Divisions abound. Red America, Blue America. The House. The Senate. Israel. Diaspora. Left. Right. Black. White. Christian. Muslim. Jew. Everywhere one looks we’re divided.
Even with some historical perspective – we (Americans, Jews, American Jews) have always, or at least often, been divided and contentious – the current divisions worry me. Today’s splits feel threatening, ready to explode in dangerous ways. In the wake of the Tree of Life massacre, it’s hard to imagine feeling otherwise. Two Shabbatot ago, some of the divisions that surround us morphed into a murderous rampage in a synagogue. Some divisions can be deadly.
Parashat Toldot brings us the birth of Esau and Jacob – Rebekah and Isaac’s twin sons. They are about as un-identical as twins can be. The Book of Jubilees, a 2nd century BCE paraphrase of the Hebrew Bible, begins their story this way: “And in the sixth week in the second year Rebekah bore two children for Isaac, Jacob and Esau. And Jacob was smooth and upright, but Esau was a fierce man and rustic and hairy. And Jacob used to dwell in the tents. And the youths grew up and Jacob learned writing, but Esau did not learn because he was a rustic man and a hunter. And he learned war, and all of his deeds were fierce.” (Jubilees 19:13-14)
In a similar vein, Philo of Alexandria (1st century BCE) presents the twins as diametrically opposed types. “Rebekah…had conceived the two warring natures of good and evil, and considering the two of them carefully – as wisdom might dictate – she perceived them to be jumping about (inside her), the first skirmishes of the war that was to go on between these contenders.” (Cain & Abel 4)
Civilized. Rustic. Writing. Hunting. Good. Evil. And, at least according to some thinkers, these opposing natures, qualities, characteristics, are eternally at war. The conflicts described in Parashat Toldot are merely “the first skirmishes.”
[Judith Kotz, Tel Aviv, Israel]
The dramatic high point of Toldot takes place as Jacob, pretending to be Esau, presents a cooked meal to Isaac, in exchange for the aging patriarch’s blessing. Feeling Jacob’s arms and hearing his voice, Isaac exclaims: ha-kol kol ya’akov v’ha-yadaim y’dei esav – “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” Voices and hands needn’t stand in fundamental opposition to one another. But here they do. As one teaching in Bereshit Rabbah puts it: “Jacob wields power only by his voice; Esau wields dominion only by his hands.” (Bereshit Rabbah 65:20)
Even in the moment of intense and painful division in our world and in our lives, I’d like to imagine the possibility of voices and hands aligned with one another, the possibility, that is, of peace and respect and hope and kindness across the divides. We needn’t all think alike; after all, hands can do things that voices cannot, and vice versa. Reading one as absolute evil and the other as absolute good doesn’t help. Esau and Jacob, let’s remember, were born of the same mother and father, and grew up in the same household. And by story’s end, they reconcile, forgive, and come together as one. We’re two weeks away, in parasha time, from that great reunion. But this Shabbat, in the heat and hurt of the things which divide us, know that it’s out there.
Shabbat Shalom.
