We often struggle to find connections between the weekly haftarah and the parsha, but this week the connection is quite obvious.
The haftarah (Malachi 1:2-3) opens as follows:
“I have loved you, said Hashem, and you have replied, ‘In what way have you loved us?’ ‘Is not Eisav brother to Yaakov?’ the word of Hashem. But I loved Yaakov, and I despise Eisav, so I have made his hills deserted and his inheritance an infected wasteland.”
Anyone reading this has a question. Yaakov is all that is good in the world. Eisav is all that is evil. What’s the choice? Why does Hashem choosing Yaakov over Eisav deserve special gratitude and warrant our appreciating how much Hashem loves us? It sounds like Hashem is saying that since Eisav is Yaakov’s brother, Eisav deserves to be treated like Yaakov. But Eisav was evil! What is the great chiddush here?
Rav Yaakov Weinberg zt”l, rosh yeshiva of Ner Yisrael in Baltimore, pointed out that it is incorrect to assume that Eisav embodied the totality of evil. Originally, Eisav was born with great spiritual potential but he made a number of wrong choices. Still and all, at certain points in his early history, he had the ability to turn himself around. This is why the Navi says that Hashem showed His love for us in totally rejecting Eisav, despite the fact that he could have changed.
Similarly, said Rav Weinberg, in Devarim (2:5-8) the pesukim describe Eisav as “ach,” our brother and tells us that we cannot take his land or bother him. This is because he received a yerusha, inheritance, from Avraham in the land of Sei’ir. But if Eisav lives anywhere else in the world this would not apply. It is not wrong as a general rule for one nation to take another nation’s land. It is only because of Eisav’s brother relationship to Klal Yisrael and his inheritance from G-d specifically in Sei’ir that we cannot take it.
It has often been pointed out that according to the midrash, Eisav’s head was buried in the Ma’aras HaMachpeila in Chevron. This must indicate that Eisav “had a head” that was worthy of being buried in such a holy place, but the rest of his body did not.
This explains why Yaakov was punished for hiding Dina in a box and not letting Eisav see her in Parshas Vayishlach. Chazal say that had he seen her beauty, he might have wanted to marry her and she would have led him to do teshuva.
One second. Why is it wrong to protect your daughter from marrying a very wicked person? Some answer that though Yaakov did the right thing, he was punished for not feeling the spiritual pain of Eisav’s soul (and the pain of Hashem Yisbarach’s great disappointment with Eisav) and not crying when he closed the box. Rav Weinberg was unhappy with this answer. Maybe Yaakov did indeed feel bad that Eisav was lost and he couldn’t help him.
Rather, Rav Weinberg said that Yaakov should not have hidden Dina at all. He should have let Eisav see Dina and be attracted to her. Then, Yaakov would say that Eisav could not marry her until he does teshuva. Yaakov would be in a position to negotiate with Eisav and lead him back to Yiddishkeit. But Yaakov did not want to risk antagonizing Eisav. For this, he was punished. We have to be willing to take certain risks to help even an Eisav do teshuva.
We see clearly from this Dina episode that there was a real potential for Eisav at that time. He was not yet a lost cause.