Rabbi’s Message, December 9, 2025

In between Thanksgiving and the secular New Year, here in North America, is typically what I think of as the season of large (and often complicated) family gatherings. This is also the season in the Jewish calendar that we read about often complicated family relationships and gatherings in Genesis. This past week in the Torah was a big one. Parashat Vayishlach narrates the meeting between twins Jacob and Esau, after they have grown into adulthood and established families of their own. In the spirit of this convergence, I wanted to share with you the sermon from Friday night’s Shabbat celebration. (And if you want to hear more like this, please see our calendar for our next Shabbat! Rabbi Evon and I would love to see you there!) 

Wishing you a wonderful week and a prayer for relational health, healing, and repair, 

Rabbi Lauren

The author of The Family Dynamic, Susan Dominus – whose remarkable investigation into sibling success has been a part of my personal reading list this week – reflected in an interview how siblings — not parents — often shape our inner lives most profoundly. “Sometimes,” she said in her interview last year with WHYY’s Fresh Air, “the most powerful model in a child’s life is not a parent, but a brother or sister who shows what’s possible.” (1)

This struck me particularly this week, because, not only are we in a season of potentially large-scale family gatherings, but also this is the week that we read Parashat Vayishlach. In it, we continue with one of the most complicated sibling stories in our Bible: Jacob and Esau. For those of us not following the tea of the past couple of weeks in Torah, Jacob – with the encouragement of his mother, Rebecca – cosplayed as his twin Esau in order to steal Esau’s birthright and blessing from their father. And then, after he successfully stole his brother’s birthright and blessings, Jacob ran away. For years. And this week is the long-awaited reunion of Jacob and Esau. It is a story about conflict, fear, rivalry, regret, estrangement, and — against all odds — transformation.

For those of us who are parents or have siblings, we can see that this is a story in which so many of our values — humility, truth, honor, loving-kindness, patience — is activated, stretched, and tested by the dynamics of this siblingship.

Just as Jacob recognizes that he cannot control the story Esau carries, Dominus shows us that siblings often hold competing versions of the same past. Susan Dominus tells us that siblings are among our earliest and most enduring shapers of self. And Parashat Vayishlach tells us how complicated that shaping can be. The Torah portion opens just as Jacob has departed from his uncle Laban’s territory, and is about to cross back into his father Isaac’s territory.

When Jacob hears Esau is coming toward him with 400 men, the Torah tells us: “Jacob was greatly afraid and distressed.” In response, the medieval commentators wonder: Why two emotions? Why “afraid” and “distressed”? Rashi explains: He was afraid of being killed and distressed that he might have to kill.

But there is another layer potentially at work here: Jacob is afraid of being truly seen — seen not as the polished, successful, wealthy man he has worked to become, but as the young man who once deceived his brother and ran away. Siblings know our beginnings. They know what we looked like before we knew who we were. They were witnesses to our awkwardness, our mistakes, our utter unfinishedness.

In Dominus’ terms, siblings hold our formative “narratives” — stories about who succeeded first, who received more attention, who felt overlooked. Those narratives follow us well into adulthood, often unchallenged.

In this way, Jacob embodies the spiritual struggle of Anavah, humility. Not self-erasure, not self-loathing — but the terrifying honesty of standing before someone who remembers you before you were polished. True humility is not thinking less of ourselves; it is seeing ourselves truthfully – considering the raw emet, the raw truth, of our whole selves. From this standpoint – one in which we are grounding in the humility of who we were and who we have grown to be, in combination with acknowledging the whole truth of each of these stages – repair becomes more possible. Repair in sibling relationships is rarely about undoing the past; rather, it is about facing it truthfully and with ownership of your agency, or lack thereof throughout your childhood, and spaces for growth.

In response to this moment, when Jacob finally sees Esau approaching, he bows to the ground seven times.

Not once, not twice — seven.

This is choreography, but it is also a kind of confession. It is a confession of what Jacob has learned in his time away. It is an attempt to show his brother that he has learned humility and that he has the ability to make space to finally show kavod, to show honor, to his brother. For us, we can see that this Kavod, honor, is the discipline of seeing the Divine Image in another (even our siblings). And Jacob does something extraordinary. He honors Esau with more dignity than he has ever shown him before.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks taught that Jacob wants to rewrite the relationship not through apology alone, but that this act of bowing is an action that restores honor to Esau, honor that a part of their childhood took away.

Susan Dominus’ book reveals something parallel: siblings often carry very different stories about the same childhood. One remembers being overshadowed; another remembers being burdened. One recalls privilege; another recalls scarcity. We bring those narratives into adulthood — into our fears, our relationships, our decision-making.

But as we move into adulthood, we also come to the realization that we can have power over these narratives.  We can transcend the choices that we made as children; and we can transcend the influences and environment that cultivated those choices. Indeed, Jacob bows seven times because he recognizes that he does not control the narrative of their shared childhood. He cannot dictate how Esau remembers. He can only honor the truth that each of their stories matter. Indeed, spiritual maturation means making space for more than just our own stories.

How many adult relationships break not because of malice, but because we cannot honor the other person’s version of the past?

This moment of our Torah whispers:
Your truth does not cancel theirs.
Your memory does not eclipse theirs.
But honor can create room for both of you to breathe and even begin to reconcile.

And then, as we return to our parasha, it happens —
the moment no one in the Torah could have predicted. Genesis 33 states:

“Esau ran to meet him, embraced him, fell upon his neck, and kissed him; and they wept.”

This is not strategy.
This is not power.
This is chesed — pure, disfiltered loving-kindness.

Esau, the brother Jacob feared most, becomes the healer of the story.

Susan Dominus teaches that siblings often surprise one another.
Traits we assumed were fixed — rivalry, resentment, ambition — have the capacity to soften over time. We can grow into new versions of ourselves.We can release burdens we once held tightly. In our spiritual tradition of Mussar, this moment involves savlanut, patience — this is the moment that shows us that every soul has the capacity to ripen in its own season, if only given the opportunity and the time.

When he embraces his brother, Esau proves that healing is possible, even when history is jagged. Jacob proves that humility and truth can prepare the ground.  The brothers cry together because they make space for what is new.

And here lies one of the deepest teachings of Vayishlach:

Reconciliation does not require rewinding the past; it requires seeing the emet – the truth – of one another. It requires making space for kavod – for the honor – and acting on the chesed – the loving-kindness – that each of us need. It requires the savlanut – the patience – that it takes for us to trust that we can all grow, with the fullness of time and personal effort.

The lesson for us today, in this community is that we, too, are siblings — through this shared community, through this sacred covenant, in this journey of stumbling toward holiness.

The Torah does not promise that every sibling story will resolve with an embrace. But it does offer us the idea that transformation is possible, and that our relationships — even the most complicated ones — can become pathways to our holiest selves.

May we meet our own siblings — of blood, of history, of choice, of community — with humility and truth, with honor and kindness, and with patience that makes space for healing and growth.

And may we, like Jacob and Esau, find moments where the story breaks open and something unexpected — something tender and redemptive – comes running toward us.

(1)  Dominus, Susan. Interview by Dave Davies. “Parenting, Siblings, and the Psychology of Success.” Fresh Air, WHYY, May 7, 2024. Audio, 35:42. https://www.npr.org/2024/05/07/1249489275/susan-dominus-sibling-success