TI Torah Study Toldot: Brotherly Love

November 18, 2023 / 5 Kislev 5784
Summary of Torah Portion from ReformJudaism.org

• Rebekah has twins, Esau and Jacob. (25:19-26)
• Esau gives Jacob his birthright in exchange for some stew. (25:27-34)
• King Abimelech is led to think that Rebekah is Isaac's sister and later finds out that she is his wife. (26:1-16)
• Isaac plans to bless Esau, his firstborn. Rebekah and Jacob deceive Isaac so that Jacob receives the blessing. (27:1-29)
• Esau threatens to kill Jacob, who then flees to Haran. (27:30-45)

Questions about the dooming of innocent children are of course unanswerable. I would only observe that the notion that Esau was “hated” by God from the womb is less an element of the original story than the consequence of later archetypal readings. That process, building on the eponymous character of the two brothers, was obviously well under way by the time of Malachi. In the rabbinical period Esau’s fate was sealed as Esau-Edom became the symbol of Rome, the archetype of pagan iniquity and brutal oppression. Rashi, writing in the 11th century, reads Genesis through the optic of that archetypical tradition, but the original story offers a more multifaceted portrait of Esau and leaves God’s moral judgment of the older twin in the realm of uncertain inference. Esau is clearly destined to lose the birthright, but we are left to wonder at times about the moral status of the brother who wrests the birthright for himself. - Robert Alter

As the story of our patriarchs and matriarchs continues, it is Jacob who struggles with the angel and is then renamed Israel, the name that adorns our people even until today. Jacob's two wives and two concubines give birth to the descendants whose names become the very organizing principle of the twelve tribes of Israel. And Jacob will serve as a main character in the drama of his son Joseph, who himself plays such a pivotal role in the transition to Egypt that leads to the ultimate covenant and redemption of the Jewish people. That is to say: Jacob is just too much of an insider for later commentators to dismantle his reputation without doing damage to the entire Jewish people.
Esau, on the other hand, wanders out of the frame of the Torah's view, and the Edomites/Idumeans who bear his name continue to be a competing and sometimes hostile neighboring people long after the Torah's stories are committed to parchment. Long after the writing of the Torah, this people disappears into the mists of history, and aside from some fascinating archaeological remains, there is little to tell their story nowadays. Familiar with their early character and their later outcome, our commentators stress how alien their progenitor Esau is from his very birth, and make him out to be an evil individual at every opportunity.
(Rabbi Aaron D. Panken, z'l)

Aside from God's providence and Esau's angry threat, Esau actually seems to have done little to merit his negative status in history. The Bible identifies him as the father of Edom and Amalek, two tribes that were enemies of the Hebrews. The Rabbis drew a further connection by associating Esau and Edom with Rome, thereby linking Esau to the destruction of Judaism. The midrash describes Esau as an idolater (Genesis Rabbah 63:6), a murderer ( Pirkei D' Rabbi Eliezer 24), and one who spoke disrespectfully to his father (Tanchuma, Toldot 11), thus adding troubling details about Esau that are absent from the biblical text.
Why is the Rabbis' portrayal of Esau so negative? Perhaps it is because the drama of the Israelites' story required rivals whose actions and natures contrasted with the values embodied in Jacob. The Rabbis used the brothers' characteristics to teach us lessons about behavior. Hence rabbinic literature crafted an ideal embodied by Jacob, who was quiet, studious, thoughtful, and emotionally in control. On the other hand, Esau's unbridled passion was problematic for the Rabbis, who struggled with emotion. As it is written, "Who is mighty? One who controls one's natural urges" (Pirkei Avot 4:1).
(Debra Pine)

The ancient rabbis, having been exiled from the land, tended to think of Esau as Rome, and of Rome as embodying the worst aspects of the persecution that they experienced. But this one-sided view is problematic. While acknowledging "Esau is a symbol of hate," Nehama Leibowitz also points to midrashim that show Esau's humanity. As she writes in "New Studies in Bereshit (Genesis)": "In the Torah…Esau is a human being, the son of Isaac and Rebecca...like all human beings he has his good and bad sides."
For example, when Esau speaks of exacting revenge on Jacob, he also decides to wait until the mourning period for their father has passed. It is a small thing, but it is still noteworthy that in the heat of the moment he prioritizes his father's need for comfort over his own desires.
If we were to take the twins as archetypes, we might want to think of them as two facets of the same personality, rather than two types of people. Each of us has a shadow to our personality, a side that includes the aspects we do not wish to acknowledge.
In the case of Jacob and Esau, we see Esau acting as a foil to Jacob's competitive side. Esau does not want to be the one who stops at nothing to win. Jacob hates his competitive brother Esau - which is, in fact, a form of hating himself. After all, is he not the one who tricks his brother Esau to get Isaac's blessing?
So often, what we hate in others is what we refuse to acknowledge in ourselves.
We might fantasize about vanquishing our foes, but the reality is this: there is no total victory. Your shadow side remains, that part of yourself that has not yet been acknowledged. The more you fight it, the stronger it becomes.
How can we heal a broken world where the shadow side will not be repressed? How do we move past this and allow ourselves to be whole?
The first step is to recognize and accept the fullness of human experience. We all have within us a yetzer ha-tov (an impulse to do good) and a yetzer ha-ra (an impulse to do bad).
The second step is to learn to love our entire selves, including the parts that are jagged or difficult. Redemption is not achieving everything you ever wanted; it is the state of seeing things as they are and wholeheartedly accepting them.
(Rabbi Kari Tuling)