Shabbat Parashat Toldot

Esau's Tears

This week's parasha is our clearest biblical episode of sibling rivalry and parental favoritism. Rebecca gives birth to twin boys, Esau and Jacob. Esau is the firstborn who grows up to be a man of the earth, a hunter and gatherer, hairy and primitive. The Torah teaches that he is loved (i.e. preferred) by his father Isaac. Jacob is born immediately after Esau, his hand grasping on to his older brother's heel. He is more of a homebody, preferred by his mother Rebecca. The result of these opposing parental loyalties is the ruse that has an elderly, blind, and infirm Isaac being tricked into giving his younger son Jacob the blessing that he had intended for his beloved firstborn son Esau. There are so many questions that we can ask of this text and of its characters, who have been held up as heroes and role models for the many generations of future Israelites and Jews during the past four thousand years. Most often, these questions are asked about Isaac (Did he really know what was going on?), Rebecca (How could she be so conniving against her own flesh and blood child?), and Jacob (Why did he just go along with the plot and not question his mother? Why was he chosen as the patriarch of the twelve tribes with this deceitful act on his record?). However, Esau is a figure who has been painted as an evil enemy throughout Jewish history and, therefore, much maligned and ignored as one of our ancestors. He deserves to be brought out of the shadows of rabbinic vilification and used as a model from whom we can learn as well.