[Avodah] maaseh avot siman lebanim

[Eli Turkel via Avodah]

We are supposed to learn how to act from the avot.
The problem is that we frequently we have opposite mefarshim on what
happened

I gave one example previously from the story of Chushim and the burial of
Yaakov

Another example is from this past week's parsha: Yaakov meets Esav and
sends him various gifts and finally prostates himself before Yaakov
I have seen 3 approaches to this story
1) We see how far one should go to avoid possible bloodshed
2) Yaakov's bowing down to Esav was wrong and a chillul hashem
3) Yaakov should not have started with contacting Esav perhaps had he gone
straight to Canaan Esav would not have reacted. Why look for trouble

-- 
Eli Turkel