From the archive of the British Library – with permission
Parashat Toldot is presented as the story of Isaac. Though in some ways it’s more the story of Rebecca and Jacob; Isaac himself is a rather passive character. The opening lines of what is ostensibly his story simply report that he is his father’s son and his wife’s husband.
Although we hear that Isaac prays to God, his words are not reported, and he speaks a grand total of 6 words in the first 60 verses of the Parashah. This despite the fact that it recounts some very significant events in Isaac’s life: the births of his children and a vision of God in which God makes a renewed covenant with him. And famously, at the end of the Parashah he is an elderly, blind man helpless before the manipulations of his wife and son. Rebecca, in contrast, takes an active role, receiving a direct prophecy from God, and taking decisive, if somewhat dishonest, action, to make sure the prophecy that ‘the older shall serve the younger’ will be fulfilled. In a text which all too often has a very male-centric perspective, it is notable that Rebecca is given more agency than her husband.
Jacob’s character is established even before his birth and throughout this section, and it is abundantly clear that he is already being positioned as the main character even in a story that is officially about his father. Jacob, after his name change to Israel, will become synonymous with the Jewish people stretching all the way into the distant future. However, I’d like to talk about another character whose story is told in Toldot: Jacob’s twin brother Esau.
Esau, especially in rabbinic commentaries, is more often a symbol than a person. This is partly because he was used as a code-word for complaining about the Roman Empire and later about Christianity. Thus, we often find that Esau is described as violent, bloodthirsty, and basically inherently evil. For example, the midrash in Bereishit Rabbah goes as far as to suggest that the reason why Rebecca’s pregnancy was so difficult was that Jacob was trying to escape from her womb to get to synagogues and study houses (anachronistically imagined to exist in the time of Isaac and Rebecca!) while Esau tried to escape in order to worship in idolatrous temples. A preposterous accusation to make against an unborn baby!
I have always felt a bit sorry for Esau. As portrayed in Toldot, he has his problems, certainly, but he’s no more inherently evil than any other human being. With all due sympathy for Rebecca’s suffering, it is hardly reasonable to blame a foetus for his mother’s pain. Aside from the prophecy, which at least as Rebecca understands it marks him out as somehow lesser from the start, he is already in his twin’s grasp as he first emerges into the world. As a baby his appearance is strange, covered in red hair. His name is interpreted to mean that he was born already fully ‘made’, relating his name to the Hebrew verb ʿa-s-h to make. I imagine Esau as one of those tall, old-looking children who often struggle in families and communities because people expect them to be much more mature than would be reasonable for their age, and judge them more harshly than they would smaller, cuter children.
Esau grows up to become a hunter. It’s easy to despise him for choosing a bloodthirsty profession, but hunting meat in Biblical times was a necessary part of feeding the household. He prefers the outdoors, and physical rather than intellectual pursuits. In Jewish communities we often place a very high value on learning, and can sometimes slip into a bias towards treating people with more respect if they have white collar professional jobs requiring significant specialist education. There are several ways to read the story of how he comes in starving and Jacob refuses to share his food until Esau swears away his ‘birthright’, his privileges as the elder son (though only by a few seconds!) Perhaps Esau is base, impulsive, only cares about satisfying his appetite in the moment, and does not think of the future. Or perhaps he is genuinely on the point of fainting from hunger, and clever Jacob takes advantage of him in his vulnerable state.
Esau marries at the age of 40. More specifically, he marries ‘out’, choosing two Hittite women as wives. We are told that this is very upsetting to his parents. Speaking as someone who myself chose non-Jewish life partners, I very much hope that in our generation we are seeing changes in the historic attitudes of prejudice against members of our community who marry non-Jews. But we probably all know someone who was excluded from their Jewish community, or possibly even cut off from their parents, because they fell in love with someone who didn’t match expectations of what sort of person can be a partner in building a Jewish household.
The final and most serious trauma for Esau comes at the end of Chapter 27. Having done as his father requested and hunted and prepared meat for him to eat, he finds that his brother, living up to his name, has ‘supplanted’ him yet again. I find it incredibly poignant to read of Esau weeping bitterly and begging his dying father repeatedly for any blessing that could still be left over. I am not saying that Esau’s reaction of threatening to kill Jacob is ideal. But his pain at being rejected by his beloved father is no less real for his violent outburst.
Esau is not only a symbol for the relationship of the Jewish people to persecuting and occupying enemies, but is also often taken as a symbol for when family relationships go wrong. I see value in reading the psychologically rich narrative directly, and seeing Esau as a person. Perhaps some of us can relate to him, especially if we don’t always feel fully comfortable within the Jewish mainstream, yet are still striving to be part of the family.
Dr Rachel Berkson, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.