There are few better examples of how our interpretation of a biblical episode can shape our Jewish outlook than one of the main events of this week’s sidrah, Vayishlach: the encounter between the estranged brothers Jacob and Esau.

Twenty-two years earlier Jacob had fled his home, after tricking Isaac into giving him Esau’s blessing, leaving his twin vowing to kill him after their father’s death. Before the meeting, Jacob is apprehensive. But Esau did not take his revenge.

Instead, the text records that Esau “ran to meet him and embraced him… and he kissed him and they wept”. Later in the sidrah, the two brothers bury their father together.

For some commentators, the dramatic reunion seems too good to be true and they seize on the fact that the verb, vayishakehu, “and he kissed him” is written unusually in the Torah with a series of dots above the letters, explaining that this casts doubt on Esau’s sincerity. According to one midrash, he was poised like a vampire to bite Jacob until his brother’s neck miraculously turned to marble.

Another midrash contends that the kiss was not “wholehearted”, but in contrast offers the view of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai that, although it is well-known that “Esau hates Jacob”, nevertheless at this moment Esau was merciful and his kiss genuine.

However, Shimon bar Yochai’s saying, Eisav soneh l’’Yaakov, “Esau hates Jacob,” came to have a life of its own, as if laying down a general principle about relations between Jews and non-Jews. Esau, as this week’s sidrah goes on to tell, is the father of the Edomites. Edom, for the rabbis, came to stand for Rome or Christianity, representing an archetype for the persecutors of Jews.

In an essay for the website TheTorah.com, the American scholar Professor Marty Lockshin gives instances of 20th century American rabbis citing the maxim “Esau hates Jacob” in the context contemporary antisemitism. Thus antisemitism, in the eyes of some rabbis, remains a permanent, inevitable feature of the pre-messianic world order.

The negative view of Esau/Edom seems reinforced by the haftarah for Vayishlach, that is read in Sephardi and some Ashkenazi synagogues, the Book of Obadiah. While Jacob (Israel), will be restored, ruin awaits Esau/Edom, a nation “greatly despised”.

“And the house of Jacob shall be a fire… And the house of Esau for stubble,” forecasts Obadiah. Some of the prophesy matches word for word a similar attack on Edom in Jeremiah chapter 49 and echoes the theme of the haftarah for Toldot a fortnight ago from Malachi, who predicts that Edom’s attempt to rebuild their mountain fastness will be frustrated because they are “the people whom the Lord execrates forever”.

The Edomites are castigated for what is considered their treachery when Jerusalem falls to the Babylonians. In the famous Psalm 137, “By the rivers of Babylon”, the Edomites are seen to call for the city to be razed. Because of the “violence done to your brother Jacob”, thunders Obadiah, “you shall be cut off forever.”

Centuries later, the Edomites are cast by the historian Josephus as a warlike people, rushing to battle “as if to a feast”, as if in perpetual fulfilment of the blessing Isaac eventually gave to their ancestor Esau, that he would be a man “who lives by the sword”.

A prophesy can be read as a commentary on historic events rather than a proclamation of archetypal truth. But no wonder that Esau got a bad name. In the spiritual allegories of Chasidism, Esau represents the evil inclination within the internal struggles of the soul, “the other side”.

But against the denigration of Esau and the fateful idea of “Esau hates Jacob”, there are alternative readings. Lord Sacks, in his book Not in God’s Name, which calls for the interpretative disarming of scriptural texts that excite inter-religious conflict, offers a subtle exposition of the meeting between the two brothers, which is sensitive to the nuances of the text.

As well as the gifts Jacob has prepared for his brother, he asks Esau to accept “my blessing”. For Lord Sacks, the reconciliation between the two brothers involves Jacob restoring the blessing that he had taken from Esau so many years before. It is Jacob’s realisation that he does not need the blessing of Esau but must accept his own destiny, which comes after his wrestling match with the angel when he is renamed “Israel”. Rabbi Sacks goes on to observe, “The choice of Jacob does not mean the rejection of Esau.”

Rabbi Sacks also notes the significance of the Torah command later given to the Israelites, “Do not hate an Edomite, for he is your brother”.

That same command is also cited by the Tunisian rabbi Haham Abraham Belais (1773-1853) as an obligation to love Christians as brothers, which is quoted in the recently published Memorable Sephardi Voices. Whereas Edom symbolised Christianity in its negative sense, now it is invoked to promote a message of religious tolerance.

Commands to love one’s neighbour or the stranger may be held up to illustrate Judaism’s enlightened ethics. But what the episode in this week’s sidrah shows is that we must be on guard too against more insular traditions, that are altogether more distrustful of the world.