Active Repair

This week’s Torah portion is Vayishlach, which means and he sent. Jacob, with his wives and children is very relieved to have left his father-in-Law Laban, and is on his way back to Canaan, only to have to confront his twin brother Esau. Jacob sent malachim, angels or messengers, ahead of him to try to gauge what kind of reception he might encounter from the brother who wanted to kill him 20 years before. Jacob finds out that Esau is on his way to meet him with 400 men. It does not sound good. This is one of my very favorite Torah portions, containing so many vital teachings. Tonight I’d like to focus on the beginning of this portion, which reads, “Then Jacob sent angels ahead of him to Esau his brother.” After finding out about the 400 men, Jacob takes several further actions. He divided his family and possessions into two camps, for safety. He prayed to God, reminding God of the promise that Jacob would be protected. He prepared a large gift of tribute from his flock and herds and sent it to Esau, perhaps in admission of guilt over his actions of so many years before. He instructed his servants to be very polite and gracious to Esau, and he also, when the opportunity was given to him, engaged himself, wrestling, perhaps with an angel, or also with his own integrity, his fears, and his past actions. This is what I’d like to call active repair. The Apter Rebbe, Abraham Joshua Heschl of Apt, wrote, “His actions, he knew, would leave an impression on the physical world.”
When I see someone who is otherwise healthy, but has hurt their arm and it’s in a sling, or broken their foot and it’s in a soft cast, I say to myself, being very careful not to judge anyone, “just because we are human.” The Torah portion, Noah, teaches us that our sins have to be expiated and mopped up, so to speak, in the course of our lives; or the world would get worse and worse, not better and better. Just because we are human, we make mistakes. We do the wrong thing. Or we are unkind, doing the right thing but not with enough love and patience. We let opportunities slip past us. Sometimes we are tired or hungry, and we are just not up to the task. So our sins, omissions, and mistakes pile up for a time. But then the slate has to be wiped clean and we have to pay for our mistakes and be cleansed. So perhaps we have a small accident or other tiny, we hope, misfortune. But Jacob shows us another possibility: Active Repair. It’s not as good as not making mistakes in the first place, but it helps. Rabbi Elimelech wrote that “Our prayers and holy words ascend upward and these are called Angels.” Martin Buber has also written about the Chassidic tradition, which teaches that our actions produce energies or angels. As Rabbi Nachman of Breslov also taught, If we can damage, we can also repair. We can atone for an offense and try to do as much good as we can, to make it better. And it does, as the Apter Rebbe teaches, make a difference in the physical world. We can apologize. We can find a way to give. And since we are all connected to each other and God, and all existence is One, giving to anyone helps. We can give love, we can help another person, we can make a donation; we can be there for someone. We can also pray: admit to God that we know we did something wrong, and then make a decision to do better next time. We can face ourselves and wrestle down our less than worthy impulses; and by falling down emerge better than we were before the mistakes. As the Chassidic masters and our teacher Rabbi Gelberman taught, we are God’s partners. We are meant to be co-creators of a peaceful world and God wants us to continue to improve creation. This goes as well for our own lives. By our free will we are given the ability to fix what we have broken. We don’t have to passively wait for the next difficulty to arise, for the next small disaster. We can make changes in the Universe, just like the Tzaddikim, the holy, righteous teachers of old. We ourselves have great power to create wonderful angels: angels of beauty and goodness, energies of healing and repair for ourselves and those who we touch. Not only can we fall down, but we can rise up, and take a small part of the world with us.