Just One Blessing - Thoughts on Parshat Toledot

This is always, for me, 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 Esau 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 Esau 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 answered, saying 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, who are a bit simpler than the very sharpest of men but loyal and decent. By the way, who wins the prize for honouring your father in the context of this week’s Parasha?

And I do know I 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 Esau, 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 parasha, 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 straightforward 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. The hero and the 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

 

Here I Am

I had the privilege of being at a 20-year reunion at JTS today.

Amazing!!

20 years.

It turned out we didn't have enough time to make it through all the various plans we had for a day together and my dear colleague Rabbi Rachel Ain asked me to run a closing something in 3 minutes.

I shared the Sugya, in honour of the person from whom I first learnt it, my then Dean, Rabbi Bill Lebeau, who made a special appearance to celebrate the special day.

This is the first time I used the Sugya in a Sermon, my interview sermon at the Synagogue I now lead, and joined 16 years ago, formerly home of Rabbi Louis Jacobs and the synagogue I grew up at.

Dika Anna

 

This is, I think, the sixth time I have had the honour of addressing this community from this pulpit.

And it always feels a bit strange.

 

I still think of myself sitting over there somewhere, with my father.

I still think of myself, as a small child, hiding in the velvet curtains and pretending I had understood the sermon so I could join in the conversation between my parents as we walked home from shul.

 

And it feels particularly strange today.

For me,

To be applying to become the next Rabbi at Louis’ Shul.

 

I’m reminded of a previous American Presidential campaign where Dan Quayle, a man who couldn’t spell the word ‘tomato,’ tried to pass himself off as an inheritor of the legacy of JFK.

‘Senator Quayle,’ responded Lloyd Benson, ‘I knew Jack Kennedy, I worked with Jack Kennedy. Senator Quayle, you are no Jack Kennedy.’

 

Other faith traditions have tales about the glory of having an occasionally errant child of a community wander away and look to return.

Other faith traditions have tales of welcoming back the returning child with extraordinary delight.

But I don’t think those stories reflect us, you and I, today.

I’ve spent almost five hours in interviews this past week facing questions and concerns.

And there’s been a lot of fear, a lot of anxiety. I am too much this, not enough that, what about the legacy of Louis?

 

I want, today, to explore what I understand by inheriting a fearsome and glorious spiritual inheritance and what I understand by the command to carry a fearsome and glorious inheritance forward.

 

It is a perfect parasha to explore these ideas.

Ve’eleh toledot.

And these are the generations.

This week’s parasha is the story of Isaac, an inheritor of a fearsome and glorious spiritual inheritance.

A man who

dug again the wells of water, which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them.

 

Ve’eleh toledot

And these are the generations

This week’s parasha is also the story of Isaac the ancestor

A man who bequeathed a legacy to the generation to come – to Jacob, Israel, to all of us sitting here today, some four thousand years later.

 

The unfolding of generations.

From one to another.

 

A story, about the unfolding of generations.

It comes from Rabbi Jacob’s charming autobiography.

Rabbi Jacobs has just been appointed to the flagship congregation, the New West End, and he is, in his own words, indulging in some namedropping.

He’s telling of all the Lords and Ladies, the dignitaries and captains of industry and he recalls a moment, just before the first Kol Nidrei service at the synagogue.

And he’s standing in the vestry with the Third Lord SoandSo whom he had only recently met.

 

These are Rabbi Jacobs’ words.

Time was pressing and I suggested that we go into the synagogue for Kol Nidre.

The Lord replied that he did not want to enter the synagogue for a while and that he would explain why after the service.

His explanation was that his grandfather, the first Lord, although a very observant Jew, did not hold with the Kol Nidre formula and used to wait patiently in the foyer until this part of the service was over.

His son, the second Lord, less observant and a little indifferent to the whole question would still wait outside because his father had done so.

The third Lord explained he personally didn’t understand what it was all about, but felt obliged to carry on the family tradition.

 

I find it a sad tale.

A tale of an emptying, a tale about the survival of the husk at the expense of the kernel.

A meaningless ritual followed for no particular reason other than the fact that his father had done is that way.

It’s the kind of story that makes me fear for the future of our glorious spiritual inheritance.

It’s a story that makes me fear, just a little, about this glorious synagogue.

 

I’m sure that as Rabbi Jacobs was writing this tale of his Lordship, he had in mind the famous story that closes Gershon Scholem’s magisterial Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, Scholem, of course, was much admired by Rabbi Jacobs who chaired one of Scholem’s lectures in London.

The story of their Lordships certainly reminded me of this tale.

 

When the [founder of Chasidism] the Baal Shem had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire and meditate in prayer and what he had set out to perform was done.

When, a generation later [his student] the Maggid was faced with the same task he would go to the same place in the woods and say, ‘We can no longer light the fire, but we can still speak the prayer – and what he wanted done became reality.

Again a generation later Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov had to perform this task. And he too went into the woods and said, ‘We can no longer light a fire, nor do we know the secret meditation belonging the prayer, but we do know the place in the woods to which it all belongs and that must be sufficient’ and sufficient it was.

But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin was called upon to perform the task, he say down on his golden chair in his castle and said, ‘We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayer, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of how it was done.’”

 

Rabbi Israel died some 150 years ago, and most of us have forgotten even the story.

 

It’s very easy to become maudlin at the passing of one generation.

We mourn those we love.

We mourn those who lit a beacon for us.

Even if we think, in theory, that we have ‘got over’ the mourning for a lost loved one, our losses prey upon us,

Most particularly when we face the all too concrete question of moving on - opening our homes and our heart to someone else – that’s when our losses can haunt us most fiercely.

And in the face of this ferocity it is all too possible to cast any potential next partner as a fraud, as a failure, as not really ‘my type.’

It’s all too possible to subject any incomer to a test that will break anyone.

I’m sure we have all done it.

And it’s a good thing to be scared about, if you are in the business of vele toledot.

And I am scared.

 

I was thinking about this, particularly last week, in the context of Eliezer’s attempt to find a partner for his master’s son Isaac.

I couldn’t help but read this story from the perspective of a Rabbinical Search process.

Abraham sets out the brief;

no-one from the daughters of Canaan, Gd forbid,

And off Eliezer goes, loaded up with trinkets and baubles to attract some bright young thing for Isaac.

I wonder how Eliezer felt on the return journey, coming back with this stranger, someone to lead into the future. Leading a search committee is a daunting task, Milton, I suspect you know this better than I.

A lot of nerves and a good slice of fear.

 

I wonder how Rebecca would have felt, shifting a little uncomfortably on her camel at the prospect of spending the rest of her life with a man she had never met.

I wonder how Isaac would have felt, at the prospect of some new woman in his life.

Actually while we know nothing about Eliezer and virtually nothing about Rebecca’s feelings, we do know about Isaac – the suitor.

 

v¼¨­¦t‰k IËk›h¦v§T³u vÁ¨e‰c¦r›,¤t jÍ©E°H³u IºN¦t vɨr¨G ¿vŠk¡v«Ît¨v e½¨j‰m°h ¨vɤtˆc±h³u 

IœN¦t hË¥r£jœ©t e¼¨j‰m°h oË¥j²B°H³u ¨v·†c¨v¡tœ®H³u

 

And Isaac brought Rebecca to the tent of Sarah his mother

And he took Rebecca and she was for him a wife

And he loved her

And he was comforted after the death of his mother.

 

We know it works.

 

Oddly there is virtually no Rabbinic commentary on this verse.

There’s a charming Midrash[1] that tells us that once Rebecca was installed as Isaac’s wife a cooling wind – a ruach, a spirit, that had been lacking since Sarah passed away – returned.

We know it worked, but we don’t know how.

There are no stories about Isaac and Rebecca going on dates in the foyers of the King David Hotel.

No clues as to what I could do, now, to help find a way to have you accept me as the next Rabbi of this special community.

 

The verse is so stark in its simplicity –

He took her as a wife, and then he loved and then he was comforted.

Maybe there is wisdom in the order of the verbs.

You have to commit before you can love.

You have to love before you can be comforted.

Courting seems so much more complex these days.

But I’m not sure it is possible to feel comforted until you fall in love again,

And I’m not sure it is possible to fall in love without commitment.

 

It’s easy to feel maudlin at the passing of a generation.

 

This is the very last Mishnah in Tractate Sotah. It is describing the end of a generation some 1800 years ago.

 

When Rebbi Meir passed away, there were no more great tellers of tales.

When Ben Azzai passed away, there were no more keen scholars.

When Ben Zoma passed away, there were no more great sermons.

When Rabbi Akiva passed away, there was no more honour for the Torah.

It goes on.

When Rebbe died, there was no more humility and there was no more fear of sin.

 

It’s a maudlin, almost terminally despairing view of Jewish life.

And admittedly it was a hard time to believe in a Jewish future.

But we, Jews, are forbidden from yeush – despair, and by the time of the completion of the Gemarah this Mishnah has a different ending.

 

Rabbi Yoseph turned to the teacher of the text and he told him,

Don’t include the piece about there being no more humility – d’ika ana.

For here I am.

Rabbi Nahman turned to the teacher of the text and he told him,

Don’t include the piece about there being no more fear of sin – d’ika ana.

Here I am.[2]

 

Who did these fools think they were?

Rabbi Yoseph, I knew Jack Kennedy, I worked with Jack Kennedy...

 

Actually I suspect they knew exactly what they were doing.

I love the idea that Rabbi Yoseph waits, while this whole litany of what is no more unfolds, until someone says there is no more humility. And this is the point he challenges – what holy chutzpah does that take!

The Mishnah can’t be allowed to stand because it’s too maudlin, and we are forbidden to despair.

 

I love the idea that the only possible response to what has passed, as one generation unfolds into another, is to say

Ika ana

Here I am.

 

And so,

Ika ana

Here I am.

And I don’t know how to light the fire, I don’t know the words of the Baal Shem’s magical prayer, I don’t know where to go in the forest.

But I do know the story.

I know Scholem’s story, the story as it appears in Major Trends.

I know a whole bunch of Talmud and philosophy and theology and all that good stuff.

And I know the story of this place, of New London Synagogue.

 

But more important even than all that, I know something else that the Baal Shem and the Maggid and the rest of them knew.

I know that there is something that needs to be done.

A task which summons our attention and our best efforts.

And what is that task?

The same as it has always been.

 

We live in a world where the unfettered call of materialism spreads misery and threatens to rip the soul out of human beings, turning us into productive units, overpaid hamsters spinning our way round and round and not really getting anywhere.

We live in a world where religious idolatry – fundamentalism – has succeeded in destroying the World Trade Centres and threatens so much more horror.

Ve’ele toldot some things change and some just stay the same.

We are still the inheritors of Avraham avinu who broke the false idols of faux religious piety and struck out on a journey towards a life with decency, integrity and kindness.

The task is still not done.

The story is not at an end.

 

D’ika anna

I know this story.

I know its past and I think I know its future.

A future I want to share with you all.

If you will do me that honour.

Shabbat shalom,

---

[1] Bereishit Rabba 60:16

[2] Sotah 49b