Boys will be/have been boys. Such is the nature of brotherhood.
Competition has bred growth and innovation, also atrocity, and all the inner sickness of a modern man, progressively destroyed in a race he neither understands how started, nor can risk to give up. Winning in evolution is measured by the success of your children, that is, the continued survival of, as novelty fucks with the status quo,and weaknesses and strengths alike must be donned like clothing, to be removed as the weather demands/permits, and stolen/given away when put down for two long.
One of the sacred truths of Judaism, perhaps the most binding and solidarity forming of them all, is this simple axiom: Aisav (Esau) hates Yaakov (Jacob). Esau is equated with Rome in the Jewish tradition, the instituition, but, sadder enough, the people too. Jews fear the contempt of non-Jews, just like The Great Empire fears anyone percieved as disloyal and clever at the same time.
Which is not to say that the Empire always fears the disloyalty of Israel. But Israel is cautioned throughout it’s tradition to be careful of The Empire, of Gentiles, (I’m so afraid to phrase it that way!)
for fear that either misunderstanding, or worse, Understanding would cause Someone not familiar with our ways to take offence…
And there’s so many layers of back and forth. Wound and gift, assimilation and rejection, of skills,norms, moral priorities and sacred insights, back and forth. The Messiah/Christ is an culmination of the relationship, finally Rome has a Jew they can trust, and use as a tool for making the poor, defeated nations and tribes of the earth “safe,” Kosher for commerce and interbreeding.
The social buisness customs are all filtered through Rome, and they all grow out of distrust, a handshake proving that I’m not picking up my sword against you, my brother, and the strange curse of Contract and Covenant ensuring the Armies of the world make Men into honest buisnessman in a World suddenly bigger and smaller than anyone’s little tribe, and more powerful despite it’s Anti-wisdom and Shallowness.
The terrible sword of efficiency and the human/animal need to succeed and survive has been the curse of Life, and humans were given Sabbaths and holidays in the hopes of transcending the constant Mind impetus to Keep Doing More Better! The chimps watched bigger animals die, and smaller animals die, and surely learned to love and appreciate peace in response to it.
And so too with us. Jacob in the Bible becomes Israel, only after fighting an angel identified with his Brother. It’s only in the context of Esau that Israel is created, only in the context of the Great Powerful, successful Other, that Jacob is defined out of existence.
Don’t call him a thief, just because he had a way out. The Best Germans were the best hunters, artisans, warriors… Generals and Farmers, religious as his father if not more so. Neanderthal Woody Allen is born, or maybe Primitive Philo, or even more romantically (romaticise the Anti-Roman!) a Buddha is Jacob. Why try so hard to make your father proud, to be the strongest fastest, when you can
just
Sit
intstead, in a tent
thinking?
Reading? There were no books yet.
Abraham may have loved guests so much because he like talking to them, and Listening too. Jacob maybe grew up in a tent like Abraham’s people comingall the time. Talking. Sitting. Whatever.
The Father respects/loves Esau’s Do-itiveness, Just like God the Father seems to like natural selections endless competitive theater. Watch the animals struggle themselves different, forward, better at whatever it is they want long enough. Boys will be boys,and the younger, stronger chimps kill threatening siblings… unless they love them enough to trust them, that is.
Nietze resents what once was so precious… how else could mothers stop their sons from killing each other, but to either encourage them to run away, or just know how much The G-d wants them to give each other permission to be?
Jacob would have wiped Esau off the map, except then he would be Esau, and who needs that to keep happening? People can only accept/reject the dominance of the toughest for so long before a Voice in The Head starts offering other possibilities. And the sweetest, most promising Voice is called
G-d ,while the most practical, anti-love, survivalistic wisdom is called Serpent. Just trying to get by, Cain tells Abel. Or, if not Abel, at least himself.
So, it’s not true that Eisav hates Yaakov, or else the Jews really would have been wiped out… like really, utterly, with no memory. The world is such now, what with the Books and the Laws and what not, that even if the last “blood” Jew was killed, the next generation of Nazi Children would start keeping Shabbos, and separating their milk and meat.
And Visa Versa, right? If the great White Power Nightmare comes true and the imagined Zionist conspiracy does take over the world, If the whole world were Jewish, and King David’s Majesty was the Authority in the world, the Jews would soon split into Our team (the real Jews) and Their team (the wicked Jews who hold back the true good from the world.) And of course, any Jew of conscience, upright and curious heart, interested in truth and returning the somehow still inaccessible Shechina to Israel, living in this afformentioned alternate future, would plunge into any remaining scriptures of What Had Been in AmericaSpainEuropeROME, in order to learn how once, people tried to build a just(ish) safe(esque) society, and how these Jews would rejoice over every piece of enlightened gentile wisdom they would find, just like Jews do now, when they break away enough from the centrism of their surroundings. So excited to find the gentiles saying something good.
Alas, the strange nature of large families, and the ridiculous yet strangely effective ways they have of staying together. There’s still a memory of how sad it was to watch people you knew where once related to you become threats to your life and safety, how much it stings.
So, with the help of the One G-d that eats all the smaller ones, we are going to use this blog to explore the relationships between Israel and Rome, the parts that work, the parts that have encouraged life and learning, and maybe even give hope to a future where humans still get along. Or at least die out together, like a family, holding hands in the same “civilized” folly that burns down cities and memories like so much incense. Or maybe just explore the peace for a minute, just to put the lie to rest–
Eisav does not Hate Yaakov. Not once he’s not threatened by him, anyway. R Shimon Bar Yochai testifies that Eisav will break his only law, his fire to kill Jacob, when the virtue of Israel becomes apparent to him. It’s Jacob that holds back from staying with his brother forever, and the eternal test of the internal security of EsauEisavRome is how much can he be willing to be at peace with that space? It’s the test of how secure he really is with himself and what he’s doing.
El help us all.
–Yhosephus
