TORAH PORTION: TOLDOT

Parshat Toldot

26 November 2022 / 2 Kislev 5783

Torah: Genesis 25:19-28:9 Triennial: 25:19-26:22

Haftarah: Malachi 1:1-2:7

In this week's Torah Sparks, you'll find a D'var Torah on the Parasha by Bex Stern-Rosenblatt called "Choosing Life", Vered Hollander-Goldfarb poses questions in her D'var Haftarah titled "I Love Because I Hate?", and Josh Kulp offers a piece called "Our Forefathers Were Liars".

Choosing Life

Bex Stern-Rosenblatt

Parashah

The Book of Genesis is a book of begetting. It tells the story of the production of the twelve Israelite tribes through reproduction, through thoughtful marriages and painful pregnancies. In this week’s parashah, Rebecca speaks poignantly about the mothers’ roles in the production of Israel. 

Rebecca moves from a status of barrenness to fertility after her husband pleads with God on her behalf, perhaps with her participation and perhaps without it. God grants the request and Rebecca becomes pregnant. We read, “And the children struggled inside of her.” So Rebecca says, “If so, why is this me?” It is unclear what exactly she is asking. Rashi interprets her question to mean “if pregnancy is so painful, why did I desire and pray for children?” Chizkuni takes Rashi’s reading of pain even further, reading Rebecca as saying if the pregnancy is so painful, I would rather die now than have to suffer the pain of birth as well. Ramban pushes this even further, reading Rebecca as saying, “‘If so, why am I in this world? If only I weren’t - that I would die or that I never existed,’ just as Job cries out I would have been as if I never existed, would that I had been brought from the womb to the grave.” The comparison with Job is stark. Job has lost everything and seems to be wishing to have been a stillborn. Rebecca, on the other hand, has lost nothing and God has personally allowed her to become pregnant. Yet she still ends up in the same headspace as Job. 

Later, we will see Rachel too speak of death and children. She tells Jacob, “Give me children, or if not, I am dead.” Rashi, citing Bereshit Rabbah, learns from this statement that one who has no children is regarded as a dead person. With Rachel and Rebecca, we have two perspectives on pregnancy. Rebecca wishes for death because she is with child and Rachel wishes for death because she is without child. In the end, Rachel will die during childbirth. She gets the child she longed for but she is a dead person anyway. 

Rebecca will go on to give birth to the twins. It is not until later that we find her pondering the reason for her existence again. After Jacob has followed her advice and taken the birthright and the blessing, Esau intends to kill him. Rebecca sends Jacob, her beloved child, away and will not see him again. To make this happen, Rebecca tells Isaac, “I am disgusted with my life because of the Hittite women. If Jacob marries a Hittite woman like these, from among the native women, why am I alive?” At this point, Rebecca is long done with bearing children. From Rashi’s comment on Rachel, it seems that Rebecca has ensured her posterity and can now die in peace, knowing she has secured her legacy. But in order to ensure that the Israelite tribes emerge, she still needs to play an active role in the matchmaking of her child. The point of her life is not defined by her pregnancy, but rather by the passing down of God’s blessing. 

Rebecca and Rachel’s lives also are defined by God’s curse, given to Eve. We read, “in pain and sorrow will bear children.” Indeed, trying to conceive, being pregnant, and bearing children are the most trying times of our ancestors’ lives. It is enough to drive our matriarchs to question the value of being alive. But it is also consistently our matriarchs who concern themselves with ensuring that the line continues, that God’s blessing is passed down and that the Israelite family is created.  Rebecca understands something deep about life. She has faced death, even longed for death, and still chosen life.

HAFTARA

I Love Because I Hate?

Vered Hollander-Goldfarb

Haftarah

Is love a zero-sum game? In the parashah it seems so at times.  Is there only one blessing? One possible chosen child? After the wrenching story of the blessings, it turns out that Yitzhak accepted both his children, preparing an appropriate blessing for each one, but others misread the situation.

The haftarah from Malachi picks up the relationship between these twins at a later point. They are no longer brothers vying for their father’s blessing but rather brother-nations, and the “adult” is God and His relationship with them. 

Malachi, possibly his name, perhaps a description of his position as a messenger of God, addresses Israel – another name for Jacob.  The time is likely in the Persian period (post-Babylonian exile) as some began to return to Judea to rebuild the Temple. While apparently not the majority of the Jewish community (life was comfortable in Babylon), the returnees who are addressed viewed themselves as “Israel.” They representing the nation, as we see in the sacrifices that they offer at the Temple that they have built in Jerusalem (Ezra 6:17 and 8:35) on occasions that they wish to mark as national. 

The reality of life in the land was difficult, compounded by the relations with the surrounding nations. The tensions with the Edomites, traditionally thought of as descendants of Esau, had been fraught already in the days of the First Temple when Judah was occasionally the controlling power. While we have no record of how the Edomites were involved in the destruction and exile of Jerusalem, the biblical texts hint at something so heinous that speaking about it was taboo.

Keeping this in mind, it may be tempting to read the opening prophecy as a statement of the love of God for Jacob, which results in His hatred for Esau. Several translations read that way, ignoring the point at which the text breaks into separate verses.  Here is the text divided by verse:

(2) I have loved you, says the Lord. And you said, “In what way have You loved us?”

- Is not Esau Jacob’s brother? Says the Lord, but Jacob I have loved.

(3) And Esau I hated,

And laid waste his mountains, and his heritage to the jackals of the wilderness.

A careful reading of the verses as they are divided suggests that this is not a zero-sum game. God’s love for one is not conditioned on His hatred for the other. Malachi differs from the pattern that seemed to permeate most of the book of Bereshit whereby only one brother can be chosen. Significantly, God’s love for Jacob is not transactional, it is a fact. Separately, Esau is hated because of his actions. The brothers are not tracked by the brother they have. The verses should not be read as one long sentence; they speak of two separate relationships.

Jacob/Israel is not free of failures, the haftarah will describe those as well, but Malachi chooses to open with a statement of unconditional love by God. Once that is established as the foundation of our relationship, he can reprimand us for our ungracious behavior towards God.

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Our Forefathers Were Liars

Josh Kulp

The Halakhah in the Parashah 

Let’s go through the patriarchs one at a time, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham lies, sort of, when he tells both Pharaoh and Avimelech that Sarah is his sister (and neglects to say that she is his wife as well). Isaac repeats his father’s lie and tells Avimelech that Rebecca is his sister. Jacob lies in our parashah when he pretends to be his brother Esau so as to steal the birthright. And yet the Torah teaches us (Exodus 23:7), “Keep far from a false matter.” What are we to make, then, of the lies of our forefathers? Can we be like our forefathers and tell lies? 

The answer is, of course, sometimes. The lies that Abraham and Isaac tell about the identity of their wives are easily justified; telling the truth would have endangered their lives. While some philosophers might argue that one should never tell a lie, this should strike us as absurd. If a violent person asks if a certain person is hiding in the house and that person is indeed in the house, the truth would likely result in dangerous consequences. 

Some would hold that the imperative to tell the truth exists under all circumstances and can never be waived. But clearly this is not the Jewish way of thinking about truth. Abraham and Isaac were protecting their wives, and the value of saving a life (פיקוח נפש) overrides all other mitzvot in the Torah (with the exception of bloodshed, fornication and idolatry). The value of peace, too, can override truth, as we learn from Joseph’s brothers, who lie to Joseph after their father dies, telling him (Genesis 50:16-17), “Before his death your father left this instruction: So shall you say to Joseph, Forgive, I urge you, the offense and guilt of your brothers who treated you so harshly”; Jacob never made such a remark. In Yevamot 65b, Rabbi Ile’a cites Joseph’s brothers’ remark to teach that “it is permitted for a person to depart from the truth in a matter that will bring peace, as it is stated: Your father commanded before he died, saying: So you shall say to Joseph: Please pardon your brothers’ crime, etc.” Truth is not a supreme value in Judaism; it is an instrumental value, one whose utility usually, but not always, leads to justice. 

The rabbis understood that truth telling, at least outside a court of law, can be set aside for a higher value. From Bet Hillel we learn (Ketubot 16b) that when one sees a bride, one says, “A fair and attractive bride” and not, as Bet Shammai would have it, “as she is” (meaning that if she’s not so pretty, one tells her so). The value of being kind to other people is an ultimate value, whereas the value of telling the truth is an instrumental value. 

But Jacob’s lie to his father in our parashah is still problematic and does not serve as a paradigm in Jewish law. Jacob seems to know that lying in order to steal the blessing is wrong. But in the end, he simply tells a straight-out lie.  When Isaac asks him (Genesis 27:4), “Are you really my son Esau?” Jacob replies, “I am.” Rashi is uncomfortable with this understanding and suggests that Jacob did not really lie because he did not say, “I am Esau” but merely “I am.” But clearly Rashi knows that Jacob lied, and he is bothered by it. And we should be as well. Jacob’s lie is self-serving, as it allows him to receive God’s blessing to go along with the birthright he took in the opening of the parashah. 

The Radak also defends Jacob, but he is careful to defend him on the lines that Jacob was a prophet. Jacob knew that the destiny of Israel flowed through his line, and not through Esau. Radak’s defense of Jacob implies that those of us who are not prophets, who do not know the way things will end up, cannot tell such self-serving lies.

The Sefer Hahinukh notes the unusual language used in the Torah concerning telling a lie, “And therefore the Torah warned us to distance ourselves much from falsehood, as it is written, ‘From a false matter, distance yourself.’ And behold, it used an expression of distancing, due to it being very disgusting; something it did not mention in all the other warnings.” Those of us who are not prophets, which means all of us, must avoid telling lies, especially when they are to our own benefit. 

While a world of pure truth would be disastrous (for a fabulous aggadah see Sanhedrin 97a), a world in which people are free to shape reality by lying about it is even more disastrous. As Sissela Bok writes (Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life), “A society, then, whose members were unable to distinguish truthful messages from deceptive ones, would collapse. But even before such a general collapse, individual choice and survival would be imperiled. The search for food and shelter could depend on no expectations from others. A warning that a well was poisoned or a plea for help in an accident would come to be ignored unless independent confirmation could be found.” We can accept Jacob’s behavior, but only if we accept at the same time the Radak’s assertion that he was a prophet. His behavior was acceptable and perhaps even mandated for him. But it would not be acceptable for us.