These last few weeks the parshiyos have been very busy with matchmaking. Last week we read about the match between יצחק and רבקה ; next week, we will read of the marriages of יעקב to רחל and לאה . And this week, also, although we talk about it less, there is also a shiduch in the parshah – between עשיו and the daughter of ישמעאל . A very צוגעפאסטע שידוך ; its surprising the shadchanim didn’t think of it sooner. On the one side, עשיו the רוצח , on the other side, ישמעאל the פרא אדם ; really ענבי הגפן בענבי הגפן . The mind boggles.

 

So today, as we read of the union between עשיו and ישמעאל , it might be appropriate to consider the character of these two in-laws.

 

You all know the Midrash that when הקב"ה was about to give the Torah to us, he first offered it to the children of עשיו and ישמעאל .

 

Says the מדרש :

ה' מסני בא וזרח משעיר למו הופיע מהר פארן וגו' מלמד שהחזיר הקב"ה את התורה על אומות העולם, ולא קבלוה, עד שבא אצל ישראל וקבלוה, שנאמר וזרח משעיר למו, אלו בני עשו, שהן בני שעיר, הופיע מהר פארן, אלו בני ישמעאל שנאמר וישב במדבר פארן...

Why did עשיו and ישמעאל refuse the Torah? Says the מדרש in

                                    ילקוט שמעוני:

בתחלה הלך לבני עשו ואמר להם מקבלין אתם את התורה אמרו לו מה כתיב בה אמר להם לא תרצח, אמרו לו כל עצמן של אותן האנשים אביהם רוצח הוא שנאמר והידים ידי עשו... הלך ומצא את בני ישמעאל אמר להם מקבלין אתם את התורה, אמרו לו מה כתיב בה לא תגנוב, א"ל כל עצמן של אביהם לסטים היה שנאמר והוא יהיה פרא אדם...

 

So עשיו refused the Torah – because לא תרצח is the antithesis of what he represents, and ישמעאל refused the Torah, because לא תגזל is the antithesis of what he represents.

 

כלל ישראל , of course, accepted the Torah. And what words did they use when they accepted it?

 

נעשה ונשמע .

 

There is a fascinating Vilna Gaon, who connects the refusal of עשיו and ישמעאל , and our acceptance with the words נעשה ונשמע , in the following way:

 

The root of נעשה is עשה , which is also the root of עשיו ’s name; and the root of נשמע is שמע , which is also the root of ישמעאל ’s name. These two words: נעשה ונשמע , says the Gaon, corresponded to עשיו and ישמעאל ; in opposition to עשיו , we said נעשה , while in opposition to ישמעאל , we said נשמע .

 

What does this mean?

 

There are two dark impulses that man harbors in his heart – the urge to unbridled pleasure and gratification, and the urge to violence. From the very beginning of history these two impulses have accompanied man – אדם הראשון fell when he could not refuse himself the gratification of the עץ הדעת ; and קין fell prey to the impulse to do violence. The ראשונים call these two urges כעסני and תאוני ; Freud – להבדיל – who was intimately familiar with all the dark places in human nature, gave them names from Greek mythology: Thanatos – the personification of death - and Eros, the personification of desire.

 

עשיו , the איש ציד , the hunter, epitomized the urge to do violence. And therefore the Torah – which gave the world the imperative of לא תרצח – could not be given to עשיו . ישמעאל – whom שרה sent away because she saw him מצחק , literally, fooling around – epitomized the urge to unbridled pleasure, which expresses itself in robbery – the license to take whatever I want, even if it doesn’t belong to me, because my pleasure and my desire overrides everything else – and so the Torah – which contains the imperative of לא תגנב – could not be given to ישמעאל .

 

However, it is axiomatic that everything that הקב"ה created has a purpose. And if הקב"ה created within us these urges – the כעסני and the תאוני - Thanatos and Eros – then they have a purpose too. Because if properly channeled and harnessed, they can become positive forces.

 

The Gemara tells how אנשי כנסת הגדולה wanted to eradicate the יצר הרע of עריות , to bottle up Eros. And they saw that the chickens stopped laying eggs, people stopped having children – even חדוותא דשמעתתא , the joy of learning, disappeared – and so they had to release the יצר הרע . Eros, the urge to pleasure, to sensual experience, to self-gratification, is tied up with the capacity for joy; a person who is so desiccated that that he can’t experience pleasure, cannot experience joy, even spiritual joy, even the joy of חדוותא דשמעתתא . אנשי כנסת הגדולה discovered that if you stop up the wellspring in the psyche that feeds Eros, you stop up the capacity for joy. The spring has to be channeled in the right direction, not stopped up at the source. (This was an insight that was rediscovered by חסידות .)

 

And just as Eros has two aspects – a negative aspect and a positive aspect – so too Thanatos. The יצר הכעסני , the urge to violence, is the desire to impose my will on the world around me. It is the urge to conquer, to destroy whatever stands in my way. It is the urge that drives men to war, and to the most terrible acts. And yet, it, too, has a positive aspect. The same wellspring in the human psyche that urges men to violent conquest, feeds the urge to change the world for the better, to impose our vision and the world, to build and invent and create. It is drive, and ambition, and energy, and action. It should not surprise us that many great conquerors were also great lawgivers – Charlemagne, for example, and Napoleon.

 

And here we come back to נעשה ונשמע . נעשה , we will do the מצוות of the Torah, and נשמע , we will hear it, we will listen to its music, and study its precepts. The Vilna Gaon, you remember, connects נעשה to – עשיו , it is the counterweight to עשיו ; and נשמע to – ישמעאל , it is the counterweight to ישמעאל . And I would suggest that at least part of what he means is this. עשיו could not receive the Torah because he epitomized that will to violence that cannot be bound by לא תרצח . But כלל ישראל were able to take that same impulse and discover in it the positive force of action, and courage, and energy, and will, to implement הקב"ה ’s מצוות in the world. They took that drive and channeled it into the first מצוה of the שולחן ערוך – יתגבר כארי לעבודת הבורא , to rise like a lion to serve the רבש"ע .

 

ישמעאל could not accept the Torah because he epitomized that desire for pleasure that could not be bound by לא תגנב . But כלל ישראל were able to take that desire for pleasure and discover in it the positive force of חדוותא דשמעתתא , the pleasure – the unparalleled spiritual pleasure – of deep Torah study – of משפטי ה' ישרים משמח לב .

 

And so our response, our answer to עשיו is נעשה ; and our answer to ישמעאל is נשמע .

 

עשיו and ישמעאל are, of course, not only people out of history. Each of them fathered great peoples:  עשיו was the father of אדום , and ultimately, according to חז"ל , of Rome and, hence, of Europe, which is the heir of Rome. And in the blood-soaked earth of Europe we see the footprints of עשיו , whose whole being opposed the idea of לא תרצח .

 

And ישמעאל was the father of the people whose whole energy is devoted to robbing us of what is rightly ours. And in their words and actions today we hear the echo of בני ישמעאל ’s refusal to accept the מצוה of לא תגנב .

 

Historically, Europe and Araby – עשיו and ישמעאל – were enemies, contending for centuries with each other. Yet the רמב"ם , in אגרת תימן , writes that before the advent of משיח , עשיו and ישמעאל will unite against us. And the Vilna Gaon explains that this union is foreshadowed in the marriage of עשיו to the daughter of ישמעאל .

 

And indeed one of the most important developments of contemporary history is the great merging of Europe and Araby – demographically, culturally and politically – all annealed with the glue of anti-Semitism. And anyone who is at all sensitive to these things cannot fail, witnessing this, to hear the words of the Gaon echoing in his ear.

 

And so today, as we read in the פרשה of the wedding of עשיו and ישמעאל , and as we read in our daily papers of the increasing union between their descendants, let us strengthen ourselves in that great resolve which is our answer to them – נעשה ונשמע , to devote ourselves as much as we are able to the study of Torah and to the pursuit of מצוות , individually and as community.

 

And through the power of our נעשה ונשמע , we will overcome שעיר וחותנו , both עשיו and his father-in-law ישמעאל , until that when: ועלו מושיעים מהר ציון לשפט את הר עשיו והיתה לה' המל

 

Shabbat Shalom.