From Fear to Courage
Jacob's Transformative Path to Selfhood
Jacob was greatly frightened; in his anxiety, he divided the people with him, and the flocks and herds and camels, into two camps, thinking, “If Esau comes to the one camp and attacks it, the other camp may yet escape.” (Genesis 32:8-9)
Said he, “Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with beings divine and human, and have prevailed.” (Genesis 32:29)
Jacob, in his anxiety to face Esav, splits his camp in two. The reason he offers is pragmatic, a kind of extension of portfolio theory: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But the symbolism of being split in two is also psychologically moving. Jacob, a twin, came out of the womb literally attached to his brother. While they were split in two when his hand was plied from Esav’s heel, Jacob has never really severed from Esav. Esav hangs over him not just as a rival and threat, but as an intimate voice in his own head. In stealing Esav’s blessing, Jacob literally tells their father “I am Esav.” Although the blessing is ontologically deserved, it is ontically filched. Jacob may still think, on an unconscious level, that his worth is a function of Esav.
Even in aspiring to be different than Esav, Jacob is determined by the logic of negation, the psychopathy of what Nietzsche calls ressentiment. Jacob has no sense of self. He is fragile. His two sister-wives also hit home, on a literary level, that this is a person who doesn’t really know himself. Though he received Leah as a wife through Lavan’s trickery, let’s take a step back and analyze the situation more archetypally. Jacob enjoys his persona with Rachel and with Leah, but is hollow inside. If he had self-knowledge, he would not need two wives. (The Midrash teaches that Leah was intended as Esav’s wife). By severing himself between two, he avoids intimacy with both. Rachel can be for “love” and Leah for “children,” but in fact this arrangement is hurtful to both Rachel and Leah and leads to fraternal enmity in the next generation. Where is Jacob in all of this conflict? Isn’t it curious that he seems so woefully aloof to it all. He is the cause of so much hatred and jealousy in his own family, and yet with the exception of Reuben, nobody crosses him. He is, on the surface, a beloved patriarch.
Of course, on the surface, Jacob does what needs to be done. No military strategist can fault him for his engagement with Esav. As with so many psychological phenomena the evidence is dubious, subtle. James Scott would say that psychological forces produce only “hidden transcripts.” Leo Strauss teaches that philosophers, writing under conditions of persecution (censorship and self-censorship) cannot be taken at their word. Jacob the character can be analyzed through this lens. As readers we can specualte that his splitting up of his group demonstrates a lack of loyalty to either one. They are expendable. Jacob can emerge unscathed in the event that Esav attacks, but only at the price of halving himself. Does the metaphor of halving ring a bell? In the story of “Solomon’s Judgment” the two mothers come before Solomon claiming a baby as their own. It is the false mother who suggests he “split the baby.” The real mother refuses. While a camp is not a baby, Jacob’s “diversification strategy” is a form of cowardice. We know this because the Torah emphasizes that his decision is decision by fear. Whether justified or not, his fear-based motivation surfaces a soul that lives in fear. What is he afraid of?
I surmise that, on an unconscious level, he is afraid not of Esav’s military strength but of his fragile ego which Esav’s presence “triggers.” Jacob is afraid of who he himself is in the presence of his brother. Is Jacob good enough, worthy of love, capable of blessing, or his he simply caught in mimetic rivalry, in which heads he loses, tails Esav wins?
Despite running from Esav the man, Jacob cannot run from the Esav that haunts his dreams. “Wherever you are, there you are.” Eventually, he reaches a breaking point where the truth of his own insecurity forces him to wrestle with himself. Commentators wonder whether the mysterious figure that Jacob wrestles with is an angel or himself or Esav. This ambiguity is deliberate. The being is an interanlized Esav, the Esav within, Jacob’s second self. While Jacob is unique as a twinned character in the Bible, he is also paradigmatic of the twinned nature of us all. The Greek tradition teaches that we are all born with a daimon; the Jungian tradition calls this “the shadow.” Jacob runs from his shadow work until he can’t. He fears his shadow until he struggles with it and prevails. He does not defeat his shadow, but in facing it his fear transforms into courage and he becomes Israel.
Through the rabbinic lens, Esav becomes a stand-in for Rome, and really for the nations of the world that are hostile to the Jewish people. So many Jews throughout history have responded to anti-semitism by splitting their camp in two. If I make myself in the right image perhaps they won’t hate me? If I become liberal or assimilate maybe they’ll spare me. If I renounce the Haredim or the settlers as extremists—I’m a good Jew, not them—maybe I’ll pass? Maybe Esav will kill them, but not me. Or perhaps he will kill only those Jews who are leftist but allow me to pass? During the 20th century, the Jews found themselves hated by both Stalin and Hitler. There were practical reasons some bet on Hitler, others on Soviet Communism, but in the end, Esav could not be appeased, whether he took the form of the left or the right.
When you are co-dependent you think it’s your fault that Esav hates you. But Esav is gonna Esav. What matters is that you know yourself and love yourself regardless of whether Esav praises you or disses you. Esav doesn’t own you. And you do not exist to placate him. Jacob is Esav and Esav is Jacob, joined by a shared pathology. But Israel is not Esav and Esav is not Israel. Israel is Jacob when he decides to be a self.
God needs the Jewish people to be partners in Creation and Revelation, but we can only do this by becoming healthy selves. Otherwise we relate to God and the covenant through an immature lens. Partnership means that we are not motivated by the desire to be liked, but by belief in and commitment to our own integrity. Jacob’s wound is a mark of his sensitivity—he is not required to defeat his shadow—but also of his strength.
To take a more contemporary example, the U.N. is, in effect, an antisemitic organization owing to its hypocritical and outsized criticism of the state of Israel, but the teaching of Jacob is that we shuold not define ourselves by the judgment of U.N. That includes not defining ourselves by our own sense of injustice at the U.N. when it reserves its selective outrage for our people. The U.N. presents a practical challenge, but not a spiritual one, if and when we “do the work.” It is easy to face Esav, and even receive his biting kiss, when we know that we are not responsible for his reactions, only for our own.
Shabbat Shalom,
Zohar Atkins
The corollary to this is that the existence of unfair or inconsistent or hypocritical judgements against you does not relieve you of the responsibility to hold yourself to a high moral standard: to do the right thing not in order that you may be liked, but because it is right. That too is part of being a healthy self. Esav gonna Esav, but sometimes the things he says are true even though it is him saying them, and even though he would not say the same against others who do far worse. Neither the desire to please him nor the desire to spite and defy him will lead you to a path of integrity.