Toldot (Torah)

I would like to propose one or two questions on this parshah, but without giving any definite answers. It centers upon two converging problems, which are really one. In terms of archetypes, we have here the beginning of the motif of Israel & the world: the idea of an antagonistic relation between Jewry and the other nations, symbolized by Jacob and Esau already struggling in the womb: “when one ascends, the other goes down; when the other ascends, the former goes down.” Esau is viewed by turn as a symbol of the hated Roman empire, of the Medieval Christian Church and, in a post-religious age, perhaps as the Gentile world generally. It is thus in the midrash, and thus in a classic medieval homileticist such as R. Nissim of Gerona, who devotes the 2nd chapter of his Derashot ha-Ran, immediately after the Creation, to this theme.

Secondly, as in the Akedah story, the modern reader is confronted here by profound moral problem: how are we to relate to Jacob’s underhanded methods? Twice in this section Jacob receives that which was due his brother: once, taking advantage of Esau’s weakness, he “buys” the birthright for a bowl of red lentil soup; a second time, using a deliberate, elaborate scheme to deceive his father, he gets the much-coveted blessing. Moreover, the text does not even criticize him; instead, we are told “and Esau despised the birthright” (25:34).

The traditional explanation is that Jacob was merely reclaiming that which was rightfully his, since the birthright essentially implied spiritual leadership, the one who was to continue the Abrahamic covenant with God. Esau is shown here as a grossly physical person, without any sense of moderation, returning from the hunt and saying “If I don’t eat right away, I’ll die!” (One is reminded of the old Yiddish joke of the visitor, asked by his hosts about various common acquaintances, and replying “Geshtorben!” “He’s dead!,” finally explaining, “When I’m eating to satisfy my hunger, the whole world is as if dead!”) He even refers to the act of eating using a word usually used for the feeding of animals or fowl: “Hal’iteni,” literally “stuff me with that red stuff.” Moreover, Rashi goes so far as to see that, since they were twins, Ya’akov was in any event really the firstborn because he was conceived first, describing the womb as a kind of narrow tube, in which what goes in first comes it last. Notwithstanding all this, for many of us the problems remain real ones. One is reminded too much of the most negative features of the Galut Jewish mentality: all’s fair in love and war where goyim are concerned. (More on the problem of Jacob’s character next week.)

Another question that bears further examination is why, of the little told regarding Isaac’s adult life as such (and sandwitched between the two phases of the Esau-Jacob competition), there are chosen the specific incidents recorded in Chapter 26: the incident in Gerar; the sowing of the land; the digging of wells; the pact with Abimelech.

A few other interesting sidelights: the motif used to explain the Akedah, that in fact God wanted Isaac to be made a sacrifice, but not to be killed, reappears here in two comments of Rashi. Two unique features of Yitzhak’s life, as against the other patriarchs—that he was monogamous, and that he never left the Land of Israel, are explained in terms of his being an “olah temimah”—a whole, pure offering—a status that he evidently retained throughout this life (analogous to that of a Nazirite?). See Rashi on 25:24 and 26:2. (Incidentally, Rashi , who is too often seen as a simple commentary for school children, filled with naive, preposterous interpretations, deserves deeper study. He represents the distillation of the classical old midrashic tradition, just before the multitude of new directions—philosophical, pietistic, scholastic, and Kabbalistic—taken by Judaism in the High Middle Ages.)

“And he smelled his clothing and said, ‘See the fragrance of my son, like the fragrance of the field, which God has blessed’” (27:27). There is something singularly clean and refreshing in this verse: the old man who, in the end, seems to find his way around life through his nose and loves, more than anything else, the vast open vistas of nature (see S. Yizhar et al). One is reminded of 8:21, where God himself mitigates his harsh verdict on humanity after smelling the “fragrance” of Noah’s sacrifice.

Finally, verse 40. After Esau coaxes “one last blessing” out of his father, he is told that he shall enjoy “the fat of the land and the dew of heaven” (there’s evidently enough of that to go around for all), and live by his sword. We then read the concluding phrase: “and when you rebel, you shall throw his yoke off your neck.” It seems interesting that, after being that it is the natural order for Jacob to rule Esau, he is blessed (or is it a simple statement of human nature?) that, in due time, he shall rebel! Perhaps this is my radical youth speaking here, but surely there is some affirmation here of the validity of the human impulse to freedom, of the throwing off of yokes of all sorts—even that of Yisrael Sabba!

Who was Esau, and why did Isaac love him?

Last year (see HY to Vayetse and Vayishlah) we devoted considerable space to discussion of the personality of Yaakov, in relation to Yitzhak and others, and to the family dynamic as a whole. One basic question remained unanswered: who was Esau himself? General speaking, the Jewish tradition treats Esau as the “heavy” of the story; the Midrashim, by and large, paint a one-dimensional picture of Esav ha-Rasha (“Esau the wicked”).

This week’s portion (with one or two excurses into relations with the inhabitants of Gerar) basically focuses upon the intimate, emotionally charged relations within the close family unit, consisting of a pair of parents and two sons. We are told at the outset: “And Isaac loved Esau, because he had a taste for game (lit., game was in his mouth); and Rivka loved Yaakov” (Gen 25:28). The stage is thus set for an explosive family conflict, with each of the two parents favoring a different one of their children over the other. Why?

Esau was basically a simple, uncomplicated, natural man, living entirely in the present, in immediate concrete reality. He loved the hunt; he is described as a “man of the field,” who felt most at home outdoors, with the strong sun beating down on his head and the wind blowing in his face. One can imagine him enjoying use of the masculine power contained in his ruddy, hairy body. He identified himself wholly with his immediate physical needs. When he came home, he wanted to eat, and felt that he would “die” if his ravenous hunger was not satisfied. His sexuality, too, was basically uncomplicated; according to the Midrash, when he wanted a woman he “hunted” for one, took her (“hooking up”) with the minimum of gestures of courtship or seduction (if that), and cast her off. Not for him the romantic love of Yaakov, who encountered Rachel by the well, fell in love with her, and was willing to postpone gratification for years. Esau, when he finally does marry, takes two wives at once. His murderous anger at Yaakov is not evil, but the natural reaction of one who discovered that which he had thought of as belonging to himself suddenly being taken away from him. He was told by his father to hunt game, bring it home and prepare it “so that I may bless you before the Lord before my death” (27: 3-4)—and suddenly found that he was cheated, double crossed.

Basically, Esau lives without the dimension of height or transcendence of the spirit. He is the epitome of natural, biological man. Rav Adin Steinsaltz, in his “Bi’ur Tanya,” explains the Hasidic concept of nefesh ha-behamit, “the animal soul,” not as inherently evil, but as representing the biological side of man uprooted from the dimension of transcendence, from what has been called “the natural depth in man.” Such was Esau. Inevitably, he was rather coarse and brutish, rough and unpolished; he had no interest in the niceties or refinements of civilization. Nevertheless, Esav and what he represents constitute a necessary, entire “storey” or level in the human personality.

Why then did Yitzhak love him? I see his attraction to his rough, unpolished son as reflecting certain inevitable conflicts within the spiritual life. We have seen Isaac as a profoundly mystical personality: given to spending hours in deep meditation, aware of the mysterious, Divine life pulsing beneath the surface of things. Yet there was a part of him which longed for the simplicity of life lived in the immediate present, for his very lack of complexity. There is something in the multi-leveled, almost convoluted consciousness of the man of God that must, at times, be tiring. Yitzhak may have been weary of always living in a tense, dialectical tension with the concrete world. Of course, he himself could not live like Esau; he saw and understood too much and on too many levels. Nevertheless, he must have looked with a certain empathy and understanding at this earthy son of his, both envying him his simplicity, and perhaps too feeling a wish to protect him from the heavy, spiritual intensity of his overly spiritual family.

I have neither the time nor inclination to comment on politics at this moment, but may it be that our present bloody confrontation with the Palestinians is somehow related to our own long-term inability to understand their own concrete, earthly reality on its own terms? Perhaps we will only be able to attain peace when we learn to make tikkun for Yaakov and Esau.

Postscript: “That My Soul May Bless you”

Three times in Parshat Toldot, in the conversations between Yitzhak and Esau (or “Esau”), an unusual phrase is used: “that my soul may bless you / your soul bless me.” When Yitzhak asks Esau to go into the field, hunt him some game, and prepare him delicacies in the way he likes, he adds, “that my soul may bless you (ba’avur tevarekhekah nafshi) before I die” (Gen 27:4). When “he” (in fact Jacob impersonating him) returns, he says to his father, “Come, sit and eat of my game, that your soul may bless me” (v. 19). And a third time, when the authentic Esau returns from the field and presents his father with the food he’s prepared, he addresses him in almost identical words (v. 31). The phrase, “for the soul to bless” is a rare one, which as far as I can tell appears in reference to human beings blessing one another only here, in the entire Bible. (The phrase barkhi nafshi et ha-Shem, “May my soul less the Lord,” does appear at the beginning and end of two consecutive psalms, Psalms 103 ad 104, but it is used there in relation to God. It would be interesting to try to uncover if and what is the common denominator between these two otherwise rather different psalms.)

What I find interesting is that this phrase is associated with food, specifically with the act of one person feeding another. It is as if the act of being given food by another somehow awakens the nefesh, the vital element within the person, to gratefulness toward the other—not only for the immediate act of feeding, but with a deep, existential blessing that comes from the very heart of the person’s being. Interestingly, the word nefesh, generally translated as “soul,” in fact refers, not to some abstract, disembodied entity but, according to Kabbalah and generally, to the seat of vitality, of life energy in the person. (We read in Leviticus, in a totally different context, that “the blood is the nefesh.”) Interestingly, this entire portion revolves around eating: the incident of Esau selling his birthright (25:29-34) also takes place around food—the infamous “mess of pottage” or lentil stew.

When I first came across this point and thought of retelling it (at a meal, where else?), it sounded like a bad Jewish joke, like something said by a character in an early Philip Roth novel or a Woody Allen movie. Tales of Jewish mothers saying “Ess ess, mein kind” are legion. The conventional wisdom is that Gentiles at social occasions offer one a drink, while at Jewish parties the line is, “Won’t you have something to eat.” Ascetic trends in religion, too, downplay the importance of food, dismissing it as ”corporeality” and advocating fasting and minimum sustenance as the ideal. Certain streams in modern feminism, on the other hand, deride the stereotypic role of the woman as provider of food (“kirche, küche und kinder”) and celebrate the cultivation of more cerebral skills. But in fact, eating, and food, is a crucial human concern, of profound cultural meaning. Food, and everything surrounding it, is a central theme, mirroring the values and attitudes of different societies. Certainly, the approach to food in Judaism—from kashrut, through the various blessings recited at the table, the etiquette and behavior prescribed for a meal, the use of the sacral meal to celebrate Shabbat and festivals and various important occasions, and the various symbolic foods for different occasion—are all indicative of the Jewish approach to life. In light of all this, the linking of the table and the act of blessing is no more than natural.