Brotherly Reconciliation (A Modern Midrash)
By Rabbi Jason Miller
This piece is based on a famous midrash on the reconciliation between Jacob and Esau which can be located in Torah Sh'leyma
The year is 2000 and Monotheist Microsystems, a family-owned high-tech company based in New Jersey is losing money for the first time since it was founded decades earlier by family patriarch Alan Ivri. The company relocated to New Jersey after Alan's death, at which time his son Irving took over managing the day-to-day operations. Now however, Irving's health is deteriorating (a bad combination of emphysema and Alzheimer's Disease) and he is preparing himself to turn the company over to his eldest (by four minutes) boy Eric.
Eric has always been the energetic, fast-paced son. Nearly kicked out of Harvard's B-School twice for grades, and once for running an alleged cheating scam, he is nevertheless Irving's favorite. Since his seventeenth birthday, Eric could be found racing fast sports cars with buxom blondes sitting shotgun. His twin brother, by contrast, not only frowned upon Eric's lavish automobiles, but he refused to drive a car at all in order to do his part to protect the environment. Jack graduated in the top percent from Yale's law school, editing the Law Review in his final year and turning down a Supreme Court clerkship to come back to New Jersey to help out in the family business. That was ten years ago when things were good for the company. The bursting of the dot-com bubble had not been kind to Monotheist Microsystems, and both Jack and Eric now felt a familial responsibility to their father to help turn the company around.
The Cambridge-New Haven rivalry was only another part of the brotherly schism between Eric and Jack. As their mother is always quick to point out, they'd been fighting since the womb, each trying to get the upper hand in becoming first born. The latest rift had to do with office space and egos more than anything else. While they each maintained a Vice President title, an equally sized stock portfolio, and a seat on the board, Eric had the coveted corner office adjacent to Dad's. Jack tried not to let it bother him, but inside it was an insult he just couldn't shake. Not wanting to be infantile, he avoiding running to Mom to complain about the lack of parity when it came to office geography.
Then came the last straw. Jack, who never gets sick, came down with a horrible sinus infection (it was definitely more than just allergies as Eric insisted) and couldn't make the quarterly board meeting that day. Still lying in bed the next morning and beginning to finally shake this sinus thing, Jack flipped the channel to CNBC. What he heard only made him think he was still dreaming. He rubbed his eyes and when he realized he was wide-awake, he prayed that he were still dreaming. The announcement made by the cute reporter standing on the floor of the Exchange made Jack nauseous. While he wasn't surprised to hear that his ailing father was turning the helm over to his brother Eric (he always was Dad's favorite after all), he never expected to find out this way.
He hurdled out of bed, threw on a pair of sweats, ran down the stairs, and biked over to his parents' home across town. His mother was still at the breakfast table reading the announcement (with a complete bio of Eric) in the Time's business section. ''This is outrageous!'' Jack exclaimed to his mother looking for the warm, motherly compassion he had always cherished and was accustomed to. What he was not expecting was a plan.
Rory apparently had already given this some thought. She explained her scheme to Jack, who was visibly uncomfortable with the idea, but decided to go along with it, even if it was totally out of character for him.
Jack headed over to the offices late that night. Only the cleaning crew was still there and he quickly flashed his ID to the security and headed up to the top floor. His key worked for all the executive suites, so he did not even need to bother the custodians. He unlocked his brother's corner office door and slid right up to the mahogany desk in Eric's $4,000 hand-made leather chair from Brazil (the shipping costs alone were more than Jack's chair from Staples). He knew his twin brother too well to get nervous when the password prompt came on the screen. He quickly keyed in ''stud007'' and went straight to the e-mail.
''Dear Dad,'' he began. As he typed, his hands got wetter and wetter with sweat. In the e-mail, he explained that he (meaning Eric) wanted to move to Las Vegas and become a professional gambler rather than head the family's company, which did not look fiscally sound. He wrote that Jack could become CEO since he probably wanted it more anyway. He signed it ''Love, your son Eric.'' As difficult as it was, Jack pretended not to consider the magnitude of what he was doing. This was fraud. This was his father he was lying to.
He knew that if he thought too long, he'd never click that ''send'' button. So, he just pressed it and held his breath. It seemed like minutes until the message moved from the "Outbox" to the "Sent" file. He wiped his hands on his pants, pushed the Brazilian chair back under Eric's desk, and headed home in the muggy summer night.
When Irving read the e-mail the next day, he was surprised but he understood. He never was one to argue with Eric over his decisions. (When Eric decided to spend a weekend in Atlantic City instead of joining his brother and their friends at the USY convention during their senior year of high school, Irving didn't say a word.) As soon as he deleted the message, Irving called up his attorney and ordered him to fax Jack a contract to officially make him CEO of Monotheist Microsystems and transfer the company into his name (Irving could do this without the consent of the Board - it was in the bylaws). So, with that, Jack Ivri was the new CEO of the company his grandfather founded two generations earlier.
-Two Years Later-
Jack built the business back up and they are actually coming out of the red for the first time since Irving transferred the company into Jack's name. Immediately after Eric got wind of the scheme, he tried to explain to Dad that he was duped by Jack, but Irving had to explain that a contract is a contract and he would not reverse the terms of the deal now. So, Eric decided to make the most of it and took off for Las Vegas. He did quite well for himself there, buying up several hotels on the strip and revolutionizing the online gaming industry.
In the winter of 2002, Jack had to go to California to meet with some prospective funders, and decided to go through Vegas to visit a client. Irving, who kept in touch with Eric on a daily basis, mentioned that Jack would be stopping in Vegas en route to LA that week. Apparently, Eric had decided that enough time had passed for him to see his estranged twin brother Jack. So, Eric sent an e-mail to Jack inviting him to have lunch with him at the Mirage hotel where Eric's online gaming company (Ubetcha.com) was now headquartered.
Jack was of course startled by the e-mail, but decided to take a chance with his brother. Perhaps enough time had elapsed that they could let bygones be bygones; after all, Eric was making a killing out in Vegas (doing much better than he would have staying at the company). So, Jack shot off a reply agreeing to lunch with Eric. But just to be safe he decided to take his son, Ronnie, with him.
Driving with Ronnie to Newark Airport, the magnitude of what was about to transpire occurred to Jack. He became very nervous. He had no idea what to expect from his brother. Would he take this opportunity to exact revenge on him for ''stealing'' the CEO position a couple of years earlier? He'd be on Eric's turf after all.
So, Jack decided that he couldn't go to the meeting empty handed. He went to a second-hand store in Downtown Newark, a few blocks away from the airport. He had no idea what he was even looking for. If the scheme he and his mother pulled a couple years earlier to steal the CEO job from Eric was out of context for Jack, then this most certainly was. He had to slip the pawnbroker a crisp clean 100-dollar bill to avoid the mandatory waiting period and background check. He couldn't believe he was purchasing a concealed handgun with Ronnie waiting in the car (in Downtown Newark no less!).
Jack made it through airport security with his newly purchased gun by taking advantage of the incompetence of the new federal security force, who were still in the transitional period. Of course they made him take his shoes off and remove the batteries from his cell phone and laptop, but when he set off the metal detector's sensor and the beeping noise went off, he calmly (without a single bead of sweat breaking through his forehead) explained it as his metal belt buckle which always sets off the machine. He felt guilty so blatantly lying in front of his son, but he couldn't think of that now. The plane was about to take off.
Once airborne, Jack got comfortable in his first-class seat, and drifted off to sleep (figuring that would be the best way to calm his nerves about the unexpected). No sooner did he fall asleep than he found himself in a deep dream stage. He was wrestling with another man. But it clearly wasn't Eric. No. He was fighting himself. The other man had his same face. He woke up in a cold sweat with a sharp pain in his leg. His foot had fallen asleep and the pain was shooting up toward his thigh.
When they arrived at the airport, they found a car service (sent by Eric) waiting for them to take them to the hotel. As they pulled up to the hotel entrance, Jack caught a glimpse of his brother. He looked so different even though it had only been two years. Jack got out of the car checking to make sure his weapon was accessible just in case.
Jack approached his brother. As he walked closer, he wondered why Eric had one hand behind his back? Was it a knife? Maybe it was a similar gun to the one Jack was now reaching for? Jack got closer to his twin brother, and all of a sudden, Eric made a sharp move with whatever was behind his back. Jack grabbed his gun.
He told Ronnie to get down, and just as Eric pulled his hand out to reveal what he had been concealing - a bottle of expensive single malt scotch, a gift - Jack pulled the trigger back four times. Never having shot a gun before, Jack was well off target, planting the bullets into Eric's shoulder. In shock, Eric lunged at Jack clobbering him over the head with the fifth of Dahlwinnie Scotch, knocking him senseless. The two men fell into each other's arms. At first, as both brothers felt the pain (Jack of his aching head and for Eric, the numbness in his right arm) tears began to well up in their eyes.
As they collapsed onto the concrete of the hotel's entrance one on top of the other, the little tears turned into huge sobs of happiness. To be together again. To touch each other again. It was as if they were in the womb yet again.
At that moment, with the pain escalating in Jack's head and in Eric's arm respectively, they put the past in the past and continued to cry. Then they gently kissed each other's cheeks in an act of brotherly reconciliation. As Jack began to dry his eyes, he took one look at his brother's shoulder. His four bullets had made four neat holes above Eric's tattoo that read, ''STUD.'' The same number of bullet holes as letters. And Jack knew exactly what that meant. He gave a small smile and knew that things would be different from now on.
