Rabbi Miriam's sermon - delivered Shabbat 14th December 2024
If someone knocks on your door, you’ll probably open it. If someone says hi in the street, you’ll probably say hello back. But if someone phones you, how many of us will actually answer it?
A survey by the site USwitch earlier this year surveyed 2000 people and found that a quarter of people aged 18–34 never answer their phones. Nearly 70% prefer to text / Whatsapp to calling. Some quite literally never answer the phone.
And the phone calls which arouse the most dread are… in the workplace. Some 18-34 year old employees will do almost anything to avoid a phone call. Someone I know very well has younger employees who have accepted that he will sometimes phone them, but ask for a warning message before, so they can prepare themselves!
Why this phone phobia?
There are different theories. One is that, in 2009, phone calls on a mobile would have cost a fortune, so my generation and younger, scolded by our parents for running big phone bills, moved to texting. That’s what we got used to.
And so a generation of texters were born: mobile phone calls were for emergencies and the phone was used infrequently to speak to your grandparents.
Indeed more than half of the young people who responded in the Uswitch survey admitted that they thought an unexpected call means bad news.
The Psychotherapist Eloise Skinner explains that anxiety around calls comes from
"an association with something bad - a sense of foreboding or dread".
The hashtag #phoneanxiety has hundreds of thousands of tags on social media.
But also a phone call demands attention and time at this moment. It requests an immediate response. With a text message, you can glance at the message in a moment, and understand it because it’s structured better than a phone call. And you can consider and structure your response.
But there’s another reason, which is that we are increasingly shying away from direct communication with other people. A stranger striking up a conversation with us on the tube or in the park could be seen as weird or awkward these days. A Stamford study showed that traditional ways of dating like meeting at church (or presumably shul) or meeting through school have been on the decline since the 1940s. And there’s a correlation between the spread of the internet and the pace at which meeting in person has declined.
Are we at the point where we find it awkward to communicate in real time? Where picking up the phone is just too intimate and uncomfortable?
And what do we lose when we move to text messages? Without hearing the tone of someone’s voice it is so much easier to misconstrue a text. Hence the rise of emojis to replace our ability to convey actual emotions. And it’s not just about misconstruing messages, but what do we lose by way of direct interpersonal communication?
Our parasha, Vayishlach, paints a portrait of Yaakov Avinu, our ancestor Jacob.
I would like to suggest that Yaakov was the first conversation-avoidant person in recorded history. As a youth, he tricks his way into what he wants, first taking advantage of his brother Esav's hunger to buy the birthright, then dressing up as Esav to mislead his father into giving him the blessing of the firstborn. When his ruse is discovered, he doesn’t attempt to fix things with words but quite literally runs away.
In Haran with his uncle Lavan, Yaakov’s conversation avoidance means that he is taken advantage of - he is working without proper pay, his wages changed ten times and in this, he is more a victim than a perpetrator.
But when it comes to his own family, his inability to communicate and have important conversations leads to great suffering. Sure, he may be tricked into marrying Leah as well as Rachel, but could he not have put his foot down when it came to marrying their two maidservants Bilha and Zilpa as well? Yaakov leaves the women to tear one another apart through their competition over baby-making. He oozes “don’t get involved”, “steer away from conflict” and “not my issue”.
At the end of last week’s sedra, Yaakov finally has enough of living with Lavan. But rather than negotiate a decent payment, he uses quasi-magical animal husbandry to walk off with a fortune. And, rather than part ways with Lavan openly and with dignity, he packs the entire family up and escapes by night. He tries to slip away from conflict. Of course, it catches up with him and last week’s parasha ended with a skirmish with Lavan.
And that brings us up to the opening of Vayishlach, in which Yaakov is forced to face Esav once more. He tries to avoid conflict in every way possible. He divides his camp up. He lovebombs Esav with lavish gifts. The Rashbam suggests that when Yaakov is left alone on the other side of the Yabok River to his family, it is actually because he was trying to escape. To save his family - but also to save his own hide - by simply not being there when Esav arrives.
But then something happens that prompts a change in Yaakov. In the night, the ultimate time of evading and slipping into the shadows, alone on the bank of the river, Yaakov encounters a mysterious “ish” - this messenger or angel - who wrestles with him. You cannot avoid a wrestle - you’re right up close, in a sort of violent embrace.
And as Yaakov is wounded in his hip or sciatic nerve, something shifts in him. He doesn’t limp away but pins the ish down, and faces him. He demands a blessing. He asks for the figure’s name. It is as if, wounded himself, he is finally requesting intimacy.
When he walks away he says something deeply significant:
וַיִּקְרָא יַעֲקֹב שֵׁם הַמָּקוֹם פְּנִיאֵל כִּי־רָאִיתִי אֱלֹהִים פָּנִים אֶל־פָּנִים וַתִּנָּצֵל נַפְשִׁי
Jacob named the place Peniel, meaning,
“I have seen a divine being face to face, yet my life has been preserved."
Like the 25-year-old who had a phone call and realised it was OK - lehavdil - Yaakov is forced to be panim el panim, face to face, and is shocked to have not only survived but to have had a transformational experience.
The next morning there is a calmness to the way Yaakov walks up to Esav. He bows seven times to the earth approaching him. Seven times reminding himself that he can look an adversary in the eye and thrive.
The two fall on one another and kiss - the ultimate way of “facing” another. And together they cry.
And what does Yaakov say when parting from Esav? It’s deeply parallel to what he said on parting from the ish:
רָאִיתִי פָנֶיךָ כִּרְאֹת פְּנֵי אֱלֹהִים וַתִּרְצֵנִי
“to see your face is like seeing the face of God, and you have received me well”
I didn’t avoid intimacy, and it was ok!
And OK, there is a somewhat anticlimactic parting of ways again when Yaakov doesn’t follow Esav as arranged - the Biblical equivalent of the empty “we must meet up again soon”. Later in the parasha, Esav moves to Seir so the brothers have space from one another. But this is a friendly parting, very unlike that of Yaakov’s initial running away.
Yaakov is thoroughly taught the same lesson twice by the wrestling figure and then Esav - you can be face to face with someone, look into their eyes, be honest with them, and emerge more whole. The Torah uses the word “shalem” - Jacob returned “complete” to his home. You don’t need to evade or avoid or elude.
Today, we could do with taking the same lesson on board; our contact-phobic generation. We need to practice looking another person in the eyes, going up to someone you don’t recognise at kiddush and saying hello and smiling at a stranger. And while I still love texts and Whatsapps and know they get results, let’s try to sometimes upgrade a text message to a phone call, and a phone call to a face to face meeting.
To quote Rabbi Steven Kushner:
“This is the reason we exist. To connect with each other. To counter our state of separation. And this is the primary function of religious living. To reorient ourselves from the divisive and ultimately destructive worship of self.”
So to close with an attempt at a Biblical joke, when the young Yaakov is in classic tricksy disguise with fur on his arms to imitate his brother, his father Yitzhak says “הַקֹּל קוֹל יַעֲקֹב וְהַיָּדַיִם יְדֵי עֵשָׂו” -
“The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” “The voice is the voice of Jacob” - that’s a good old fashioned phone call. “The hands are the hands of Esau” - this is of course a text message.
So in honour of our ancestor Yaakov, let’s try to embrace a bit more “kol Yaakov” in our lives, and a little less “yedei Eisav”.
Shabbat shalom!
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