A Letter to Pope Leo XIV

I wrote this letter shortly after Pope Leo XIV became the first American Pope of the Catholic Church. I mailed it to him later that afternoon.

Dear Holy Father,

As a rabbi who embraces Jesus as a God-intoxicated Jewish mystic, I wish you success and kindly request a moment of your time to address a concern that threatens both our communities.

As the first American Pope, I urge you to confront the rise of Dark Catholicism led by the cosplaying pope, Donald Trump, and his Catholic nationalist minion, J.D. Vance. This movement attracts young American men who are fearful of what Father Dwight Longenecker calls the “sexual revolution, with its ugly sisters feminism and homosexualism,” and who seek refuge in an abusive patriarchy that promotes hypermasculinity and the domination of women.

My people, too, are falling prey to the Dark Judaism of religious nationalism, where the Torah of Hillel— “What is hateful to you, do not do to another” (Shabbat 31a)—is supplanted by a hyper-masculine Jewish supremacy that seeks the merciless and utter destruction of the Other (Deuteronomy 7:2).

To redeem our respective peoples, we need an alternative model for what it means to be a man. Let me propose one that we both share: Jacob/Yisrael.

Read as myth rather than history, Jacob and Esau are twin brothers who symbolize the male ego and its Shadow. Esau, the eldest by mere seconds, is born covered in red hair, representing his fiery nature. He is impulsive and a hunter favored by his father. Jacob emerges from the womb clinging to (i.e., drawing his energy from) his brother’s heel (Yaakov/Jacob means “heel” in Hebrew). He prefers life among women, where he learns the arts of cooking and perhaps magic (Genesis 25:29; 30:37-40) and is cherished by his mother.

The exploitation and repression of Esau (the Shadow) define the first half of Jacob’s life. He purchases Esau’s birthright as the eldest brother for a bowl of stew and disguises himself as Esau to deceive their dying father and steal the blessing that rightfully belongs to Esau. Eventually, however, the Shadow demands its due; Esau swore revenge and plotted to kill Jacob.

Their mother warned Jacob about his brother’s plan and sent him to live with her brother Laban. This was a step toward manhood, as Jacob transitioned from the world of women to the world of his maternal uncle, a mixed-gender figure.

Jacob’s time with Laban was a period of karmic rebalancing, during which the trickster became the tricked. Jacob fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter, Rachel, but he was deceived into marrying her older sister, Leah. Ultimately, he married both sisters. The two sisters, mimicking Jacob and Esau in their competition for their father’s love, vied for Jacob’s affection.

Fearful of Laban as he once was of Esau, Jacob gathers his household and flees. Laban and his sons catch up with him, but instead of killing him, Laban demands that Jacob promise to respect and protect Leah and Rivkah. Jacob agrees, taking a further step toward maturity as a man.

As Laban returns home, Jacob learns that Esau is approaching with 400 warriors. Jacob seeks to appease Esau with peace offerings, but the Shadow cannot be bribed. Jacob then takes his family and possessions across Jabbok’s Ford and returns to face Esau alone. It is then that he wrestles with an angel, symbolizing the God-realized person Jacob could be if he could integrate his ego and his Shadow.

Though the angel wounds Jacob in the hip, the two wrestle each other to a draw. The angel demands that Jacob let him go, and Jacob demands a blessing in return. The blessing was a new name, a realization of his true nature: “No longer will you be called Yaakov/heel, but Yisrael/godwrestler, for you have wrestled with the divine and human and overcome” (Genesis 32:29).

Mirroring Laban’s departure and the angel’s appearance, Esau arrives as the angel departs. Instead of fighting, however, the two brothers embrace, kiss, and weep (Genesis 33:4). Why? Because, as Jacob/Yisrael says to Esau, “I have seen your face, which is like seeing the Face of God” (Genesis 33:10).

Seeing the Shadow—and by extension, the Other—as the Face of God frees us to love our neighbor and stranger (Leviticus 19:18, 34), calls us to eschew the way of the warrior, to walk at the pace of “the nursing children, sheep, and cattle” (Genesis 33:13), and to care for “the least of these” among us (Matthew 25:40).

This is the image of manhood we must provide our young men: a picture that makes butchering babies, starving infants, deporting children with cancer, and bombing civilians anathema. A picture that doesn’t equate being caring fathers with neonatalism or impregnating as many women as possible. We must celebrate a masculine ideal that defines strength as the capacity to wrestle with God rather than bully the weak, and to see every face as one face of the Faceless One.

Thank you for listening to me, Your Holiness. May you go from strength to strength.

Your brother in the thousand names of the Nameless One in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28),

Rabbi Rami Shapiro