concert Monday night. This was a new one for us. We hosted two folk-punk Klezmer bands who had been looking for a place to play in DC that wasn’t a bar, and Hill Havurah basically became a concert venue for the night. The Parish Hall was completely transformed – it was unbelievable. A number of Hill Havurah members came, and so many more people from outside our community, too. We sang and we danced and we yai dai dai’d, and there were people there from literally every generation that’s currently alive – in significant numbers, each. Yiddish felt like the opposite of a dying language… it felt intensely alive, and with it, the stories of our ancestors – their values, their loves, their fights, their traumas. By the end of the first band’s set, I was on cloud nine.
And then the second band played. They were phenomenal musicians and storytellers. It was moving to see people my age connecting so intimately with that part of our lineage. We all experience and express that lineage in different ways, and those differences are beautiful; they’re part of the tapestry of our Jewish community. But the fact of my being so moved and feeling so connected made it even harder to process when the band said some things that hurt my heart to hear. I won’t repeat those words here, but they were about Israel and the police, and they were not the kind of words I expected to hear during a concert in our space.
I mean, I walked into this concert ready to get shaken up a bit. The band describes themselves as folk-punk, and punk is supposed to do that right? But these words hit me far harder than a shakeup. They hurt. During that first song, I wasn’t sure how to respond. Do I register my discontent with my body language? Do I sing along, as requested, to be as gracious of a host as possible? Neither of those responses felt right, or even possible. During that song, I just sort of broke my heart open and prayed. The band was singing about horrifying current events. The way they described them was totally different from the way I would describe them; they were using words and descriptions that I find deeply insensitive and wrong. But they were also sincere. That’s how they understand our world. If we had been hosting a panel discussion, I’d have appreciated hearing their perspective, and I’d have made sure there was at least one counterperspective clearly and sincerely articulated. But this was a concert. I put my hands on my heart, and I prayed.
Eventually, after what felt like a very long, out-of-body experience, the song ended, and they moved on to material that felt much easier for me to connect with. As I listened, and processed, and eventually danced again, I wondered what on earth I would say at the end of the concert. I couldn’t just stand up there and be like, “Brivele and A Glazele Tey, everybody!!! Incredible!!! Give it up for our guests!!!” That didn’t feel right. I was deeply upset by some of what was said in this context in which dissent was not possible and agreement was assumed – and I was also moved by the music and its history. It was incredibly complicated for me; an emotional rollercoaster. So I grabbed a mic and said, “Wow – this was a journey. I think we just went through a lot together. I’m having a lot of big feelings. Thank you.”
There’s more that I want to add now: I’m upset. These musicians said things that would have felt controversial but appropriate for a panel discussion – but not for an event that was billed as a klezmer concert; even an “edgy” klezmer concert. Concerts are more like prayer services than dialogues. They don’t allow for the back-and-forth. They create a bit of a groupthink mentality in which listeners are really brought in on a spiritual journey – and once you’re on that journey, that’s that. There’s no dissenting opinion vocalized. There’s no space for pushing back, or expressing hurt.
I’m not sure where to place my frustration, though. Were we tricked, like Isaac? Were we naive, like Esau? Are we somehow compromised, like Jacob and Rebecca? Are we all just stuck living in a moment in Jewish history that feels incredibly fraught?
At this point, the only way I see to move forward is to focus more on mutual empathy and mutual care than on anything else. We have to learn from Jacob and Esau: we can call each other out as stupid or immoral; we can play a zero-sum game, and trauma and misery will ensue. Or, and this is my dream, we can keep working hard to create a world in which we can all have what we need; community, a sense of belonging, a sense of home. We can keep trying to learn new ways to build that inclusive community. When we hear voices that feel like an attack, we can focus on lifting up more voices; voices that feel like an affirmation, or a repair. We can move forward together.
Jacob and Esau come back together later in Genesis. Jacob is terrified there will be violence. Instead, the brothers embrace. Esau asks if Jacob wants to join their families together, and Jacob respectfully declines, and they each go their own way. I’d like to think that their embrace was deeply healing for both of them, even if it didn’t end with them becoming family again. They no longer needed to live in guilt and resentment. They knew that if they met again, there would be no need to fear. They did what Isaac couldn’t do: they saved a blessing for one another. They didn’t obsess about their father’s failings or argue about who, so many years ago, had been right or wrong. Instead, they heard each other, they held each other, and they moved on in peace.
My hope, especially now, is that we remember and feel the sacred power of the ways in which all Jews are part of one shared people, even when our expressions of Judaism or our relationships to Israel differ. We are stronger together. We need one another. May we heal together, grow together, and embody our ancestors’ vision when they wrote in the Talmud, “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh – the entire people Israel is responsible for one another.”
Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Hannah