Faith: Hebrew Scriptures show us difficulty, reward of reconciliation, which U.S. needs

We all know that America is deeply divided, and our bodily politic suffers from wounds that will not easily mend. In this cold, dark season, it would be easy to despair for our national future. Yet while the Hebrew Scriptures fully acknowledge the profound difficulty of bridging differences and healing communal hurts, they also offer hope for reconciliation.

Let’s take a closer look at this challenge as embodied in the story of Jacob and Esau. The two twins struggle with one another from the very beginning, fighting ceaselessly in their mother’s womb. When Rebecca finally delivers, they wrestle to be the first to enter the world and thereby secure the privileges of the first born. Esau narrowly wins that battle, but Jacob eventually extorts the birthright and then, with Rebecca’s aid, tricks their father, Isaac, into giving him the traditional blessing of the eldest son. Not surprisingly, when Esau learns that his younger brother has stolen his blessing, he threatens to kill him. Jacob flees under the cover of nightfall and manages to avoid Esau for the next 20 years.

When the two finally reunite as middle-age adults, at first glance, the meeting seems to play out like a fairy tale, with love conquering all. The text tells us: “Esau ran to greet him. He embraced him, and falling on his neck, he kissed him, and they wept.” A few minutes later, Jacob tells his brother, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”

Yet this encounter doesn’t conclude with a neat happily-ever-after. While two brothers make a tentative plan to travel together, it does not come to fruition. Instead, Esau travels to Seir while Jacob settles in Sukkot. They go their separate ways and do not seek any further contact until they come together one final time to bury their father.

This is the nature of many reconciliations — tentative and partial. Ultimately, Jacob and Esau recognize that they live very differently. Their values, interests and orientations diverge too much for them to go through life as inseparable friends. Jacob will be the keeper of the covenant, Esau an outlier. Still, the lack of a Hollywood ending does not negate the powerful experience of their embrace. As Rabbi Amy Eilberg notes, for that exemplary moment: “Jacob was able to see his brother’s humanness, his capacity for love, the divine goodness even in Esau. This narrative is a hopeful tale of personal and national transformation, of estranged brothers turning into family again, of learning to see enemies as flawed and wounded people, just like us.”

I derive three contemporary lessons from this story.

First, national reconciliation will not happen overnight. Making peace around longstanding, bitter disputes takes time. Restoring a sense of the common good in America will require tremendous patience.

Second, just as neither Jacob nor Esau convinces the other to completely change his mind, so, too, our political divisions are not going away. We need to learn to distinguish between views we respectfully disagree upon but can live with, and those which are anathema to any just society, which we must labor to root out. Liberals and conservatives can and should strive to understand and reach out to one another; at the same time, both should utterly reject politicians who espouse bigotry, promote falsehoods, exploit the vulnerable, undermine the commonweal and fly in the face of established scientific facts.

Finally, as Rabbi Eilberg reminds us, we must find ways to see the essentially good and decent majority of our fellow countrymen and women as family again, perhaps finding our common humanity in both our individual and collective flaws and wounds.

May the coming new year bring healing and renewal, and may it inspire us all to begin the holy work of reconciliation.