Toldot: Deception – or love?
In the early twentieth century a man was brought to Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook. This father had given his son a good Jewish education, he tried to set a good example, and he kept the mitzvot. Now, however, his son had drifted away from Judaism; he no longer kept mitzvot, he did not even identify as a Jew any more. What should he do? Rav Kook asked the father, “Did you love him when he was religious?” “Of course.” “Now,” Rav Kook replied, “love him even more.”
But what is even more? And from whose vantage point – that of the father or the son? The Sefat Emet, taught from his grandfather, “Everywhere there is a hidden point of God. We only have to remove the external covering in order to reveal that innermost point, which is called a “well of living waters.” What did the father need to uncover in himself to reach out and love that inner well of his son?
Toldot is a story of such a dilemma. Our text polarizes the natures of two twin brothers. Esau, the elder, is an am ha’aretz, a simple man, a hunter, a ruddy-faced outdoorsman. He is emotional and hearty, but, as commentators note, not a scholar. His brother Ya’akov however, is understood to be a scholar of Torah, one who stayed in tents to learn. We see in Rashi that our Sages say that he went to the Yeshiva of Shem and Ever, where he studied for 14 years. Eventually, one brother wins, one brother loses. Love and deception are at the core of this story.
We will see, to paraphrase Rashi again, that deception begets deception. Ya’akov will find this out when he finally weds and beds his beloved Rachel, only to find the not-so-beguiling Leah lying in his bed. As we learned last week, kinyan (acquisition in marriage) is kinyan by any other name. We can certainly hear by the shock in his voice, that Ya’kov has indeed consummated this marriage. Sex trumps deception; and, as Leah wryly notes, comeuppance was Ya’akov’s due.
But is Toldot really a story of deception, of what will be eventual retribution? Or is Toldot more a story of listening to God, and following through, even as one son will clearly be hurt, enraged and walk away? God spoke to, and provided very clear instructions to Rivka, about who should serve the other. Rivka’s interventions – which were considerable, and made over the somewhat querulous concerns voiced by her son Yaa’kov – were entirely in order with the prophetic instructions she heard from God while she was still pregnant.
Over the years I have given much thought to this sidra, especially to the nature of Yitzhak. In this sidra Yitzhak is now the father. What did he see? What did he know? Was he deceived – or was he a deceiver himself? When does deceit merge with the demands of love? When does love conflict with the demands of God?
As Sefat Emet taught, sometimes what is hidden, holds truth. Yitzhak is at his most enigmatic in this sidra. He reaches into his innermost truth, and while externally he feels the rough, smelly, hides of goat, we know he knows we know. There is cosmic laughter at this point, reflecting the very core of his being. Yitzhak is a man who has held goats in his arms. In touching his son Ya’akov, I think Yitzhak is uncovering his son, finding his own pintele Yid, that inner well of God’s Presence.
Last week I spoke about how Yitzhak found healing through the redemptive quality of his love for Rivka. This week I suggest that love was the primary emotional verb in Yitzhak’s tent – and not deception. Toldot is about tough love.
Toldot is acted out to afford the players a stage to actualize God’s command. The first born must be supplanted, even as he was also beloved. Rivka and Yitzhak needed a strategy to allow them as parents to bank their love in a trust fund, an account that reached to a future beyond that of their sons. Their future was the future of the people Israel – a people barely conceived of at this point – and that future covenant was at stake with the granting of the Blessing.
In this sidra we sit at a crossroads – pagans to the left, Israel to the right. Yitzhak may have had diminished sight but I believe he could see well beyond any immediate physical limitation. Even as Yitzhak became increasingly tent-bound, he understood and loved both of his boys, and he knew what he must do. He also knew from his earliest years he must stay in the Land. Unlike his father, unlike his son, he stayed. Perhaps Yitzhak knew, even then, that possession was 9/10 of the law. And so, he stayed. In that staying he gave us our future. The ohel, the tent, that once filled with love’s light became a light that enabled both Rivka and Yitzhak to see how to make hard decisions – the hardest decision – choosing one son over another. One son only would carry the Blessing, the Covenant forward.
Before my father died, he chose me from his four living children, to be his executrix. After his death, there was some degree of contention that came from one of my siblings, and in support of my decision in the matter, my youngest brother turned to me and said, “You have all the power.” He said that with love.
Blessing, Covenant is power. Let us never underestimate the power of this Blessing. This Blessing is our heritage, our obligation to pass forward. In the words of my beloved father’s favourite song, “I once was lost, but now am found, T’was blind but now I see.”
Rivka heard and Yitzhak saw. They did what needed to be done.
The life of Sarah begins with her death. And from death, new life begins.
Last week I noted that there is a Midrashic tradition that Torah existed before Torah (as we know it). In Midrash Bereshit Rabbah we see an elucidation of this idea. Referencing Mashal, or the Book of Proverbs, our Sages discuss how Wisdom existed before Creation. “The Lord made me as the beginning of His way, the first of His works of old” [Prov. 8:22]. Our Rabbis loved back-dating – “the older, the better”, and this pre-history certainly grounds that maxim.
With the opening of Lech Lecha, I realize again how difficult it is to go beyond these two not-so-simple words. Go. Go where? What constitutes a journey, especially in our minds? How do we hear the voice of God: Commanding as in the domain of the Leviathan, or insistent as a mosquito? And how do we understand Lech lecha in the context of understanding the mitzvah of circumcision, brit milah?
Rosh Chodesh, Vayetze
November 11, 2018 by Rabbi Lynn Greenhough • From the Rabbi's Desk Tags: vayetze •
“Going to the Karliner gives me special powers,” the chassid replied. “I can read everyone’s thoughts.”
“In that case,” one man challenged, “can you tell me what I’m thinking of right now?”
“You’re thinking about God,” said the chassid.
“You’re wrong.” said the man. “I wasn’t thinking of Him at all.”
“You see?” said the chassid. “That’s why I travel to Karlin…”
In Vayetze, Ya’akov is also making a journey. He has left his home, and is returning to Haran – the same land his grandfather Avraham was called to leave. The sun had set and Ya’akovpiled some stones to make a pillow of sorts, closed his eyes, and while sleeping, he had a dream about a sulam, a ladder connecting this world with the beyond, with angels ascending and descending. Every year Vayetze and the Karliner’s teaching awaken me to my own journey, my angels, and my sulam.
My journey began with a teaching decades ago, with my-then Rabbi Victor Reinstein. Today we often exchange Vayetze letters, exchanging news of our lives and still noting our latest thoughts on this mysterious sidra.
The second pasuk in Vayetze says, “Vayifgah bamakom,” which means, ‘And he met up with that place.’ But Rashi, elaborating on the term vayifgah, teaches us that pegia (the root of the word), also means to entreat.Ya’akov met up with, encountered, and entreated with God (HaMakom) – or was he encountering his own place of separation, of wound, within himself?
In his book, Beit Aharon,the Karliner, Rebbe Aharon, suggests the word vayifgah also means wound or injury; he suggests we are all on a journey of healing, not just Ya’akov. Ya’akov was fleeing from his brother, but also leaving his family.
His heart must have felt wrenched, not just by leaving, but by his actions that had precipitated his flight. He was wounded, and separated within and without. The Karliner teaches that part of our life-work is to repair our separated and wounded heart-selves, so that our hearts will not be divided against our place, our God, Ha Makom. Shelo yihiyeh libcha chaluk al HaMakom
The Karliner taught that healing our separations from God is linked to healing our inner woundedness, and the only way to effectively heal is through deep encounter, through entering deep prayer, vayifgah bamakom. Yet how do we pray when we feel separated from our Source? This dilemma is our journey. This is our sulam. We are all ascending and descending from HaMakom.
For nearly 25 years this phrase Vayifgah bamakom has taken me on a journey. To New York City, from Eichler’sto Levines, and to Der Arbeter Ring, the Workman’s Circle;all stops in search of information about the Karliner. It has taken me through a friend and emissary to Israel and to JFK airport. But to shorten a long story, we will begin at my first stop, at Eichler’s Bookstore. I wandered around, finding nothing, and finally asked one of the frum young man, who was busy sorting kippot, if he knew anything about the Karliner. He startled, abruptly and then he asked me, “Who are you? Where are you from?” I stuttered a bit, taken aback by his brusque tone, and mumbled something about Victoria, finding out later he barely knew where Canada was. He ran to the phone and called his Rebbe – he was a Karliner, he called back to me, over his shoulder, in fervent excitement. He said you could ask a thousand New Yorkers they could never tell you about the Karliner. “Who are you”?
He then invited me for a Karliner Shabbos, to celebrate Shabbos with a joyous abandon I would never experience anywhere else, but I shyly declined. I had played enough Jewish geography by then to know that within one minute I would be deemed treif. The joy, the exuberance of the Karliners would not, I knew, extend to a lesbian convert. But then I continued to meet that same Karliner, year after year. He would leave one job and then appear at my next destination – a year, even two years later. He sent me to learn Vayetze with the Karliner rabbi who ran the Bialystoker Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation which was still standing in the Lower East Side – and then I was invited to a wedding downstairs, where the hassen, the groom, and kallah, the bride, were surrounded by angels in wheelchairs.
I think of Vayetze as the original encounter therapy. We need to follow the Mystery that is core to our journey, follow the clues we are given, face into our absences and separations, and let those absences and empty spaces guide us back to prayer, back to God. Angels will guide us, a bit like my elusive, impish Karlinerboychik – and one day we will surprise ourselves with the question that has dared not yet pass our lips.
This year, as I thought of “my” Karliner, and how he followed me/I followed him around the Jewish bookstores of NYC, I thought maybe I was one of his angels? Maybe he wanted to peer beyond his world, just as I longed to peer beyond my own. I know we each have a coterie of angels guiding us forward to face into our own vayifgah bamakom. Maybe he was one of my angels. Maybe, maybe, I was one of his.
Today, when we read Vayetze, I still travel to Karlin. I still ask my angels to help me heal, as I know the healing is never done. I wonder where my Karlinerboychik is these days – I know there was something he was yearning for and I wonder about his journey. And I am filled with yirah and rachmanes, awe and compassion, for the pain, the separation and the healing of this journey we are on. I know we each have a sulam, we each have our angels, who come to us in the stillness of the night, and in that stillness, we being to heal. Aleichem shalom.