Dignity and honor are important attributes for most people. We zealously guard our own dignity, often over-reacting to perceived slights delivered by others. We recoil with horror from moments which compromise our own dignity, and we respond with rage when we feel belittled.
At the same time that we assert our own honor, we also cherish a conflicting virtue – a willingness to make peace and to appease enemies. Even when that reconciliation requires some compromise of our own standing, we often consider waiving our "right" to respect to be a praiseworthy act.
If we feel the strain of that tension – the desire to maintain our dignity and the desire to harmonious living with other – how much the more so when it involves compromising the dignity of a tradition or an institution we venerate?
It is precisely that conflict which our Torah portion explores in the reunification of our patriarch Jacob and his brother, Esau.
According to both biblical and rabbinic accounts, Esau was a wicked man – impulsive, immoral, violent, and ignorant. Jacob, to the contrary, is esteemed as the ancestor of the entire Jewish people, a role model for moral development and the acquisition of wisdom.
After a long estrangement, Jacob and his brother are about to meet again. Fearful for his life and for the safety of his beloved family, Jacob instructs his servants to approach his explosive brother and say, "Thus says your servant Jacob..."
Your servant!?! How can Jacob, patriarch of the Jewish people, devoted follower of God, grandson of Abraham, allow himself to stoop so low? How can he describe himself as the servant of a thug?
With indignation, Midrash Bereshit Rabbah records the view of Rabbi Judah ben Rabbi Shimon: "As a troubled fountain and a corrupted spring, so is a tzaddik (a righteous person) who abases himself before the wicked." Rabbi Judah asserts that Jacob's act of self-abasement constitutes the degradation of what Jacob stands for as well: the Torah and the service of God. As a tzaddik, Jacob stands for something beyond his own personal identity. Therefore, he cannot allow himself to be slighted, since to do so causes the Torah itself to be diminished.
This view is reflected in the Talmudic dictate prohibiting a Torah scholar from waiving the appropriate honor. As an individual, that choice might be an option, but as a walking symbol of Torah and of God, such a slight would encourage disdain for the sacred.
In opposition to this view, the Midrash relates the time that Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi, the compiler of the Mishnah itself, sent a letter to the Antoninus, the emperor of Rome. His salutation was "From your servant Judah to our Sovereign, the Emperor Antoninus." When his scribe saw Rabbi's salutation, he was horrified, and exclaimed, "My master, why do you treat your honor so lightly?" To which Rabbi responded, "Am I better than my ancestor Jacob?"
Rabbi Judah ha-Nasi understands the wisdom and depth of Jacob's precedent: in the interests of human harmony, in pursuit of peace, a willingness to compromise our own dignity may indeed constitute the highest service of God, the most powerful assertion of the dignity of all humankind.
Not that dignity is so cheap, but that peace is so precious.
Shabbat Shalom.