ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at an expansive view of identity and self-understanding, it seems safe to turn to Moses Maimonides, medieval Jewry’s most renowned philosopher and a champion of universal and rational truths. It discusses the midrashic pronouncement that seems to underlie the epistle even of the worldly, wise, and rational Maimonides: Esau hates Jacob. The account of the meeting between Jacob and Esau is truly one of the strange and dramatic episodes in the Torah. Jacob is returning to his homeland after twenty years of exile. He had left at the behest of his mother, Rebecca, who feared that Esau wished to kill him for his— and her— act of deception. The story of Jacob intimates the paradigm of a powerless Jewish life. Jacob, in the eyes of the midrashic masters, seems an apt representative of that life.
