A while ago I was driving down Bury Old Road with my father on the way to a meeting. As we approached Sheepfoot Lane I saw someone whose car had broken down attempting to push his car. I perhaps even had a fleeting thought about the poor guy who needed a hand. But my father’s reaction was somewhat different. With a loud sigh and a small slap on the steering wheel he bemoaned the situation, “Can you imagine if that was us? It’s so cold out there. What a shame we can’t get out and give him a hand”. My father was genuinely pained and really felt for the poor guy, but due to the circumstances he just couldn’t afford to take the time out to help. My father’s reaction somewhat shocked me. Logically there was no way he was going to spend any time helping the guy, so why the frustration? I think an episode in this week’s Parshah will help us understand.
We read this week how Yaakov together with his two wives, two maidservants, and his eleven children approaches his brother Eisov . The Medresh asks why does the verse make no mention of his daughter Dinah? The Medresh explains that Yaakov hid her in a box – in line with the family tradition of Avraham and Yitzchok who employed similar tactics with their wives – so that the wicked Eisov would not see her and want to take her as a wife. The Medresh describes Yaakov as being one who “withholds from his friend kindness” [Job 6:14].
What was the kindness that Yaakov held back from Eisov? Had he allowed him to marry her, then maybe she could have influenced him to change his ways – as wives often do! The Medresh continues that Hashem said to Yaakov, “because you didn’t want to marry her to someone who was at least circumcised, she will be abused by someone who isn’t even circumcised”. Hence the immediate story following the meeting of Yaakov with Eisov is the episode where Dinah is violated by Shechem.
Granted we can learn from here how wrong it is to even hold back from doing acts of kindness – if already with someone like Eisov who was on his way to kill Yaakov we see that one should still do kindness to him, how much more so with regular people who are in need of a good turn – but the real problem asks R’ Nosson Tzvi Finkel (1849-1927) is that surely Yaakov had good reasons why he didn’t want his daughter to marry the wicked Eisov? The Gemora says that someone who marries their daughter off to an ignoramus is akin to tying her up and putting her in front of a lion! Eisov wasn’t just an regular ignoramus, he was tremendously wicked!
Furthermore it was probably forbidden for Yaakov to let her marry Eisov. As much as he was expected to do Chessed to his brother and try to correct his ways, so too he had to do Chessed to his daughter and not let her be taken by him. If Yaakov was totally justified in what he did, why then [even on his level] was anything wrong that he got punished?
R’ Finkel explains that it must be that the action of Yaakov was not wrong but his mind-set. Yes, he was correct by hiding her in a box, but he should have—on his level—been more pained by the fact that he couldn’t help his brother. The fact that it didn’t ache him enough that he wasn’t able to let his daughter marry Eisov was a mark against Yaakov. Sure he must have grieved and agonized over not being able to help, but on his level he should have been more aggrieved. It wasn’t the fact that he put her in the box, it was the way he slammed it shut, the extra nail he used when closing the box!
We see from this incident that the correct Torah approach in situations when you can’t help is at least to be bothered that you can’t help. We are accustomed to being bombarded in the news by what is going on around the world. We read almost daily of people struggling around the world – storms, hurricanes, hunger, wars etc. the list is endless. More often then not we are just bystanders and there is nothing we can do to solve the world’s problems! But the Torah test is: Do we continue reading as we take another sip from our mug or do we stop and pause for a moment and feel the pain of others.
The choice is to dull our senses and to desensitise ourselves or to pause for a moment and train ourselves to become more caring.
Good Shabbos, Yaakov