Toledot

Bereishit 25:19-28:9

Esav's Suffering

Jenny R. Labendz, 5763

Before I begin this devar torah, I will mention the mishnah in Pirkei Avot 6:6, that says that "One who says something in the name of the person who said it brings redemption to the world." I once heard someone explain the reason for this based on the Zohar: when we can distill our own thoughts from the thoughts of others whom we cite, only then can we expose in all of its honesty, personality, and glory that which comes from inside of us, and offer it as a contribution to the project of bringing redemption. In that vein, I thank my friend Aleza Andron for sharing this perspective on Esav with me, based on some ideas she heard from a rabbi whose name she can't remember.

Read through the beginning of the parashah (25:19-24):

What role(s) does God play in the creation of this family? Pretending that you don't know the rest of Bereishit, what do you expect of the futures of the characters and their relationships with God?

Parashat Toledot contains some of the most chilling and intense drama of the Bible. We meet two of our most complicated characters-Yaakov and Esav, the children of Yitzhak and Rivkah. At the beginning of the parashah, both Yitzhak and Rivkah pray to God regarding the children: Yitzhak prays for their conception (25:21), and Rivkah prays regarding the pain her pregnancy causes her (25:22). God answers both of them, so we see that from the very beginning, God's hand is present in the lives of these two brothers. They are to be different people, undoubtedly (25:23), but they are both valuable, both brought by God. Note that the phrase  (וְרַב יַעֲבֹד צָעִיר 25:23) is ambiguous in the Hebrew, and may mean either "the older will serve the younger" or "the younger will work greatly".

While this appears to point to some imbalance between the brothers and some special fate for one of them, I suspect that the ambiguity of the prophesy is intentional, indicating that their fate is as yet far from sealed.

Of course, it doesn't take long for us to find out that Yaakov will be the one to continue Yitzhak's line and be the next of our "forefathers". The question is, why? What was wrong with Esav? We have a long tradition telling us that Esav was a bad man in so many ways, even casually referring to him as "Esav HaRasha"-"The Evil Esav". The well-known midrash from Bereishit Rabbah 63:6 says that when Rivka was pregnant and she would walk by a synagogue or a beit midrash, Yaakov would kick trying to come out, and when she would pass by houses of idolatry, Esav would kick to come out. But where do see any evidence of this in the Torah? From where do the Rabbis get this idea that Esav was wicked? Read through the whole story in the parashah (25:19-25:34, and then all of chapters 27 and 28) and see what you can find, but try to read impartially. What sort of character is Esav, really? Is he all that bad?

One of the most painful passages of the Torah is found in our parashah, 27:31-38, when Esav comes to bring his father the food he has hunted and to receive his blessing, only to find out that Yaakov had already stolen the blessing by dressing up as Esav to trick his blind father. Upon discovering this,"וַיִּצְעַק צְעָקָה גְּדֹלָה וּמָרָה עַד מְאֹד" -- "Esav cried out a great and bitter cry so much" (v. 34). Only one other person in Tanakh cries like that, Mordekhai, when he finds out that the Jews are going to be massacred: "וַיִּזְעַק זְעָקָה גְדֹלָה וּמָרָה" ("And he cried a great and bitter cry"--Esther 4:1). In verse 38, Esav asks, "הַבְרָכָה אַחַת הִוא לְךָ אָבִי בָּרֲכֵנִי גַם אָנִי אָבִי וַיִּשָּׂא עֵשָׂו קֹלוֹ וַיֵּבְךְּ" -- "Do you only have one berakhah, my father!? He raised his voice and wept." The emotion in these few lines is almost unbearable. Esav is in real pain; what has he done so wrong to deserve this?

I don't think Esav did anything so wrong; he didn't deserve that pain. The Torah itself is clear that Yaakov's trickery was morally repugnant, and the upcoming stories in Bereishit show Yaakov suffering numerous times from other people's trickery: What goes around comes around. However, we are still left wondering why Yaakov was chosen and not Esav, and why did Esav have to experience such pain?

Perhaps we can shed some light on why Esav was not the right person to carry on the line of the Avot if we look a little closer at the few things we know about him from scenes in our parashah. First, Yaakov swindles Esav's birthright, the promise of the greater inheritance, from him (25:29-34). "וַיָּבֹא עֵשָׂו מִן הַשָּׂדֶה וְהוּא עָיֵף" - "Esav came from the field exhausted". Without even asking what Yaakov has cooked, he asks him to give him "מִן הָאָדֹם הָאָדֹם הַזֶּה" -- "some of that red stuff". Nothing is important right now except for his hunger and fatigue. When Yaakov asks him to trade his birthright for the soup, he answers unflinchingly, "הִנֵּה אָנֹכִי הוֹלֵךְ לָמוּת וְלָמָּה זֶּה לִי בְּכֹרָה" - "I'm at the point of death; what do I care about the birthright?!" The only thing that's important to Esav right now is... right now.

Without even contrasting Yaakov with him, we can see that Esav is a person who embodies "akhshaviyut"--the here and now. It's almost impossible for him to think beyond the present moment. How could he have valued the birthright, something so irrelevant to his present condition? How could he bother to ask what the soup was, if the thing most present to him was his hunger? Esav was unable to break out of this moment and think with any perspective. Maybe that's why his anguish is so great when he hears that his berakhah has been stolen. When tragedy occurs or we are feeling low, our fear and pain deepen in intensity because we begin to lose the perspective that reminds us that there is a future beyond this moment: as Henry David Thoreau wrote, "the universe is wider than our views of it" (Walden, "Conclusion"). When we begin to regain that perspective, our pain begins to subside or at least becomes easier to face. Esav was incapable of that sort of comfort or relief. There is only now; there is only this. That's why his pain is so bitter. If we, a people who have long encountered real joy but also very real sorrow, had inherited that feature from Esav, how could we possibly bear our own history (and present)?

Be that as it may, our problems our not all solved. How could Yaakov's model, unconcerned with the present, with the pain he causes Esav or Yitzhak right now, with the immorality of stealing the berakhah-even if stealing it was necessary in the long run-how could this be the model we are supposed to embrace? It just can't be. But, remember, this is only Bereishit, and the Torah's theologies and ideas are not all yet fully ripened. Values are developed over time and the stories are longer than one chapter or parashah. One of the most important verses in the whole Torah is found in Shemot 24:12, when God tells Moshe, "עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה שָׁם" - "Come up to me on the mountain and be there." Why does God have to tell him to "be there", having already told him to come up there? Won't he "be there" once he gets there? God tells him to be there because one of the fundamental religious imperatives is always to be there, to be in the moment, to be present in what we do. That's why we make berakhot--to bring us inside of what we're doing; to remind us that we are in this action and must be in it fully, no matter how small or great. The legacy of Bereishit is that being there must accompany a sense of perspective, that this moment is not all there is. The Yaakov in Moshe gives him the perspective to think broadly, so that God can then urge him never to forget this moment. With that luscious tension he receives the Torah.

Hannukah is a winter holiday, bringing light to a dark time, when the days are so short and nights so long. What's wrong with the dark? When there is dark, we can't see anything around us; the whole universe becomes us. We risk losing perspective on what is around us in time and in space, until everything is whatever is here and now. The parashah of Yaakov and Esav teaches us not to tolerate that perspective on the world, and we must add light to it, so we fill the world with our Hannukah lights, to see where we should be headed.