Dvar Torah on Parshat Toledot

This week, we read about the rivalry between the twin brothers, Yaakov and Esav, for the love and blessings of their parents. The personalities of the two brothers, as depicted in the Torah and embellished upon by the Rabbis, seem stereotypical. Yaakov has many of the features of the classic Jewish guy, as delineated by Hollywood and many 20th century American novelists. He is described as a dweller of tents - which the Rabbis take to mean he was studious - as opposed to Esav, the hunter, who is always outdoors. Yaakov is a mama's boy, we see him in the kitchen making soup, and it his mother, Rebecca, who eggs him on and helps him (by dressing him and cooking a meal!) to deceive his father by pretending to be Isaac's beloved Esav, and thereby receive his father's blessing, which was intended for Esav the hunter.In general, Yaakov is always inside, and Esav is out in the field. Even at their birth, it is Esav who emerges first, and Yaakov is born grabbing on to Esav's heel, perhaps reluctant to go out into the world, needing to be pulled there by his more adventurous brother. This dichotomy - outside/inside - seems to be a central one for the two brothers. Yaakov is comfortable in the company of his mother - cooking, staying at home in the tent - as opposed to Esav, who is always out there, hunting, for his beloved father. The coupling of Yaakov's interiority with a certain femininity (he even describes himself as being "smooth", whereas Esav is "hairy"), and Esav's exteriority with the masculinity of an aggressive, volatile hunter, close to his father and not his mother, is interesting, and of course parallels the yin/yang dichotomy of Zen Buddhism. These personality traits have, of course, been noticed over the centuries and commented on in various ways. The Nazis, for instance, saw Esav as the manly, forthright, powerful aryan type, with Yaakov fitting right in to the role of the tricky, weak, urban, feminine (and therefore not be trusted) Jew. The scene in which Yaakov buys Esav's birthright from him for a pot of lentil soup is seen as typical Jewish sharpness in business, in which the Jew unfairly uses his shrewdness to take from the non-Jew that which is rightfully his. On the other hand, much of classic Jewish thought has embraced these stereotypes as positive, with Esav, the eternal goy, often jokingly granted the dumb, simple, "goyishe" pleasures of physical prowess and worldliness, while Yaakov's intellectual pursuits, sensitivity, articulateness and inwardness were the proud possessions of the intellectually superior, Torah-studying Jew. People such as Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen and Phillip Roth have, of course, mined this dichotomy in their art (one can imagine a somewhat more learned Lenny Bruce riffing on this week's parsha - "Lentil soup - Jewish, hunting - goyish. Kitchen - Jewish, forest - goyish. Mother - Jewish. Father - goyish."), and have done much to reinforce these stereotypes as well as share a good deal of their anxiety about them with their audiences.What are we to make of all this? Should we embrace these stereotypical roles as being good for the Jews, the secret of our sustained survival in a violent, aggressive, goyishe, Esav-like world, or reject them as not true, and embarrassing if they are? I would argue that, by the end of our parsha, these attributes have failed for Yaakov, and have left him in an extremely precarious position. Although he has managed to trick his father into believing he was Esav, and therefore mistakenly bless him, this will do him no good, as, because of Esav's foreseeable and understandable anger, he is forced to flee his parents' home, and will in fact spend the next two decades in oppressive and demeaning exile. In fact, it is only in the events of next week's parsha - "Vayetze Yaakov" -"And Yaakov went out", and in the parsha after that - "Vayishlach Yaakov" - "And Yaakov sent", that the mess made by Yaakov in this week's parsha is cleaned up. Interestingly, Yaakov does this through the atypical act of "Vayetze" - "going out", leaving his home, his mother, his tent, his former life and persona, and behaving more like Esav. During his years away from home, with his father-in-law Lavan, it is he who will be tricked, first by having his beloved Rachel switched with her sister Leah on their wedding-night (paralleling the way he deceived his father), and then by Lavan's sharp business dealings. He is also forced during these years to earn his living, Esav-like, outdoors, as a shepherd, as he himself will say "by day, parching heat consumed me, and icy cold by night". And, finally, he can only return to the land of Canaan by being willing and ready to meet Esav on his own terms, and fight him if necessary, which he is ready to do in Parshat Vayishlach.I would argue that Yaakov's journey in these three parshas takes him from a childhood which is stereotypically Jewish, as I outlined above, but which ultimately fails, to a manhood in which he is forced to confront the limitations of his previous self, and embrace those Esav-like experiences and qualities which he previously spurned, but which he now needs if he is to survive. Unlike a Phillip Roth or Woody Allen hero, who needs to totally reject the Jewishness of his childhood in order to become the ideal man/goy, Yaakov is able to assimilate Esav's qualities while still retaining his own. For example, he is able, ultimately, to trick his father-in-law Lavan, the trickster, ending up with more sheep than him (as Shylock, stereotypically, explains in The Merchant of Venice), thereby retaining his "Jewish" characteristic of cleverness and a kind of scientific intellectuality (Yaakov makes a deal with Lavan to be paid for his sheep-herding with all of the spotted and speckled lambs and goats, and then does some sort of trick or miracle or experiment in applied genetics that guarantees that all of the newborn lambs and goats will in fact be spotted and speckled). According to a Rabbinic interpretation, he also, when he finally meets Esav in Parshat Vayishlach, and as he is getting ready to fight him if he must, claims that he has retained his loyalty to God and His commandments, remaining true to his original self. I would argue that it is precisely this ability to accept Jewish values as one's own, while being open to take on those very values and characteristics that are typically seen as foreign and not Jewish, that is the message and lesson of Yaakov's life journey. It is his openness to change, to growth, to reassessment, that is ultimately "Jewish". Yaakov's earlier behavior contains within it certain values, which the Jewish people have traditionally honored, but which, ultimately, led him and his family to a dead end. His ability to leave that life and its attendant values behind, and take on new values, and a new persona, without erasing his earlier one, was his salvation. Shabbat Shalom,Shimon Felix