This was my D’var Torah for Parashat Toldot on Saturday, November 21, 2020 (5781), a week before Thanksgiving.
On many late Shabbat afternoons in college, an hour before dark, eating marshmallow fluff and chummus on pita at Hillel, and singing with people, the kind of ay-ay-ay-ay yearning melodies that I love far more than most members of this shul, I would think:
Should I be Orthodox? No.
Should I be Orthodox?
Tevya’s song was “If I Were a Rich Man.” Mine might have been titled “If I Were a Frum Man.”
I’m so far past that time, the beginning of my Shomer Shabbat life, and yet I still sing that song from time to time. It hasn’t gone away entirely from my spiritual playlist. In college it was when I was one of seven or five or one Conservative Jews in a room full of yeshivah graduates, who knew exactly for the ay-ay-ay songs which wrong Hebrew syllable to accent. Now it’s when I’m standing next to Rabbi Krinsky, and that’s a guy who looks like a rabbi and talks like a rabbi.
It’s more than that. Do you recognize something like this anywhere in your life? Is there a person or a group who you think — I’m not like that but maybe I should be, that’s the kind of group feeling, that’s the kind of intelletual coherence, that’s the kind of self-confidence that why don’t I have, why doesn’t my group have? Why am I not that? Why don’t we have that?
This is the defining situation of Yaakov Avinu, who we meet in today’s parasha. Even before he is born, he is wrapped around another person and that person is wrapped around him. ויתרוצצו הבנים בקרבה, Vayit’rotzatzu habanim b’kirbah, two siblings in an intimate, sacred, murky space, holding onto each other. As Yaakov comes out he can’t get out first, and he can’t quite differentiate — even though the two babies look entirely different, one dark and hairy and one not. Yaakov is described as not Esav, and still he is holding onto the heel of Esav.
In Hebrew the shoresh, the root word ekev or akev means the heel, and it means something not straight, and it can be used the way we say “on the heels of” — meaning one thing is connected after something but the relation between the first thing and the second thing isn’t quite clear, it looks close but it’s an indirect relation. Yaakov’s existence and identity are on the heels of Esav, and the question is just how and how much is he defined in relation to Esav.
Yaakov, who is not Esav, is described as being next to Esav but distinctly different. Or you could he is distinctly different from Esav but right next to him.
In the parasha it’s not just about who Yaakov is, but about whether Yaakov is blessed as who he is.
Later on, in a couple weeks, we will read about how Yaakov has to reenact this in utero wrapping together as an adult with a family, when he wrestles at night with a being who gives him a blessing and a name.
There are many layers to Yaakov’s search for identity and blessing. There is first of all his body. I see Yaakov as someone who might wish he had Esav’s body, his physical presence — Esav presents to the eye as strong, as masculine, as powerful out in the world, at least in the eyes of Yaakov’s father. Yaakov is described as smooth, חלק, maybe unremarkable physically, whatever that means. Or maybe that’s how he sees himself when he imagines how others look at him, what they value in a look.
I think of Yaakov as someone who is not sure he deserves a blessing for being himself. Later on, when old and blind Yitzchak announces he wants to bless his first-born son, Yaakov doesn’t think he should have this blessing. But Rivka does. Or Yaakov wonders if he has to present as someone else in order to get this blessing. He accepts that he has to dress up as Esav in order to get this blessing. He accepts that being blessed depends on the judgment of someone who cannot see him as he might really be.
I think of Yaakov at the same time trying to figure out what parts of Esav are not him and what parts are. They are twins, after all. There is some DNA that’s the same. Yaakov puts things right up against his body, but still the voice is the voice of Yaakov, even when the hands are the hands of Esav. What parts of the hands of Esav does Yaakov like, does he thrill to? What parts should he let go of? When will he stop holding onto Esav’s heel?
The Torah locates this spiritual work of identity and claiming blessing specifically in Yaakov — the one who will become Yisrael, our name, the father of the plural children who will all be B’nai Yisrael, the Children of Israel.
Who am I and who is Esav? Who are we and who is the group we are wrapped around in some way? How do we disentangle ourselves and step away enough and be blessed, and accept that we are blessed?
There are so many aspects of our lives today I see in this Yaakov-Esav light. It applies to skin color, gender, sexual orientation and gender identity, power in all kinds of settings.
Often when we are wrapped in a fight or a political debate, or a religious debate, this is what’s really happening. There’s often a layer of: is that Esav stronger in the world than I am, or more blessed than we are?
When American Jews debate about Israeli policy in the West Bank, it’s been my experience that everyone thinks they are overpowered and can only speak by dressing up as someone else. If you support Palestinian statehood, you think that’s the minority position, and you’re amazed at how many people and how much money the other side succeeds in mobilizing, why doesn’t my side have that kind of muscle, why can’t my side be blessed like that? If you support Israeli sovereignty over all the territories, you think that’s the minority position, and you’re amazed how the left has succeeded in making anyone who questions this into a racist — why doesn’t my side have that kind of muscle, why can’t my side be blessed like that?
When I talk to congregants about American politics, many of our most dedicated and clear conservatives and progressives feel overpowered by the force of the other, and shadowed in the same way by this other who seems to define all the discourse. Conservatives think liberalism dominates the media and college campuses and every space where people gather to talk even causually; and you can’t even speak a conservative thought without being cancelled, so powerful is this Esav. Liberals think that the power of money and the dominance of corporations makes it impossible to even suggest policy changes without being labeled a socialist who hates America. And this last election (2020) was very much not about claiming our blessings but holding off our Esav, and also wondering about that powerful other and how they do it, and should I be doing something like that.
It seems that way with our Judaism too sometimes. Even for me. We compare ourselves to Chabad, envious of their joy and their chesed, differentiating ourselves through our own way of equality and inclusion. That’s Yaakov trying to work out a relation to Esav — comparing, wishing I had some of that, defining me in terms of not-them.
This part of Yaakov’s life reminds us that it’s all part of the process. We do wrestle to define ourselves on our own terms. We do compare ourselves. We do see things about the other close by that are worth wanting — in the cohesion of other groups, in their intellectual life. We might even dress up on occasion, try on qualities of another person or another group.
The parasha ends there this week, but the Torah goes on. The spiritual search is to find the voice of Yaakov, even when we puzzle over the clothes and the hands of Esav. Even Yitzchak, who can’t see what he needs to see, somehow hears the right voice. We’re not defined by what others can’t see about us, but by what can be heard.
Right now is a time we all need blessings and we all need to believe that we deserve blessings. It’s not easy getting blessed. What with all the Esav’s in our lives. Not at all the Esav’s we struggle with are evil; they just aren’t us.
So as we look toward a time of thanksgiving, and further into a month when we will light lights, I pray you will all find a wide open place outside the wrestlings, apart from the imitations and away from the blindness of others — just a mirror where you see yourself, the image of God, worthy of blessings.
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