Biblical Advice For Defusing Tension [Vayishlach]

Okay friends, the story begins. We learn about how to diffuse tension. There are times in our lives when we have to encounter or confront uh people that are going to make us uncomfortable. And in the para it's a very extreme example. It's an example of as who wants to kill Yakov. Um, this can definitely what we're going to learn be applicable in even less extreme cases where we have to encounter or or collaborate with somebody who is piece of work and we have to and and there's different ways of dealing with it. What YaKob did, somehow he figured out how to diffuse the tension. Let's give some context here. Yakov steals the blessings from Asab. Fair and square. He didn't even want these blessings at first. Or he did, but you know, his mother kind of pushed him to go for it. Now I shouldn't. I'm stealing. Just do it. He ends up doing it. As of wants to kill him. It's like now great. He has to run for his life. He has to go live with his uncle Lavan. He gets married. He goes through his whole journey of being swindled of marrying multiple wives. He estab he he has 12 children. It's now time to come home back to his father, back to the land of Israel. And on his way, he finds out through the messengers, through the angels that Asov is coming. And Asaf is still angry. Do you know how long it's been? By the way, at this point, he was at Love's house for about 20 years. Prior to that, he made a pit stop at the yeshiva of Sheaman to learn Torah so he can be in the spiritual mindset to stay at Loveven's house. So 44, 45 years, he hasn't seen his brother. And his brother's still angry. His brother still wants to kill him. He has 400 people, 400 soldiers. So, Yakov does three things to prepare. Rashi tells us that if you look at the text carefully, you'll notice these three things. He prepares for war by dividing up the camp. If he attacks one side, at least we'll have the other side. Now, now, okay, this is not even the point of our discussion today, but I just think it's an important thing to to note. Which side are the like it? What's which which family is going where? If it kills you, at least at least you'll be alive, right? How do you divide this up properly? What is the point in that? Okay, there's commentaries that dive into that. It's a different discussion for a different time. Maybe we'll touch upon it soon, but I don't think so. Um he then prays to God and he prepares a generous bribe, a generous gift. A and Yakov is scared. Yakov is terrified. He is very much afraid. So much so that he's praying again that God please save me. Why would he do that? God already said he's going to save him. God already said he's going to protect him in the dream. It was just a dream. No, he had taken the dream seriously. Okay, commentaries dive into that as well. But our point here is that he was terrified. And the moment of truth comes and he encounters Asaf. And I'll read for you this text. and translate it. I'll read in Hebrew and translate it. As of runs to greet him, he embraces him. He falls on his neck. He kisses him. And they cry. Well, that's a shift. That That's like a huge shift. YaKob went from being terrified from having to prepare for war, pray, prepare a gift to, "Hey, Yakob, how are you, man? It's been a while." How did that How did that shift happen? Many years ago, my father used to work as a juvenile court judge. And there's elements of that profession that could be dangerous because you are dealing with a very young population, a criminal population who is not happy with you. And you lock them up until they're 18. They go free. So that's kind of scary. These guys don't like you. At least some of them. Some of them get re I mean the focus is on rehabilitation, but some of these guys don't like you and they're coming out soon, but it can be very scary. My father is coming home after court. He goes into the parking lot. It's 5 6:00 at night. It's pitch black. He's the only guy in the parking lot. He's about to open his car door and there's a fellow approaching him. And again, it's pitch black outside. The guy has a hoodie on. You don't see his face. And he's getting closer and closer and closer. My father has his hand on his hip just in case he needs to take advantage of various safety protocols um such as items that are included in the Second Amendment. And my father has his hand on his hip on on his and this guy's getting closer and closer. Comes up to my father. Are you Judge Zeberman? My father says, "Yes." He takes his hood off. He says, "I just wanted to thank you so much. You've gotten me through this system and I feel rehabilitated and I'm off drugs now and I'm now have a family. Ju just thank you so much. I really appreciate it." My father says, "You know, you almost you almost killed yourself. That was dangerous, man." Um, but that reminds me of this encounter with Yakov and Asov. As's coming with 400 men. Yakov's getting all nervous. He's scared. He's going to meet him for the first time. And who knows what's going to happen. He splits up his family. And YaKob, how are you? And he gives him a big embrace. Asov was angry at him. That's what the angels told Yakov. As was actually angry, but somehow the positioning Yakob had put himself in created some sort of shift in Asov. Now the truth is if you look in Rashi, Rashi points out that the word he kissed him. Rashi brings two different opinions as to whether that was genuine or not. Some say he was acting nice. Some say he was being nice wholeheartedly. Didn't last. That's fine. But at least at that moment it lasted. Some say no, he was faking it the whole time. Even if he was faking it, that's pretty good. He went from being angry, wanting to kill him, to at least being able to fake peace. And the second opinion being that he's able to actually he was actually peaceful. I'll take either one of them, right? Both those are both great. What shifted? What changed? I saw recently from Rab Shimshin Rafal Hersh. He points out that although there's a debate when he kissed him, was it real? Was it not? It says he kissed him, but then it says he cried. You can fake a kiss. You can fake an embrace. It's very hard to fake a cry. There must have been something genuine there, something real. Somehow Yakov positioned himself to be able to meet Asov and strike a very deep court and shift his attitude. And if we can learn what Yakov did and if we can replicate that or at least internalize it, then maybe in our relationships we can meet people and inspire them to put their sword down. Now, for whoever is listening to this either either live or you're listening to the recording on YouTube or whatever, I'm not suggesting that you start going to your abuser, god forbid, and and uh if if somebody had that situation and like just be nice, make amends, forgive indiscriminately. I I'm not saying that at the end of the day, Yakov succeeded in creating a shift at least temporarily. He also prepared for war. He was ready. He was being responsible. He was making the proper safety protocols, the proper spiritual protocols of praying, the proper social protocols, preparing a bribe if that might be the easiest way out. I I'm not saying let's just hug everybody and forgive them and let terrorists destroy us because peace and love, man. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is there's people who we encounter and there's times where we have the ability through our positioning to diffuse them and to inspire that embrace, to inspire that relationship. How? So, here's the thing about Asv I'll share with you two different perspectives which I think are are I think coexist and almost run parallel to one another. when Sims Rafal points out that Asaf cried and that cry must have had some genuinity. Is that a word? Some authenticity to it. Genuineess to it. Some authenticity to it. Why did he cry? He was angry at his brother. He wanted to kill him. What was he emotionally about? Emotional about these were positive emotions. These were positive tears. So Rah points out at the end of the day he shared something in common with Yakov. He is the child of Abraham and Isaac. They're brothers. They both come from a Jewish home. They're connected. It must be that Asov's barbarism. Is that the Is that a word? I'm sorry. I'm getting all the words wrong today. I don't have my diet coke now. Um, gotta restock. It must be that Asov's barbarism was imperfect. He was not a perfect barbarian. He was not perfectly wicked. He was wicked. He was bad. He was evil. He had issues. But his issues were not perfect. He was not just a man of a field. He was not just a man of war. He had to have some other redeeming quality. And when he met Yakov that emerged, somehow Yakov brought out the best in him. This is by the way, this is true spiritually, not just in this case. This is always true spiritually and always true psychologically. There is no perfectly imperfect person. He can't be perfectly a perfect barbarian, a perfectly selfish person because if he was, he wouldn't succeed. And Naf was successful. He must have had some sort of people skills. He must have valued human life on some level. He must have cared about other people on some level. the positive qualities that he would have inherited from and must have shined through on some level because if he was just a man of sword, just a man who wanted to kill people, he's not going to survive and certainly not successfully long term. There must be some other quality and that those good qualities emerged. And the reason is because there's no perfect problem. Again, this is true spiritually. I'll give you a source. I'll give you two sources. Number one, in general, the idea of kipa, of negative energy that conceals the existence of God, can't exist independently. Like if if God is the source of everything, then God is also the source of kipa, which means kipa can't exist without holiness, without God. It can't exist independently. I'll give you another source chapter 11 of Tanya where the author of the Tanya introduces the Russia and he says there's two types of rashas. There is the incomplete rasha who occasionally gives into the animal soul, occasionally gives into the eight or har to the evil inclination occasionally is controlled rather than being in control. Now how occasional? I mean whatever fine so there's different levels of incomplete Russia right maybe it's every day maybe it's once a month maybe it's every few minutes but then you have the complete Russia who is totally being controlled by his emotional impulses by his animal soul by his evil inclination but the author con concludes the chapter saying that even that incomplete Russia didn't lose his Jewishness, didn't lose his spark, didn't lose his soul. A complete sadic can lose his evil impulse, can lose the animal soul, but a complete Russia can't lose the divine soul. It's still there. It's we say in Hebrew, it's makif. It's It might not be relevant to him. in terms of how he behaves. It might be abstract. It's still a meaningful influence that will somehow emerge at some point in life. Which is why the prophecies tell us that when Mashiach comes, everybody will do nobody will be pushed away. Even the incomplete Russia, sorry, even the complete Russia is not perfect at being a Russia. He still has that soul. There's still some good quality that's going to emerge. Some quality these the quality of salt started to emerge when he had met Yakov. Yakov somehow brought out the best in Asov. And if we can meet people that we feel are like Asaf and again I'm not if if we actually feel like we're in danger maybe it's not our job at that moment and I'm not suggesting it is. Yakob felt like this was his calling and he put the safety precautions in. He prepared for war. But if you feel like it's your job to reconnect with somebody, we can like Yakov position ourselves to bring out the best in them. You know how we do that? See, here's what I I gleaned from the author of the Tanya in a different book. He's a book called Torah or which is his essays and insights on the Torah portion. And the way I understood it is if you want to really um bring out the best in somebody, bring out who they are, you have to appreciate who they are, not who you want them to be. And that, my friend, is very difficult. Because often relationships go sour when we're trying to get somebody to behave in a certain way because this is who I expect you to be. But if I can accept who you are, I don't mean tolerate who you are. I mean I can actually appreciate who you are. You shouldn't tolerate people like it. Like if somebody's being if somebody's making you uncomfortable, you don't have to tolerate it. Um you have to find a way to accept it or don't accept it. My my humble opinion, accept it means find a redeemable quality in it. There was a redeemable quality within Asov that YaKob wanted to accept because you know what Asov was? The cabalists explain that Asov was the reason why he was like this man of the field. Why he was so like such so so passionate, so barbaric. Well, the behavior of barbarism is bad. But the energy behind it is not bad. So the catalysts explain, are you guys familiar with the the the pre the the spiritual worlds? The world of toou the world of tik. So the the cabalists explain that there's these two paradigms of existence. There's these two different ways God interacts with the world. Usually the usually let me give you some context here. The way God interacts with the world is through various personality traits that he had created. So God can choose to be kind. God can choose to be to employ discipline, to employ love, to employ kindness, to employ strictness, to employ order, to employ connection. There's the seven spheros described in Cabala which correspond to seven human personality trait traits that exist within the soul. And there are two versions of these. There was an original version which was a very passionate version with very narrow boundaries, very narrow space. Which means if you are all passionate love, but it's just too much, you don't understand how somebody could be strict ever. You just don't get it. But sometimes that's needed. And if you are a strict person in nature, but you're like too much, your emotions are like just somebody turn the dial up, right? You just don't get why you would be nice. There needs to be order in life. And these two prototypes clash. And within a person, if they have these two prototypes and they don't know how to balance them, they don't know how to mix them, they're going to explode. They're going to be untamed wild energy. That's as conversely your emotions could be very you dial up very low. You're not that focused on on on passion on you're focused more on just the structure of what needs to get done. You have this in you know you're you're not much of a dreamer. You're you're a doer. We got to get things done. We got to focus. We got to there's a certain maturity that comes with it. You can tolerate different views. You can tolerate different opinions. You can tolerate different perspectives. That was Yakov. Yakov was the simple guy sitting in the tent. So to Asov, this untamed energy was not channeled properly. Thought it could be channeled properly. Thought that the energy of Tu described in Kabala represented by could be channeled properly. Let's give him the blessings. Was blinded to his toward his behavior because he was looking at his source. And in his source, he's pretty good. It's great potential. Yakov saw the same in Asov. Asov is coming. And I am the guy with good boundaries. As is the guy with the passion, right? I'm the CEO that the the CFO that knows the budget and he's the CEO that's the dreamer. Let's get together. But the angels told Yakov, Asaf still wants to kill you. As doesn't see that there's any space for you. So rather than Yakov saying, "But that's not who I want him to be," he learned to appreciate who Asov really was. And it actually spoke to Asov. It actually empowered them to embrace and to connect. Yakov learned his language. You know what Asov's language was? Uh, I say this figuratively, not not technically. Asa was very binary. He spoke binary. I'm kidding. But he was very black and white because somebody who is that energetic um like Asov to the degree Asov was lacks the maturity of structure, lacks the maturity of appreciating differences, lacks the maturity of seeing the world in color. Someone like Asv would never survive living in Lavven's home for 20 years, a corrupt space. He could barely survive his own home. So rather than Yakov trying to cram as into his box, be more like me, Yakov set himself aside and said, I want to learn to speak your language, this black and white language. Because passion usually is black and white. When you're passionate about things, there's there's like a right and a wrong. When you're logical about things, you're a little bit more tolerant. Yakov said, "I'm going to go out of my box here and learn your language." So, you know what Yakov did? He split the nation in half. He said, "Guys, we're going to be binary. We're going to be black and white. I'm going to try to see things the way Asov does. That there's a right and there's a wrong. There's a there's the way I want to do things. There's a way I shouldn't do things. There's a certain high energy passion. And although that could translate in practice into a very dangerous space into barbarism, into selfishness in its source, it's a very good thing. could be a good thing. I mean, imagine you're a CFO controlling a budget with no vision, with no dream, with no, right? So, so it's a very good thing. And when Yakov learned to appreciate Asov's language, they embraced and the better side of Asov emerged. albeit temporarily because either it was like Rashi says not genuine according to the first opinion or it actually was genuine but either way it was temporary but here's the thing one of the things Yakov did was he opened up the pipeline for this possibility to happen again in the future there's been many times when Asav and Yakov historically have been fighting And there's going to be a time when ultimately we're going to be able to get along again where we're going to connect where the better version of everybody's going to emerge when Msiah comes and actually if you look in the ha of this week's Torah portion it talks about how the nation of Asav is ultimately going to recognize God and ultimately going to reconnect it. It's literally in the prophecies and Yakob had started that and we begin that in our own life when we approach people like Yakov did safely. We prepare for war responsibly. We prepare the gift and the prayer. But we also learn to speak their language. As language was that black and white binary splitting things in half. There's this way and there's that way. things are two-dimensional. That's what passion does to us. Yakov learned to speak his language and validated not what Asov was doing, but who Asov was. I I'll give you a quick example. Um, I remember several months ago, this was back in the summer, our four-year-old had a friend over in the community. Like, we're new here, right? So, he has this new friend over and they're playing outside in our backyard and I'm inside and I just poke my head out to check on them and our our four-year-old is pretty rambunctious. I'm like, "Oh god." Our four-year-old is on the roof of the house with his friend. And somehow I'm going to have to explain to this parent that your kid is on the roof with my kid. Probably my kid's fault. And when this four-year-old goes home and he starts climbing the roof of his parents home and says, "I learned it from." And and there's two ways to react. Number one is panic. anger, frustration, get off of there. And that's not I'm not saying that's the wrong way to react. I'm not saying that's how I didn't react either. Um I I will neither confirm nor deny. No, I'm kidding. But but I I I'll tell you what happened. I stopped for a second and you know what I thought? It's pretty impressive. Like to get on that roof, you have to be courageous. And our four-year-old is not usually that courageous. Where do you get that courage from? You have to employ some sort of resource and skill of being able to take other toys that are in the backyard, stack them up just right so you can get on the roof. You have to be able to be confident once you're up there that you're not going to fall. And you have to trust yourself to the degree that a 4-year-old can that you're going to employ the right skills to be safe and not slip off. Okay, this is pretty impressive. That doesn't mean you get to climb the roof, but now I could appreciate who you are and that diffuses everything. This is what Yakov did with Asaf. Okay, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.