Hear Our Voice

The Torah portion this week, called “Toldot,” revisits the story of the seeds of sibling rivalry. This oft-repeated theme in Torah and some of the greatest literature ever written, is laid out this week in a matter of verses. First, Rebecca struggles to become pregnant and even rails against the heavens over her deep distress from being unable to bring a child into the world.  Next, we no sooner learn that she is pregnant with twins who, as the text teaches, vayitrotzetzu habanim, have already begun wrestling and struggling for dominance, one over the other. Our sages of old, carrying their own prejudices and knowing who would come to bear the mantle of the Jewish people, imagine that the destiny of these nascent Jewish lives has already been set.  They would wrestle, the Rabbis taught, because whenever Rebecca would walk by a Beit Midrash (House of Study), Jacob would seek to reach out, so driven by his passion for study and learning.  And whenever Rebecca would walk by a brothel, it would be Esau whose yearning would betray his sacred genesis. 

Esau would be born, and he would be so named by his physical attributes, esav, ruddy and rough.  Jacob (Yaakov) on the other hand, would be named not by how he appeared but by the nature inferred of him, because he was holding onto his brother’s heel.  For lack of a more poetic definition, Yaakov earned the namesake of the “heel grabber” – one whose character was that of a person who would seek to pull another back so that he could get ahead.  I imagine that were I to have the choice, I would choose the former rather than the latter. Perhaps it is easier to be sized up by how you appear, than to be offered a mantle, that from day one, will hang over your head, always proclaiming that who you are today isn’t enough. Along these lines, I prefer to imagine the story through a Jewish mystical lens, that is one that would suggest that like other rivaling siblings, they are not two distinct people, but rather projections and characterizations that run through and manifest in all of us.  What is Jacob’s journey?  First he steals his brother’s blessing for a bowl of porridge; then he conspires with his mother, stands in pretense before his blind father, and takes advantage of, in truth, his brother’s deep commitment to provide for their father that which Isaac seeks.  Jacob’s malfeasance yields a stolen birthright, and then he runs away from all he knows to a land that God will show him- albeit a very different kind of “leaving” than that of his grandfather, Abraham’s. 

And then, in the middle of nowhere, he rests his head on a rock and he dreams. Perhaps for the first time in his life, he dreams and perhaps for the first time in his life, he discovers that God had been in this place all along. Angels from the earth to the heavens and back down again, a vision that is celestial but unclear.

Who am I? 

Why am I here and what’s next?

I am a shell of a human being with perhaps a hint of a seed. 

Over time, the seed will grow and help him become the father of a large family, the 12 tribes of Israel and according to Torah, all of the Jews who are to come ever since. So this is our story, not so much Jacob’s or Esau’s or Rebecca’s or Abraham’s.  That is why these stories matter – not to discern what it meant for them, but rather what their stories mean to us.

Who are we?

Where is God?  

Will we overcome our travails? Our namesakes? Our stories that others wove about us when we were young? 

Will we have our “Come to God” moment? Moments?”

And will we be open to them when they arrive? 

Will we presume them to be imposters, whose veracity we will doubt because they do not sound like all of the voices of the past? 

Or, will we declare, as does Jacob when he finally has his moment, “Achen. Yesh Adonai bamakom hazeh v’Anochi lo yadati.“  “Behold!  God was in this place and I didn’t know it.” 

Paths of blessing are rather clear.  You know which is the direction that will yield more contentment for the greatest number of people.  You know better.  Whether you are one who navigates her life by the constellations of signs, portents and wonders or by those of kindness and goodness, staving off jealousy and greed, rage and selfishness, you know better. 

If the stories of our ancestors are not about us, they are about no one.  Their only gravity lies in the ways they are refracted through the prisms of our minds and our hearts.  All the rest is commentary.