Jewish Life Digital Edition January 2014 | Page 22

garding his choice of wife. Instead, it was
outright premeditation, as Eisav’s real plan
was to bring about the death of his father
by opening up old family wounds, causing
his uncle, Yishmael, to come and dispute
the birth right with Yitzchak. And after
Yishmael had killed Yitzchak, Eisav
planned to avenge his father’s death with
the result being that he would wind up inheriting from two families!
And yet, in spite of the fact that Eisav was
a complete and utter rasha, when he and
Yaakov eventually met up again, Yaakov was
terribly afraid of facing his brother. Why
should this be the case? Because, Yaakov
reasoned, Eisav had two ‘strengths’ (note
that the Midrash uses the word “koach”,
meaning “strength”, and not the word
“mitzvah”) that Yaakov lacked: (1) Dwelling
in Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) all of the
years that Yaakov had been away, as well as
(2) Honouring their parents during that
same time period. As noted, Eisav was a
kofer b’ikur from the time that he was a
young man. Accordingly, Eisav didn’t live in
Eretz Yisrael because G-d had made it a
mitzvah to live there, and he didn’t honour

his parents because G-d had commanded
him to do so. Eisav’s actions were dictated
solely by his own logic – by his head. And,
even so, we see that for the relatively small
amount of good that Eisav did in the world,
Hashem still rewarded him accordingly: the
head of Eisav, the seat