Dot…dot…dot

This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, is fascinating, deep and textured on so many levels. In it, Jacob famously wrestles with what is described as an “ish” (man). Is it really “a man,” or is it a heavenly being? G-d? Or a struggle within himself?

After this struggle, G-d changes Jacob’s name to Yisrael, “for you have wrestled with G-d, and with people, and prevailed.” The name can be deconstructed as Yisra-el, the first part of which stems from the word “to struggle” and “el” referring to G-d.

This face-to-face encounter with G-d, panim el panim (face to face), as the text says, precedes another face-to-face encounter with his twin brother, Esau — this encounter is one that Jacob fears, and for good reason. But rather than run away from what might be a disastrous meeting, Jacob is ready to face Esau. He does not go naively into their meeting but prepares well, keeping his growing family protected — just in case Esau is out for revenge, still seething after Jacob usurped his birthright.

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The first meeting between the estranged brothers is interesting. After Jacob approaches cautiously and humbly, prostrating himself seven times at Esau’s feet, the text continues, “Esau ran to meet [Jacob and his family]. He hugged [Jacob], and throwing himself on his shoulders, kissed him. They [both] wept.”

Taken on face value, the text suggests that the years have faded the bitter memory of the stolen birthright from Esau into some sort of acceptance, and rather than bitter, one reading of the Hebrew text suggests some sort of reconciliation — a hug to “forgive and forget.”

But in the scroll, above the word “kissed,” you might notice a series of tiny dots set one over each letter. It is a scribal oddity, a unique formation that appears only a few other times in the Torah. The presence of the dots wherever they appear in the Torah suggests there is something more than meets the eye within the word (or words) itself.

Here, in the context of this meeting between the estranged brothers, the word and its meaning have been the subject of many a rabbinic and scholarly debate since Talmudic times as to what’s really going on here between Jacob and Esau, and what the dots are trying to tell us.

One argument posits that the dots suggest Esau’s kiss was ambivalent at best, or even that it wasn’t a kiss at all, but an attempt to bite (!) Jacob in the neck. The word for bite differs by just one letter from the word for kissed.

So, is “Vayisha’kei’hu (and he kissed him),” as it says in the scroll, really supposed to be “Vayisha’kei’hu (and he bit him)”? Quite a different meaning, eh? The words sound exactly the same, but one of the verb’s consonants is different (noted in bold), and vastly changes the meaning of the passage. Do the dots indicate a biblical typo? (There are, indeed, many such scribal errors throughout the Torah.)

The change of a single letter would entirely alter Esau’s sentiment (and the direction of his heart) from a kiss of reconciliation after years of estrangement, to the betrayal of vulnerability and friendship instead.

The truth is, we don’t know for certain (and that’s often the fun of parsing biblical text). But it’s always interesting to speculate.
For me, the dots above the word might well suggest Esau’s ambivalence toward his brother, but for this inevitable meeting, he is willing to bury the past, if only for this moment. And later in this portion, to set aside animosity to bury, together, their father Isaac.

This tense meeting between Jacob and Esau got me thinking about the holiday season.

As we venture out beyond our local circles of family and friends, perhaps for the first time since the election, we’ll undoubtedly meet up
with those in our intimate circle for whom we don’t, let’s say, have the kindest of feelings — especially these days.

How will we greet them? Yeah, you may be inclined to bite them (at least metaphorically, with a sarcastic snap or two), but you won’t. Instead, hopefully you will embrace them, perhaps not wholeheartedly, but in the interest of keeping peace, maintaining civility and enjoying the moment. In other words, set the dots, let them fade from relevance, if only for a day, and embrace what you do you have in common.

And with that in mind, from our family to yours, my wishes for a meaningful and joyous season of light and a Happy Hanukkah! pjc

Hazzan Barbara Barnett is a Jewish educator and cantor living in Pittsburgh. This column is a service of the Greater Pittsburgh Jewish Clergy Association.