Chukas – Duality of Yaakov and Esav

To understand פרשת חקת we must realize who the people in this פרשה are. You see, this week’s פרשה takes place 38 years after the end of last week’s פרשה, and the audience in this פרשה are the children of the people in last week’s פרשה. Those who walked through the sea and who stood at הר סיני have all died and their kids are now stepping into the new role of the generation that will conquer ארץ ישראל.

We also need to know that there are 9 parts to this week’s פרשה:

1- the laws of the פרה אדומה

2- the death of Miriam, followed by the loss of the באר מים and the incorrect hitting of the rock to get water for the people in place of the באר.

3- Moshe sends a message to the king of אדום (עשו’s family) to allow the Jews to pass through their land and get into ארץ ישראל faster. The king of אדום refuses and comes out with an army to drive the Jews away.

4- Aharon dies and Elazar his son becomes the כהן גדול. The people then lose the ענני הכבוד.

5- עמלק (dressed up as כנענים) comes to attack the people, the Jews defeat them.

6- the people now must circumvent הר סיני (where אדום lives) and they get tired and scared. They start complaining, and Hashem sends serpents to bite and kill them. Moshe makes a copper snake puts it on a stick in middle of the camp and anyone who gets bitten looked at the copper snake and was healed.

7-we hear a few פסוקים about the travels of the people and we have a vague reference to some miracle that happened in ארנון which the Torah equates to kriyas yam suf. What was this miracle? We have no clue from the verse itself.

8- Moshe sends a message to סיחון the king of the Amorites, to let the nation pass through, סיחון refuses, the Jews kill the Amorites and settle their cities.

9-  the king of Bashan comes out to fight with the nation, and Moshe and the people defeat him and his army.

I have a few observations and a few questions. Firstly, almost every single point that’s in this week’s פרשה is also in פרשת בשלח. The באר, עמלק, the miracle of the splitting of the sea, the nation circumvents other hostile nations, and the clouds of glory, all of these are aspects in both פרשיות, why would that be? And, if you look closely, the similarities are inverses of each other. In בשלח they get the באר and the clouds, here they lose them. There they don’t fully defeat עמלק and here they do. There Hashem decides that the nation should not confront other nations for fear that it will drive them back to Egypt and here they do confront the nations in front of them. There the wet sea turned into dry land and here the מדרש tells us about the mysterious miracle the dry rocks turned into rivers when the rocks above them moved to crush their enemies that had been waiting to ambush. Why would this generation be the inverse of יציאת מצרים?

One more observation: ויקחו אליך פרה אדומה תמימה, you shall take for yourself a completely red cow. We call it the פרה אדומה, but there are really two adjectives attached to this cow, it is אדומה תמימה. Say those two words a few times and think, where in the Torah have you heard these two descriptors used together? Way back in ספר בראשית there were twins born, and one was referred to as red, and the other as complete. עשו’s description is ויצא הראשון אנמוני and יעקב’s description is ויעקב איש תמה. And if you follow through the laws of the פרה אדומה they continue to show a duality that is reminiscent of the twins. There are the laws regarding one who dies in a tent (אדם כי ימות באהל) and the jars that are inside the tent with this dead person, and there are also the laws about someone who encounters a dead person out in the field (וכל אשר יגע על פני השדה), and the way that the person died was by a sword. Hmmm, a man who sits in the tents and gives importance to small jars? A man who uses a sword out in the field? Yakov was the complete man who sat in tents and crossed a river to go back for small jars, and Eisav was the איש שדה, and his father said about him על חרבך תחיה.

But, what does all this point to?

Here is my theory: it is famously said that Yakov and Eisav were supposed to be a duo that occupied two different roles in the world and together they would bring Hashem into the world and bring the world to completion. Then, when Yakov stole the ברכות from his brother Eisav, he assumed the responsibility to carry out both roles since Eisav would not comply with the plan (this is why he married both Rachel and Leah, even though people thought that Leah was meant to be with Eisav). This continues to be our mission to this day, to be dedicated to the study of Torah in the tent but also to be able to operate and exist in the field and bring Hashem into that space as well.

The generation that left Egypt had everything spoon-fed to them, they would never be able to step into the shoes of Eisav. But this generation would need to, they would be waging wars, conquering cities, building houses and farming the land. So, the equivalent of their parents getting the באר /clouds is them losing those things to become self-sufficient. They would finally face enemies and not run away, they would completely defeat עמלק. All this was meant to be their version of the liberation, tailored specifically for them so they could practice standing on their own two feet. And it is this generation that hears about the dualities of פרה אדומה. The ritual that pulls us out of the most intense state of impurity is where this generation is told that they have both roles in the world. they would be in the field and in the tents. And they would encounter death very closely, whether during wars, farming or building accidents, or natural sickness. And they needed to know that there is always a way back to purity even after the most intense state of טומאה. And regardless of whether you manifest as a “field man” or a “tent man” you can always purify your mission in the world.

But, I think they don’t get it right on the first try. Immediately after the פרה אדומה they try to confront Eisav head on and say, let us pass through to our land. We sat in slavery and we earned it. I think this was too brazen and they needed to first get complete control over their more innate characteristic, that of voice. And in fact, they are put in a situation where they need to use their voice shortly after. When Aharon dies the עמלק attack, but they try to trick the Jews into davening for the wrong thing by dressing up as כנענים and then when the Jews would pray to be saved from the כנענים they wouldn’t be answered, but they were able to pray to be saved from whichever nation was attacking them and they were saved. And then, later in the פרשה when the people complain, and the snakes come and attack the people, again they can admit to their mistake and pray correctly to be saved. And it is after these two correct usages of their voices that they can go back go using the secondary acquired trait of the sword. And at the end of the פרשה they can peacefully approach סיון for permission to pass through and when סיחון denies they can wage a war and win.

I think we are meant to learn from this פרשה that we are supposed to have the dual life of both Yakov and Eisav, but we can never lose focus of the fact that our more natural existence is to operate with our voice.