By Harvey Sanders

I sometimes think my family is a little dysfunctional. But no matter how dysfunctional I think it is, I am frequently exposed to families that are much worse in my legal work. Family conflicts are often most visible at holiday get-togethers like Thanksgiving and Hannukah. This week’s scriptural reading is Vayishlach, and it contains one of the most challenging sibling rivalry stories from the Bible. 

Let’s recap. Jacob and Esau were the twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah. They struggled even in the womb. Although Esau was born first, Jacob purchased Esau’s birthright (the rights associated with being firstborn) for some lentil stew and bread. Esau later regretted this decision. Jacob and Rebekah then trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. Esau swore he would kill Jacob and Jacob fled to Haran to his uncle Laban. Jacob stayed away from his brother for twenty years. 

Our story picks up this week as Jacob returns to Canaan with his family. Esau approaches him with 400 men. Jacob is anxious and afraid. He plans for the worst and divides his family into two groups so that if one is attacked the other can escape. He prays. He wrestles with an angel that Rabbeinu Bahya describes as the celestial representative of Esau. He gifts Esau 550 heads of livestock to placate him. When they saw each other, Esau ran to Jacob, embraced him, kissed him and they wept. A modern biblical commentator, Rabbi Aviva Zornberg suggests “their embrace is a combination of hugging in love and grappling in struggle, as each one wants to merge with the other but also to defeat him.”  They went their separate ways, without violence, and when Isaac died, they buried him together. 

Not all of us have 550 heads of livestock to placate our siblings to resolve a dispute. But there are other ways. One of my favorite podcasts is Hidden Brain. In an episode in its series called Relationships 2.0, Prof. Julia Minson, a Harvard psychologist, discussed how to deal with conflicts better. People typically disagree because they believe they are right, and the other is wrong. People are often advised in connection with handling conflict that they should be more empathetic, to take the other person’s perspective and to exercise intellectual humility. But the other person may not recognize these efforts.  

Prof. Minson encourages parties to engage in conversational receptiveness. This increases transparency through four techniques with the acronym HEAR. The H stands for hedging – using words like sometimes and maybe. The E stands for emphasizing agreement – pointing out the areas of agreement. The A stands for acknowledgment – restating the other person’s position. The R stands for reframing to the positive – using positive words rather than negative. She gives this example: “Instead of saying I hate it when people interrupt me, you might say I really love it when people let me finish.”  Instead of making statements, ask more elaboration questions – call on the other person to explain why they believe what they believe. You might think being conversationally receptive makes you less persuasive, but the research shows the opposite because the other person will be more open to hearing what you have to say. But even if it doesn’t, it may prevent the conflict from derailing the relationship. 

I don’t know whether conversational receptiveness would have helped Jacob and Esau, but maybe it can help us get along better with our families and others. 

Harvey Sanders is a partner at Sanders & Sanders, a law firm specializing in labor and employment law. He is a Past President of Temple Beth Tzedek, and he leads the Federation’s Community Relations efforts. He recently completed two terms on the Federation’s Board of Governors.