The Alter Rebbe, founder of the Chabad Movement, said: “We must live with the parashah”"In other words," as his brother later explained, "we must draw lessons for daily life from the weekly Torah portion.".
This week we read about Jacob, his meeting with Esau, his brother, the problems of Dinah, Jacob's daughter, the birth of Benjamin, Jacob's last son, and, finally, Esau's descendants.
At the very beginning of the parashah, Jacob sent messengers to find out what was happening to Esau before their reunion. The message the messengers were to deliver to Esau was (Genesis 32:5): “[...] I lived with Laban (his father-in-law), and I have been delayed until now (20 years...)”. The word “lived” in the verse is written, in Hebrew, garti. This word can be explained in two ways (which Rashi, in his commentary, brings): 1) from the word war, whose meaning is foreigner and, 2) the sum of the letters of the word garti It is 613, equal to the number of Mitzvot in the Torah, so Jacob would be saying to Esau: “I have lived in Laban’s house, with all the difficulties that entails, and yet I fulfilled the 613 precepts.”.
The lesson of the second explanation is that, despite having spent twenty years immersed in the materiality of the world, herding sheep and taking care of supporting his large family (11 sons and one daughter with 4 wives), that did not prevent Jacob from being fully connected to God.
And here's the connection to everyday life. This week I heard that someone from the community is in one of the prisons near La Plata. As soon as I could, I went to visit him. Regardless of the whole situation, the person was completely surprised, amazed by the visit. And he began to tell me his life story, who he is, how he got there, and, most importantly, what had happened to him just the day before.
Having been a lifelong, inveterate denier of God, the day before he had seen a beautiful color in the sky as the sun set. He thought of shouting to some people in another cell, “Hey, I painted the sky orange!” But then he stopped to think, “Am I God that I can 'paint the sky'?” But, he continued, “God doesn’t exist.” So he decided to tell his companions this, but just as he was about to, a huge cloud covered the sun, leaving him speechless, and, more importantly, without his philosophy. This and a long series of signs and occurrences happened to this character until, suddenly, without him knowing or imagining it, a rabbi appeared!
We stayed talking for two hours about God and His actions. Ideas, feelings, soul, bond of Jewish With God and all that jazz, this person became a fervent admirer and, to the best of his ability, a servant of the Creator of the Universe. Not through any merit of mine, but because life's twists and turns had led him to that point. All that was left was to deliver the final blow, so to speak.
And this is what Jacob wanted to tell Esau, and the lesson for each of us: the circumstances of our surroundings have absolutely no influence on our relationship with God. In fact, in the most inhospitable, lowly, and vulgar places in the world, one can seek and find God and serve Him with a whole heart. There are no excuses. If it's possible inside prison, what can we say about those of us on the outside?.