Dvar Torah on Parshat Toledot

In the parsha of Toldot, we read the terrible story of Yaakov and Esav; twin brothers, fated from the womb to hate and compete with one another. The story begins badly, with a description of Rebecca's difficult pregnancy. In her distress, she went to seek God's word, and is told that she is carrying twins, who will grow to be two nations, constantly at odds with one another. The Rabbinic Midrash embellishes the story, and tells us that the discomfort she felt was due to the fact that whenever she walked past a (somewhat anachronistic) Yeshiva, Yaakov would try to get out and learn some Torah, and whenever she passed a pagan Temple, Esav would try to get out and worship. If there ever was a determinist narrative, this is it. Even before they were born, Yaakov and Esav were already fully formed personalities, with their destinies all mapped out. This poses a number of difficult questions. One is this: how could two parents, Yitzchak and Rebecca, produce two such different children? How could two kids, sharing the same genes, growing up in the same home, come out so diametrically opposed? The Sforno, taking his cue from the text, has a determinist answer. When the parsha identifies Rebecca as "the daughter of Betu'el the Aramean, from Padan Aram, the sister of Lavan the Aramean", he explains the presence of all the extra lineage by saying that it is there to signal the fact that Rebecca will give birth to Esav, who will be like her rotten brother, Lavan. The Sforno sees Esav's personality problems as genetic and pre-determined; through his mother, he inherits his uncle's miserable genes. I really am not a determinist. I always responded well to ideas like "take a sad song and make it better" (Lennon & McCartney) and "Free will is granted to every human being. If a person wants to steer himself to the good path and be righteous, he has the ability to do so. And if he wants to steer himself to the evil path and be bad, he has the ability to do so." (Maimonides). How, then, can we understand this genetic determinism? And why is it that only one son, Esav, gets the lousy genes, and not his brother, Yaakov? In addition to the Sforno that I mentioned above, there are a number of other Rabbinic statements which underscore Rebecca's problematic pedigree. The Rabbis make much of the fact that, unlike her husband Yitzchak, whose parents are the righteous Abraham and Sarah, she is the daughter of bad, idol worshipping, deceitful people. For instance, the Torah tells us that when she has trouble conceiving, she and her husband pray for a child. Yitzchak's prayers, and not hers, are answered, because, as Rashi, quoting the Midrash and Talmud, understands it, "the prayers of a righteous person who is the child of righteous people are not the same as the prayers of a righteous person who is the child of evil people." Clearly, a great deal of importance is imputed to the differences in their lineages. The Torah does, however, give us more than this depressing information about Esav's genetic nature; we also know a bit about how he was nurtured. We are told that his parents had favorites. Yitzchak loved Esav, the first-born (by a few minutes), the hunter, the hairy he-man, who kept him well-supplied with meat. Rebecca, on the other hand, loved the younger, studious, stay-at-home, help-mother-in-the-kitchen-and-make-some-lentil-soup Yaakov. Could it be that Rebecca was aware of, and sensitive about, her genetic disadvantage? Could it be that, seeing how her sons were, from birth, different, she identified the hardier, hairier Esav with her family's shameful genetic heritage, and treated him accordingly? Could it be that her love for Yaakov was based on her identification of him with her husband's holier family pedigree, and that is why she, so sensitive to this issue, loved him and not his brother? And, is it not also possible that Yitzchak, seeing Esav's predilection for wild behavior, got a kick out of it, and encouraged it? It was probably a lot of fun for him to see a son so bold, physical, and aggressive, so different from him and his family, and so he encouraged it. Yitzchak, who years earlier had meekly accepted his father's decision to sacrifice him to God, whose wife was chosen for him, who never ventured outside the land of Israel, apparently enjoyed, on some level, having a sword-wielding wild man for a son. Is it not probable that this parental situation is, in fact, what pushed Esav over the edge? Yes, he was genetically pre-disposed to risk taking, and intense, violent, physical activity. But he didn't have to go that route. It was his mother's and father's decision to treat him, from birth, as if he already was what he was predisposed to be - an heir of her family's shameful personality traits, and a tonic to Yitzchak's life of submission - and Esav's reaction to that treatment, that ultimately made him what he became. As my favorite Shakespearean character, Shylock (surprised?) says: "the villainy you teach me, I will execute; and it shall go hard but I will better the instruction." Shabbat Shalom, Rabbi Shimon Felix