And He Lifted Up His Voice and Wept - A Sermon on Shabbat Toledot

 Always a difficult Parasha

I get that we are supposed to favour Jacob over Esau and indeed find ourselves, the Children of Israel, in the narrative of our patriarch Jacob.

But … I never have.

Jacob comes across in this week’s Torah reading as a bit of a schemer, quick to do his brother out of his birthright at the beginning of the Parasha. And then quick to follow his mother’s – let it be said – desperately dishonest advice, at the end.

And I know the Rabbinic commentaries, that Rebecca knew that the covenant had to run through her favoured son, which is supposed to justify the deceit. But it doesn’t help much.

And I know Easau, the red-headed, the purchaser of red-lentil soup, is the ancestor of the Edomites who wreak such havoc later in our story and presage the terrible things done to our people by the Romans, called Edom. I know also the Rabbinic commentaries that associate every action of Easau with idolatrous wrongdoing. But it doesn’t shift me much.

I mean, I know he’s quick to sell off his birthright;

          וְיַעֲקֹ֞ב נָתַ֣ן לְעֵשָׂ֗ו לֶ֚חֶם וּנְזִ֣יד עֲדָשִׁ֔ים וַיֹּ֣אכַל וַיֵּ֔שְׁתְּ וַיָּ֖קׇם וַיֵּלַ֑ךְ וַיִּ֥בֶז עֵשָׂ֖ו אֶת־הַבְּכֹרָֽה׃

That verse is brutal in its stripped backparsimony.

He ate, he drank, he got up, he went and he spurned, did Esau, the birthright.

But Easau is not supposed to be the smart one, who dwells in the encampment studying. He’s the guy out hunting in the field and he’s, at the very least, tired and hungry.

He certainly regrets the action.

When Easau finds that Jacob has come in and taken the blessing from their father from under his nose – Bmirmah – as Isaac says it, in guile. Easau wails.

That’s another extraordinary passage,

[Esau] said, “Was he, then, named Jacob that he might supplant me these two times? First, he took away my birthright and now he has taken away my blessing!” And he added, “Have you not reserved a blessing for me?”

Isaac said to Esau, “But I have made him master over you: I have given him all his brothers for servants, and sustained him with grain and wine. What, then, can I still do for you, my son?”

And Esau said to his father, “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” And Esau wept aloud.

 

It breaks my heart every year.

I know people like Easau, a bit simpler than the very sharpest of men, but loyal and decent and, by the way – who wins the prize for Honouring your father in the context of this week’s Parasha?

And I do know I am one of the Children of Israel, one of the people of the God of Abraham, and for me to be in this place – this place I love, holding this heritage I adore -  I need that the Biblical story unfolds, not through Easau, but through Jacob – who is to become Israel in next week’s Torah reading, when he wrestles that angel.

But it doesn’t sit easy.

And every year, when I come to this parashah, and I read through the classic commentaries that justify the actions of Jacob and Rebekkah and Isaac, and the modern commentaries, particularly from within the Orthodox world, I’m left cold. To mix my metaphors, a little as if I’ve been given something beautiful to eat, but it’s got ashen, somehow in my mouth.

So, for those of you who have heard me preach on this Parasha before, you will have heard me preach about destabilising narratives which see me retreat behind the sense I have of what I know is right, or preaching about not falling for the assumptions of the evil of the other, or that sort of thing.

Actually, it’s not even the tale of Jacob and Easau that brings up this destabilized sense of my relationship with the Avot and Imahot of these stories – the founding parents, the archetypes and the bases of our faith.

Back a generation, as it were, there’s the story of the Hagar. Brought in to provide a child to an infertile couple and then kicked out when the couple manage their own child. Hagar is, of course, the mother of Ishmael – held to be the first Arab.

It’s almost a trop.

That we have a thread of connection that binds us to archetypes who shape everything we are, as Jews. But none of them is a paragon of perfection on the straight-forward reading of their lives. They  behave, at times, in ways that cause us and other characters in our sacred scripture distress.

The characters who suffer the behaviour of our great archetypes go down in our literary and religious history as our enemies, but when we read these tales with an open heart, they inspire empathy too. At least they do for me. Actually, it might be even more complex than that.

The great Tikvah Frymer Kensky in her book, reading the Women of the Bible, writes

Hagar is the prototype of Israel. Everything that happens to Hagar is paralleled by the story of Israel's sacred history. The liberation, the wandering in the desert, the promise from God. The unsettling nature of the story is that Sara is our mother, but Hagar is us. You sympathize with Hagar and feel uneasy about it. That is the technique of the storyteller. Hagar is the double of Israel, yet so is Sara.

We might be both sides of each of these stories; hero and antihero all bound into one.

I don’t really have an end to this sermon.

I don’t have a neat way to wrap it up and apply it to the awful bloody brokenness of the Middle East.

I certainly don’t excuse or feel anything less than utter contempt for the perpetrators of the horrors of 7^th October, or anything less than utter heartbreak for those suffering.

But I can’t retreat behind only feeling for one side of this story.

Maybe there is a lesson in a Midrash which tells us how Abraham felt about his two sons – the covenantal son, the one who goes on to bear the story from his own generation into the future, Isaac, and the other son – the one to be sent away – Ishmael.

When God tells Abraham, “Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac,” the Rabbis assume the conversation between God and Abraham,

“take your son,” – I have two sons

“your only son,” – they are each the only son of their respective mothers

“the one you love,” – is there a limit on how much we can love? – Says Abraham, in the mind of the rabbis of Bereishit Rabba.

Why does there have to be a limit on the amount we can love.

Or, from this week’s reading, my heart is still snagging, and ripping on that verse Easau shares, when he realises that Isaac has blessed Jacob instead of himself.

Have you but one blessing father? Bless me also father -  הַֽבֲרָכָ֨ה אַחַ֤ת הִֽוא־לְךָ֙ אָבִ֔י בָּֽרֲכֵ֥נִי גַם־אָ֖נִי אָבִ֑י:

But mainly, my heart is just with the continuation of that verse.

וַיִּשָּׂ֥א עֵשָׂ֛ו קֹל֖וֹ וַיֵּֽבְךְּ

And he lifted up his voice and wept.

Shabbat Shalom