Vayishlach

The passuk states: Yaakov said “please save me from the hands of my brother, from the hands of Eisav.” The Beis HaLevi asks, we know that Yaakov had one brother, Eisav, why then did Yaakov mention “מיד עשו from the hand of Eisav,” shouldn’t “מיד אחי from the hand of my brother” be enough? Also why did Yaakov mention “from the hands of” twice?

The Beis HaLevi answers that Yaakov knew that Eisav had two possible ways of fighting against him. One way is to simply come at war to try to kill him. The other way is to be friendly to Yaakov and act peacefully and influence Yaakov for the bad. The words מיד עשו reflect Eisav who wanted to kill Yaakov, and מיד אחי reflects false brotherly love, who wants to persuade for bad.

One may think that the first way is worse than the second because Eisav would try kill Yaakov, and he would not remain, whereas the second way at least Yaakov would stay alive, just tainted with bad. However, in reality the second tactic is even worse than the first, because by being influenced for bad, it can bring a person to be kofer b’ikar and chas v’shalom deny Hashem. Yaakov davened to be saved from both possible ways: from the hands of Esav, who was coming to kill him, and from “achi”, from the friendly, brotherly, peaceful tactics which could bring him away from Hashem.

We find a similar idea by Chanukah and Purim. On Purim there is a chiyuv to make a seudah, while on Chanukah there is not. The Levush explains the reason is because on Purim the decree was physical, to physically kill out all of the Bnei Yisrael. Parallel to this, Chazal required us to make a seudah, to be able to praise Hashem through our eating and express our hakaras hatov for saving us physically. On Chanukah however, there was a different danger. The Yevanim wanted us to become shmad, they wanted to annul mitzvos such as Shabbos, learning Torah, and milah, and were happy for us to become friends with them. This is a ruchnius milchama– a spiritual battle, with our neshama at stake. Once the Yevanim distance us from Hashem’s mitzvos in essence they are distancing us from Hashem. The Maccabim were called the name מכבי reflecting מי כמוכה באלים ה’ there is no one like You, Hashem! Therefore on Chanukah we sing hallel and say al hanissim in the beracha of hoda’ah to thank and praise Hashem for saving us and not letting our neshamos be destroyed spiritually. Therefore we do not have a chiyuv seudah, but rather a chiyuv of giving hallel and hoda’ah.