The Jew Who Looked Like Esau

By Rabbi Shmuly Begun

SAN DIEGO — Jacob Zvi Griner grew up in a religious Jewish household in Zamosc, Poland. When the Nazis occupied his city in 1939, his family was forced into the ghetto. His father was taken away, presumed murdered. Jacob narrowly escaped the horrific fate of his mother and sisters, who were lined up and shot at the edge of pits outside Izbica.

During his desperate flight, he obtained a Catholic baptism certificate under the name Gregor Pawlowski, a document that saved his life on at least one occasion. After the war, he found refuge in Catholic orphanages, was formally baptized at thirteen, and eventually entered a seminary, being ordained into the priesthood in 1958.

Despite his new life, Pawlowski’s Jewish identity remained a deep part of him. In 1966, he shared his story with a Catholic newspaper in Krakow and began planning his move to Israel. Before departing, he erected a monument at the site where his mother and sisters were killed and established a burial plot for himself there, with an inscription that read, in part: “I abandoned my family, in order to save my life at the time of the Shoah. They came to take us for extermination. My life I saved and have consecrated it to the service of G-d and humanity.”

In 1970, Pawlowski arrived in Israel, where he was greeted by Catholic clergy and, remarkably, reunited with his brother Chaim, who had survived the war and recognized him from the newspaper article. For 38 years, Father Pawlowski served Catholic communities in Jaffa.

Seven years before Pawlowski’s passing, Rabbi Shalom Malul, dean of the Amit Ashdod Yeshiva, traveled to Poland with his students. There, the rabbi discovered the unique headstone Pawlowski had prepared for himself at his family’s mass grave. This discovery sparked a friendship between the priest and the rabbi. During their conversations, Pawlowski expressed his wish to be buried as a Jew next to his family, stating in his will and to Rabbi Malul: “I was born a Jew, I lived as a Christian, and I will die as a Jew,” adding that his “heart feels Jewish.”

Honoring his wish, Rabbi Malul, accompanied by his students, ensured Pawlowski received a Jewish burial and the mourner’s Kaddish, completing the journey of Jacob Zvi Griner’s soul full circle, fulfilling his desire to return to his people in death.

Four thousand years ago, in a tent in the desert, our forefather Isaac, advanced in years, his eyes grown dim, called for his son Esau. He wanted to give him the blessing of the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth. “Bring me the food I love,” he said, “and I will bless you.”

Rebecca overheard. She knew the blessing was meant for Jacob, Esau’s younger brother, the more righteous one. So she dressed Jacob in Esau’s hunting clothes. She covered his smooth arms with goatskin so they would feel hairy to blind fingers. She placed the savory dish in his hands and sent him in.

Isaac, tasting the food, feeling the rough arms, smelling the scent of the field, gave the blessings to the son who stood before him, who looked and felt exactly like Esau.

But Rebecca knew something only a mother could see: one day, her descendants would not all look like Jacob.

They would strip off the garments of Jacob and put on the clothes of Esau, hunters of success in the great wide world. They would stand before the nations and say, “I am Esau, your firstborn.”

How would the blessing still find them when that day came?

If Rebecca had simply told her husband that Esau wasn’t worthy, the blessing would have been given to Jacob in his own clothes, the perfect Jew, the one you could spot from a thousand feet away. But then what of the Jew who would one day look like Esau? Would he be left outside the gate, deprived of the blessings of our forefather Isaac?

Rebecca was declaring, across four thousand years: The blessing is not only for the Jacob who stays in the tents of Torah, but also for the Jacob who walks into the world wearing Esau’s clothes, the one who tries to cover the fact that he is Jewish, and yet still, deep beneath layers of borrowed identity, carries a Jewish soul that will not die.

The soul of Jacob Zvi Griner, who declared, “I was born a Jew, I lived as a Christian, and I will die as a Jew.” And the soul of the Jew who lives a life as a self-proclaimed atheist and will suddenly, in his final breath, cry out the Shema prayer, like a man waking from a long nightmare and remembering who he truly is.

That Jew is not a traitor. That Jew is the very one Rebecca dressed up and pushed forward into the tent. Rebecca saw us—all of us. The traditional and the assimilated. The observant and the oblivious. The proud and the ashamed. She wanted each of us to receive those blessings.

No Jew is too far. No Jew is “just another Esau.” Every Jew who stands before the world looking like Esau is still, underneath it all, Jacob. And the blessing is still his.

Look in the mirror and tell yourself: you are not Esau. You are Jacob.

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Rabbi Shmuly Begun is the director of Chabad of Tierrasanta and a Judaic Studies faculty member at Torah High School. He also serves as a member of the Kaiser Permanente Spiritual Care Team.