Dreyfus, Esav, and the Slow Cure for Antisemitism

Dear Friends, 

This morning—Friday—my gardener shared something that stopped me in my tracks.

As we spoke, he told me how often he overhears raw antisemitism from vendors, contractors, and delivery people who don’t realize he's Jewish. Some of the comments, he said, are so shocking that he’s learned to simply walk away.

It was a sobering reminder: hatred isn’t only “out there.” It’s local. Casual. Sometimes muttered when people mistakenly think they’re among their own. And when you hear it, it feels like nothing has changed.

Which is why something that happened this week in France feels so strangely timely.

A Promotion Arrives—100 Years Late

More than a century after the infamous Dreyfus Affair, the French government posthumously promoted Captain Alfred Dreyfus to the rank of brigadier general.

For most people today, Dreyfus is a name buried in the past. But in 1894, he stood at the center of one of the greatest scandals of modern antisemitism. A Jewish officer in the French Army, he was falsely accused of espionage, convicted on forged evidence, and sentenced to life on Devil’s Island.

The real spy was soon found. The evidence of forgery became undeniable. France tore itself apart over the question of his innocence. Émile Zola wrote J’accuse! exposing the conspiracy. And after more than a decade in brutal isolation, Dreyfus was finally exonerated and reinstated. But France never granted him the rank he deserved.

Until now.

Over 125 years later, with near-unanimous support, the French government finally awarded Dreyfus the promotion denied to him in life. It doesn’t erase the injustice. Nothing can. But it does teach something subtle yet profound:

Some cures for antisemitism are slow. Painfully slow.
But time has a way of forcing truth to the surface.

And that message comes straight out of this week’s Parsha as well.

Esav’s Hatred—and Esav’s Hug

Twenty years earlier, Esav had sworn to kill Yaakov. His resentment was fierce, his anger white-hot, his determination unwavering. Yaakov was forced to flee for his life.

But as Parshas Vayishlach opens, Yaakov returns home, terrified of what awaits him. He prepares for war. He prays. He sends gifts in waves. He divides his family into camps.

And then… the unimaginable happens.

“Esav ran toward him, embraced him, fell upon his neck, kissed him, and they wept.”

The moment is shocking not only because it defies expectation, but because Chassidus explains it reveals a deeper truth: hatred—even real hatred—can cool with time. When the heat of resentment fades, the humanity beneath can sometimes re-emerge.

Esav never became a tzaddik. But something in him softened. Time did its quiet work.

The Long Arc of Redemption

Antisemitism has never vanished. It mutters in casual conversations, as my gardener reminded me this morning. It terrorizes on global stages. And it stains the pages of Jewish history with episodes like Dreyfus.

But Jewish history also teaches this:

Falsehood has an expiration date.
Truth does not.

Sometimes the world needs decades—or centuries—to catch up.
Sometimes the healing is slow, uneven, and incomplete.

But in the long arc of Jewish time, the Esavs of the world do soften. The Dreyfuses do get their promotion. And the Jewish people keep walking forward, as Yaakov did—never with naiveté, but always with faith.

May we merit a time when the embrace is real, the respect is immediate, and the justice is not delayed by 125 years. And may the world learn at last what Yaakov knew all along:

Time reveals truth.
And truth, ultimately, prevails.

Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Ruvi New