When the boys grew up, Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob became a mild man who stayed in camp.
Bereshit 25: 27
Before they were enemies, Yaacov and Esav were brothers. Before there was deception, exile, hatred, and fear, they shared a single womb.
We usually read their story as a struggle to determine which brother would inherit the future. But perhaps that reading is already a concession to tragedy. What if the future was meant to belong to both of them?
A Divine Plan Broken
Yaacov and Esav were both the sons of Yitzchak and Rivka, born into the family from which the Jewish people would emerge. God’s original intention, I believe, was not that one should replace the other, but that each would have his role to play in the emerging nation. Yaacov would embody the spiritual genius of Israel; Esav its courage, vitality, and ability to deal with the physical world. One would give the people its soul, the other its strength. Neither could fulfill its purpose alone.
But the brothers failed each other. Misunderstanding gave way to deception; deception to resentment; resentment to separation. Esav was driven out of the Jewish story altogether, and eventually became its enemy. What should have been a partnership became a wound. Jewish history has been bleeding from it ever since.
This leads to a possibility so disturbing that we hardly dare consider it. What if the Torah given to Moshe at Sinai was already shaped by this disaster? What if it was, in a profound sense, a lesser Torah—not the full expression of God’s original intention, but merely the Torah that could be given to a people from whom Esav had been torn away?
The Torah of the two brothers, the Ur-Torah, remained unrealized.
What if the Torah given to Moshe at Sinai was not the full expression of God’s original intention, but merely the Torah that could be given to a people from whom Esav had been torn away?
An Army Without Weapons
Deprived of Esav’s strength, the Jewish people became masters of another kind of power. Especially after the loss of their land and sovereignty, they could no longer defend themselves with armies. Instead, they built a powerhouse of the spirit.
One glance into the Talmud and we see the result. What an astonishing battlefield! Here the Jewish people fought with arguments instead of swords. No claim was allowed to pass unchallenged; no possibility escaped examination. The courage and ferocity that might have belonged to Esav were transformed into the intellectual religious warfare of Yaacov. And this battle continues in the commentaries and sub-commentaries to this very day.
This achievement was magnificent. Empires rose and fell. The Jewish people, often powerless in the usual sense, survived them all against all odds. Their enemies disappeared, but the Jewish people remained. It seemed that the soul had conquered history without the help of the body.
Yet this astonishing survival also made the Jews an unbearable puzzle to the nations. How could a people without the normal instruments of power refuse to disappear? In this defiance of history lay one of the deepest sources of antisemitism: the outrage provoked not simply by what Jews did, but by the stubborn fact of what they are.
And then came the Holocaust. It revealed, with utmost cruelty, what spiritual genius could not accomplish. The soul might survive, but it could not, by itself, protect the bodies of the Jewish people. The belief that Yaacov could live forever without Esav was shattered.
When the Pendulum Swung Back
The rebirth of the sovereign Jewish state gave the Jewish people back something they had long been denied: the power to defend themselves. Esav returned in the form of soldiers, weapons, physical courage, and national sovereignty. That return was necessary, but it was also dangerous.
In exile, we had sometimes behaved as though a soul could live without a body. In sovereignty, we began to behave as though a body could live without a soul.
For the old tragedy now threatened to repeat itself in reverse. Where Jewish life had once exalted Yaacov at Esav’s expense, the new State sometimes exalted Esav at Yaacov’s expense. Strength became a creed. It was all too easy to fall into the illusion against which the Torah had warned: “My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth” (Devarim 8:17).
In exile, we had sometimes behaved as though a soul could live without a body. In sovereignty, we began to behave as though a body could live without a soul.
Israel has repeatedly faced moments when its survival seemed to hang by a thread. Beyond the military crises, there was the much deeper question: Can a Jewish state endure on power alone? And if it survives by force while forgetting the spiritual purpose of its existence, what, in the end, has survived?
Two Halves of One People
In our day, something most remarkable is happening. More Jews rooted in Yaacov’s world are entering the army without giving up their commitment to Torah. More Jews shaped by Esav’s world are discovering that Jewish spiritual life is not a relic of the past. The brothers are beginning, however awkwardly, to recognize each other.
But recognition is not reconciliation. Neither side has yet understood the full magnitude of what is required. Yaacov cannot survive without Esav’s strength. Esav cannot give the State of Israel a future without Yaacov’s spirit. Each is only half of the people God intended.
How are we to heal a wound three thousand years old in the seventy-eight years of Jewish sovereignty? No wonder religious and secular Israelis stumble. We are trying to reverse a catastrophe that has shaped nearly everything we have become.
And we must be careful not to misunderstand the task. The answer is not to remove the “Esavness” from Esav. That would simply repeat the original disaster. Instead, it is only the more destructive aspects that must be removed. We must remove the hostility between the brothers, not the distinctiveness of either one.
The Torah Hidden Within the Torah
Esav represents far more than military power. He also represents science, art, culture, music, discovery, and the capacity to shape the material world. These are important additions to Jewish life. In fact, they may be indispensable parts of what God originally intended for Israel to become.
This does not mean we should grant every cultural fashion the approval of the Torah. Much must still be judged, refined, and sometimes rejected.
But by which Torah are we to judge? By the Torah as we have grown accustomed to reading it after centuries of separation? Or by the deeper, original Torah in which Yaacov and Esav were meant to stand side by side?
Perhaps this is the greatest challenge facing our sages today. Must God intervene with a new revelation? Must there be another Sinai?
Or has the Torah we are searching for been concealed all along within the Torah we already possess—waiting to be discovered through a new reading of the Talmud and the great sources of our tradition?
Such a discovery would not mean abandoning the Torah, but rather, uncovering a dimension of it that our broken history has prevented us from seeing.
The future of Israel will not be decided by whether Yaacov defeats Esav or Esav defeats Yaacov. Rather, it will be decided by whether they can finally become brothers again.
After all, they began their lives in the same womb.
May God grant our sages the wisdom—and the courage—to bring them home.
