At the heart of this week’s Torah portion lies a kind of riddle “wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma,” the significance of which echoes throughout the remainder of the book of Genesis, and perhaps even further than that. The riddle in question relates to Jacob’s deception of his father Isaac in order to take his older brother Esau’s blessing. Isaac at this moment is aged and blind, and he plans to give his favored son Esau an important blessing after Esau brings him a meal he has hunted for him. Yet, as we learned earlier in the parashah, destiny is on the side of Jacob rather than Esau. When Rebecca is pregnant, God tells her in a poetic refrain: 

Two nations are in your womb.
Two separate peoples shall issue from your body;
One people shall be mightier than the other,
And the older shall serve the younger.

Despite Isaac’s preference for his oldest son, Rebecca knows very well that Jacob rather than Esau must be groomed for greatness, and she thus encourages Jacob to pretend to be his brother and take the blessing for himself.  When Isaac learns that Jacob deceived him, he is described as being “seized with a violent trembling” and when Esau discovers his brother’s dissimulation he weeps and responds to his father with the agonizing   “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” We know from various events throughout the parashah about Esau’s unsuitability for continuing the legacy of Abraham and Isaac. Before this episode, he sells his birthright to his brother Jacob in exchange for a bowl of lentil soup, later on he displeases his parents by taking two Canaanite wives rather than marrying women from his own tribe. Yet it is difficult not to empathize with Esau’s cries here, and we naturally wonder, why couldn’t Isaac have blessed both Esau and Jacob in equal measure? Was Jacob’s guile the only way to address this imperfect scenario, or could an alternative solution have been found?

Continue reading “Dancing in Chains: Deception and Destiny in Parshat Toldot” →