Parashah of the week: Vayishlach

Years after Jacob took Esau’s birthright, the brothers meet again. Jacob, ever the pragmatist, tries to soothe his brother by offering him gifts. The moment is awkward. Esau says he has “plenty” (rov), but Jacob insists that he himself has “everything” (kol) and metaphorically shoves his presents into Esau’s hands. Esau relents and takes them (Genesis 33:11).

Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim of Luntschitz (1550-1619), in his Kli Yakar, notes the language used by the two brothers. Esau saying that he has “plenty” (rov) implies that he doesn’t have “everything.” The Kli Yakar observes that “even if they have all the silver and gold in the world,” the wicked feel a lack and are compelled to take. In contrast, the righteous, like Jacob, are “satisfied and happy with what they have, so they feel they have everything (kol)” even when they don’t. Such people will always give.

But this perspective seems unfair to Esau and to those of us eager to succeed. What’s wrong with striving for more or realising oneself more fully, provided one appreciates what one has, as Esau did? Doesn’t such desire drive all commerce and innovation? Where would we be without it? Perhaps nowhere. Even Jacob, who is associated with completeness, wholeness, and staying indoors, eventually got out there, working hard on his father-in-law’s farm for decades to earn his wives and family. The Kli Yakar’s approach is too binary.

In fact, there are three paths, not two. The first is to see one’s glass as half empty. Such a person finds it hard to give and easy to take. No one wants to be around such a person, and it’s not Esau. His is the second path. Esau’s glass is mostly full (rov). He is satisfied with his lot to a degree but hungers for more and can be discerning about who he takes from.

The third path is to feel that one has everything (kol). The glass of such a person is not half full but overflowing with divine abundance. She shares with others from that place of superfluity, selflessly. When one takes from such a person, the glasses of both the giver and taker are full. Jacob, and Abraham before him, set up such an ideal. We read that Abraham too was “blessed with everything” (Genesis 24:1).

Yet, even for these spiritual masters, there were times of rov (plenty) and the attendant sense of lack, rather than kol (completeness). Jacob ultimately separates from Esau, as Abraham had earlier done from Lot, because “their possessions were too many (rov) for them to dwell together” (Genesis 13:6; 36:7).

So, although rarely achieved, true relationship depends not on a sense of plenitude but on feeling whole.