No Golden Shields: Navigating Power Without Losing Our Way - Vayishlah 5786

The Eagle Standard — a symbol of Rome’s power.

Jacob is on his way home after twenty years away. He left under painful, complicated circumstances — fleeing Esav’s fury after taking his blessing — and in the years since has built a family, acquired great wealth, and survived the endlessly shifting loyalties and dangers of his father-in-law Lavan’s household. Now he turns back toward the land he left as a young man, carrying with him not only wives and children and flocks, but the unresolved past.

As he approaches the boundaries of his homeland, he sends messengers ahead to his brother, who was known to dwell in a region near Mt. Seir, in what is today southern Jordan. 

The messengers return with a terrifying report: Esav is already coming toward you — and four hundred men are with him. Overcome with fear, Jacob divides his camp, hoping that if one part is attacked the other might survive. He prays for God’s protection and then he sends forward a carefully staged procession of gifts, waves of animals moving toward Esav, each accompanied by the same humble message: “These belong to your servant Jacob; they are a gift for my lord Esav.”

That night, after moving his family to a safe place across the Yabbok River, Jacob goes back, for reasons left unexplained, alone, to the other side. Under the cover of dark, a mysterious, unidentified figure wrestles with him until dawn, wounding him at the hip. Jacob, however, eventually gains the upper hand, and refuses to release his assailant without a blessing. The stranger gives him a new name—Israel — and the renamed patriarch limps toward the sunrise.

Then Esav appears. Jacob approaches, bowing seven times as he nears his brother. Esav — who had previously vowed to kill him — runs to him, embraces him, falls on his neck, and kisses him. They weep. They speak. They part — peacefully, if not intimately — and each goes his own way.

It is a moving reunion, poignant and complex. But this week, I’ve been thinking less about the emotional reconciliation and more about one small but nagging detail that seems missing from the story:

Why did Jacob reach out to Esav in the first place?

Ramban, Nachmanides, zeroes in on this question with characteristic acuity. Looking at a map of the ancient Near East, he notes explicitly that Jacob did not need to pass through Esav’s territory in order to get from Haran to Canaan. In other words, there was no need for this encounter. Jacob could have made it home without ever alerting Esav to his return. And yet he sends messengers, initiating contact before anything happens at all, stirring the embers of a fire that might otherwise have remained dormant.

Ramban is troubled by this strange detail. He cites a midrash that likens Jacob’s outreach to grabbing a dog by the ears—provoking danger that is not seeking you. And then Ramban makes an even bolder move. He sees in Jacob’s unnecessary embassy to Esav an echo of another moment in Jewish history:

“In my opinion, this hints at the fact that we caused ourselves to fall into the hands of Edom, for the Hasmoneans entered into a covenant with the Romans, and some even went to Rome to seek their aid; and that became the beginning of our downfall.”

To understand Ramban’s claim, we need to remember two things. First, rabbinic tradition understands the Jacob–Esav relationship as archetypal of the long, uneasy relationship between Israel and Edom — Edom eventually becoming a code-word for Rome. Which means that Jacob’s actions toward Esav are not merely biographical details; they become spiritual templates for how Israel relates to great empires.

The second thing we must remember is a chapter of Jewish history most Jews never learn. Our knowledge of the Hasmoneans — the heroes of the Hanukkah story — usually begins and ends with the Maccabean victory over Antiochus Epiphanes and the rededication of the Temple. But what comes next is almost completely unknown to many of us, and yet it represents one of the great turning points in Jewish history.

After the revolt, Judea becomes an independent kingdom. But independence does not immediately bring stability or security. Hasmonean rule is from its inception insecure — surrounded by threats, led by rulers who are priests-turned-kings, and riven by internal tensions. So Judah Maccabee turns to Rome — a rising power already reshaping the Mediterranean world—to forge an alliance.

According to 1 Maccabees, a pro-Hasmonean text preserved in many Christian Bibles, Judah learns of Rome’s victories, its conquests, its might. He hears that Rome makes alliances with those who approach it. And so he decides that Judea should be one of those allies. The envoys arrive in Rome, and the Senate drafts a treaty of “friendship and alliance”: Rome promises never to abandon the Jews; the Jews promise not to aid Rome’s enemies. On parchment, it is a pact between equals. But beneath the diplomatic language, something is shifting. A small, vulnerable kingdom, barely emerging from war, is beginning to pin its security on the goodwill of a distant empire whose power it admires.

A few decades later, under Simon, Judah’s brother, the outreach deepens. After securing a major victory, 1 Maccabeestells us:

“Simon sent Numenius to Rome with a large gold shield weighing a thousand minas, to confirm the alliance with the Romans.”

A thousand minas, over half a ton of gold, carried across the sea as a gift.

From the perspective of 1 Maccabees, this is a moment of triumph. Judea honors Rome; Rome honors Judea. But listen closely and another register emerges: a small nation trying to secure its future by impressing the mightiest power it knows; a leadership dazzled by empire, hoping that proximity to greatness might guarantee protection.

Over the next century, the Hasmonean kingdom expands — and cracks. Some rulers forcibly convert neighboring peoples. Court politics turn brutal. Religious legitimacy erodes. By the time Queen Salome Alexandra dies in 67 BCE, her two sons, Hyrcanus II and Aristobulus II, are locked in a battle for the throne. They each have factions behind them. They each seek allies. And in their conflict, the pattern Ramban hints at becomes painfully clear.

Both brothers appeal to Rome. Both send gifts. Both promise loyalty. And when Pompey finally marches east, he does so not as a conqueror seeking spoils but as an invited arbiter of a Jewish civil war. Josephus tells us he hears arguments from both sides, evaluates which leader would be easier to control, and then besieges Jerusalem. In 63 BCE, he breaks through the Temple walls, enters the Holy of Holies, and reinstates Hyrcanus — not as king, but as a puppet high priest. Judea is now a client state.

Modern historians like Shaye J.D. Cohen emphasize that Rome did not swoop in unprovoked. Rome entered Judean politics because Judea opened the door. But, Cohen argues, it could only do so because the Hasmonean state was already hollowed out from within. The embassies did not create the corruption; they revealed it. And then they accelerated it, deepening dependence on a power Judea could neither control nor fully trust.

Ramban looks back at this history and sees an echo of Jacob’s unnecessary embassy to Esav. Both moments, he suggests, involve fear reaching toward power without inner clarity; both caution us about the spiritual dangers of unnecessary entanglement with forces larger than ourselves.

One might conclude from this that Ramban advocates total withdrawal: stay away, do not engage, avoid entanglement because power is self-interested and will fail you when it matters. And that perspective certainly resonates with the warning of Rabban Gamliel son of Rabbi Judah the Prince, who teaches in Pirkei Avot:

“Be careful with the government, for they only befriend a person for their own needs. They seem like friends when it benefits them, but they do not stand by a person in their time of distress.”

Rabban Gamliel is not cynical so much as clear-eyed: do not confuse proximity with protection; do not surrender moral clarity for promises the powerful cannot be trusted to keep.

Yet this cannot be the whole story. Because the Torah does not instruct us to withdraw from public life. Rather, it generally commands engagement — pursue justice, defend the vulnerable, strengthen community, shape society toward the common good. To absent ourselves from public life entirely, or to treat power as inherently corrupting, runs counter to the socially conscious spirit at the core of our tradition.

So what kind of relationship with power should we seek?

The Christian theologian H. Richard Niebuhr, in his classic Christ and Culture, offers a framework — one that works for Jews if we substitute “faith” or “Torah” for “Christ.” Niebuhr describes how faith communities define themselves as against culture; as harmonious with culture; as positioned above culture; as living in unresolved tension with culture; and aa aiming to transform culture. These are not prescriptions so much as postures — inner stances that shape how faith communities meet the world.

These categories help us see that the question is not merely whether to engage or withdraw, but why and how — and what beliefs about security and purpose motivate us when we reach toward power.

Ramban seems to lean toward “against.” Rabban Gamliel gestures toward “in tension.” But the prophet Jeremiah offers something else entirely.

Jeremiah ministers during a period of national anxiety as Babylon rises to the north. Judah’s leaders, panicked, turn to Egypt for protection. The strategy makes geopolitical sense, but Jeremiah nevertheless fiercely objects. He sees Judah’s vulnerability not as the root of the crisis but as a symptom of something deeper.

There is rot within. Broken institutions, unjust systems, moral callousness, spiritual confusion. Judah turns to Egypt because it cannot bear to look inward.

For Jeremiah, no alliance, no army, no treaty can secure a society that has abandoned its moral foundation. And conversely, a society anchored in justice, equity, and truth possesses a resilience that no empire can fully extinguish.

Jeremiah is not preaching isolationism. He is preaching alignment. Engagement without moral grounding collapses. Engagement rooted in righteousness strengthens and sustains.

This struggle — between fear and purpose, insecurity and integrity, flattery and faith — is not ancient history. We are watching it unfold in our own time. Too many leaders, institutions, and ordinary citizens twist themselves into shapes that betray their values in order to maintain the favor of those whose commitments shift with their moods and whose loyalties lie primarily with themselves. Too many curry favor with the powerful, hoping proximity will grant protection. Too many barter their credibility for access. And we are witnessing in real time how readily such leaders discard those who supported them when they are no longer useful.

Currying favor does not merely reveal insecurity; it strengthens the very forces that imperil us. It deepens our dependence on those who do not share our commitments. It blinds us to the ways we are being used. Judea’s outreach to Rome did not simply signal internal decay; it accelerated it, aligning the kingdom with an empire that would ultimately dominate and destroy it. And something similar is happening now in our civic life, as people who ought to know better elevate, excuse, or empower those whose ambitions threaten the values they claim to uphold.

Our tradition does not ask us to flee from the world. It asks us to meet the world with clarity and purpose. To engage power, but never from panic. To build alliances, but never at the cost of our values. To know who we are before deciding whom to trust or support or empower.

Jacob walks toward the sunrise limping — wounded, renamed, still moving forward. Perhaps that is the Torah’s final wisdom about navigating power: that we will not emerge unscathed from the struggles of our age; that fear will accompany us; that danger is real; but that we can still meet the world with integrity. We can still refuse to offer golden shields to those who demand tribute. We can still engage not as supplicants seeking favor but as partners in the holy work of shaping a society worthy of its people.

May we walk with courage.

May we discern wisely what and whom we strengthen with our words and our silence.

May we engage power in ways that honor our deepest commitments.

And may we never forget that our safety, our dignity, and our moral future cannot be outsourced, but must be cultivated—patiently, persistently, together—rooted in justice, animated by compassion, and guided always by the enduring light of Torah.

So may it be God’s will. Amen.