Thread by @ZoharAtkins

I wrote about how to make peace and end rivalry, looking at the story of Jacob and Esau.

The key lies in the Torah's play on three words:

mincha (gift/sacrifice)
machane (camp/company/troop)
chen (grace favor)

etzhasadeh.substack.com/p/beauty-is-pe…

And so the gift (mincha) went on ahead, while [Jacob] remained in the camp (machaneh) that night. (Genesis 32:22)

And [Esau] asked, “What do you mean by all this company [machane] which I have met?” [Jacob] answered, “To gain my lord’s favor (chen).” (33:8)

According to rabbinic interpretation, the meeting between Jacob and Esau is a world-historical encounter, a compressed sign of all that is to come in the conflict between Jerusalem and Rome.

Jacob hides in his machane, be it real or affected. Afraid of his brother, he seeks to flex a sense of strength in his numerical mass, in his posse. He sends gifts ahead to Esav to create a sense of distance, a sense of importance.

Both the camp and the gift allow Jacob to mediate his relationship. His gifts are a power move, a gambit of realpolitik. His camp helps him feel safe. Of course, we know, Jacob is insecure. Jacob’s craftiness is layered.

There are two ways that we can go astray in our self-evaluations and in our presentations. We can rely upon our gifts and talents (minchateinu), our offerings, for our sense of self-esteem. This is Cain’s error. He conflates his self worth with his creative capacity.

On the other side, we can rely on our armory, our power, to shield us from the bothers of inner life. If we just have enough of a camp to surround ourselves with, we don’t need to confront our existential tumult.

Grace—chen—the small word concealed in the bluster of talent and the stability of fortification, is the way out. It is also a word that means beauty. And it is a word that recurs obliquely in the upcoming holiday of Channukah.

To end the bitter strife of brothers, to pacify the conflict between the deceiver and the hunter, requires a shift from a focus on power to an appreciation of beauty.

War is an endless when the goal is domination. Peace dwells on those who are guided by beauty, who know their own beauty, and can find beauty in those around them.

If politics is war by other means (von Clausewitz), aesthetics is peace by other means.