Toledot

All Class of 2026 Senior Sermons

Yet Rebecca’s strength has dreadful consequences. In deceiving her blind husband, she humiliates him and causes him to shudder in fear. In depriving her eldest son Esau of his blessing, she causes him to explode in anger and to plot his brother’s murder. And in securing for Jacob both blessings, she causes him to flee for his life, alone into the lonely night of exile. Is Rebecca strong and righteous, or is Rebecca headstrong and wrong?

Presumably, the way to answer this question is to look at the prophecy received by Rebecca when she sought out God. Here is U.C., Berkeley Professor Robert Alter’s translation of the oracle found at the beginning of our parashah ():

Two nations—in your womb,
Two peoples from your loins shall issue.
People over people shall prevail,
The elder, the younger’s slave.

The problem is that this prophecy is ambiguous, especially in its final clause, “v’rav ya’avod tza’ir.” Biblical scholar Richard Elliott Friedman suggests that this could mean either “the elder shall serve the younger” or “the elder, the younger shall serve.”

Rebecca, together with most readers, interprets the prophecy in the first fashion, understanding that Esau must be subjugated to Jacob. This interpretation sets the course for their family and perhaps for the history of their descendants. But perhaps Rebecca got it wrong? Perhaps the oracle truly meant that the younger boy, Jacob, was to serve his older brother, Esau? Perhaps Isaac got it right in trying to bless Esau with physical dominion (), while reserving for Jacob the covenantal blessing (). Perhaps this family could have been spared the fraternal anger, hatred, and division if Rebecca had only understood her prophecy differently. But perhaps all of this tension was ordained by God, and was a necessary stage in the emergence of Jacob as Israel, patriarch to 12 tribes.

Rebecca’s prophecy is not the only ambiguous utterance found in the Bible. 91�첥 Professor Stephen A. Geller studies this phenomenon in his 1996 book, Sacred Enigmas. In a 2007 volume of essays in honor of Dr. Geller, 91�첥 Professor Benjamin D. Sommer continues this path with a chapter titled, “Prophecy as Translation: Ancient Israelite Conceptions of the Human Factor in Prophecy.” Dr. Sommer examines, among other texts, an incident described in . There, the evil northern king Ahab gets 400 prophets to support him in his desire to invade the neighboring country, Aram. Yet the southern king Yehoshafat asks him to seek one more opinion from the prophet Micaihu ben Yimlah. This prophet repeats his colleagues’ words, “Go up, so that the Lord will deliver into the hands of the king,” but interprets the prophecy in the opposite fashion. Rather than predicting that the enemy will be delivered into “the hands of the king,” it is the king who will be delivered into the hands of the enemy. Ahab ignores Micaihu’s interpretation, invades Aram, is taken captive, and killed.

Dr. Sommer shows that the 400 prophets erred not in their hearing of the message, but in its interpretation. Perhaps they were cowed by the king into delivering the message that he desired. Perhaps they simply lacked the courage and the zeal to speak truth to power. But perhaps the message itself was intentionally ambiguous, and the responsibility of interpretation was invested in the prophet by God. Indeed, Dr. Sommer points to , to show that God intentionally obfuscates to all prophets save Moses. The prophet must be attuned to the divine message, but must also interpret with integrity, guided by a sense of justice and righteousness.

The Rabbis also discern this phenomenon of obscure prophecy. In the  they say, “all of the prophets saw through a cloudy speculum (aspeklirya she’eina me’ira); but our Master Moses, saw through a clear speculum.” Maimonides builds on this theme, differentiating the prophecy of Moses from that of other prophets. Moses can prophesy at will; Moses can see the matter clearly; Moses can stand and speak with God without fainting; Moses alone is unable to return to ordinary life because his prophetic commission is clear and continuous (Yesodei HaTorah 7:6).

For most prophets, then, interpretation is as important as the prophecy itself. Indeed, interpretation is part of the prophecy. This is reminiscent of what the Rabbis say about dreams. In the , Rav Hisda claims that a dream without interpretation is like an unread letter. Indeed, the dreamer has an opportunity to seek a better interpretation and to transform an evil omen into a blessing.

What should guide interpretation? Prophecy is not magic. The role of the prophet is not to force the hand of God, but to be guided by God’s way. What is God’s way? Justice and righteousness, kindness and peace. Perhaps Rebecca understood correctly, and her boys were destined to battle. Perhaps she was justified in deceiving Isaac and depriving Esau of his blessing. But it seems to me that an interpretation that ensures enmity is of necessity flawed.

We can’t know how the story might have developed had Rebecca allowed Isaac to bless his older son. But we can work in our own capacity to interpret our sacred tradition in ways that create just and compassionate communities. As our families gather in thanksgiving for the earth’s bounty, may we also be blessed in appreciation for one another, so that we become not like Jacob and Esau, but like brothers and sisters who dwell together in peace.

This commentary was originally published in 2012.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee and Harold (��”l) Hassenfeld.

This season, as I encounter the story of your pregnancy, I feel your fear in my chest.

Before you bravely took leave of your family, they blessed you that through your line would come thousands upon thousands of descendants. When you struggled to conceive, Yitzhak pleaded with God for you to bear children.

The Torah records how the boys thrashed about in your womb. וַיִּתְרֹצְצוּ הַבָּנִים בְּקִרְבָּהּ. You cried out, אִם־כֵּן לָמָּה זֶּה אָנֹכִי, “If this is how it is, why do I exist?” (Gen. 25:22).

You must have been so scared. Something did not feel right in your body. You were separated from your mother and your family of origin. Your mother-in-law, Sarah, was no longer alive. To whom could you turn to understand what was happening inside you? Midrash Bereishit Rabbah describes how in your suffering, you circled the entrances of the tents of the women, asking, “Was it like this for you, too?”

Rashi comments that in your distress, you regretted longing for the pregnancy in the first place. Ramban believes that, overcome with pain, you questioned why you were alive at all. Sforno says that you sank with dread that one of the twins would take the life of the other in utero, causing you to succumb to the perils of childbirth. Even before the boys emerged, you carried the terror in your belly that one might kill the other.

Never one to simply let life happen to you, you got up and sought out answers. Some of your learned descendants say that you found your way to the ancient Beit Midrash of Shem and Ever, reaching for wisdom, wrestling for meaning. Others, like Ramban, insist that you cried out to God, longing for a prophecy of how the future would unfold.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I remember the day my center of gravity shifted. During a music rehearsal at the congregation where I was serving as a rabbi, I attempted to hoist myself backwards to sit on the edge of the bimah. It was a move I had done dozens of times without thinking, and that afternoon, the laws of physics no longer permitted it. I was shocked to learn that during pregnancy, organs shift, stretch, and shrink to accommodate the growing fetus. For nine months, I drank chocolate milk, craved rice and beans, and struggled to sleep. After two days of labor, my body feverish, my blood pressure high, there was a birth complication I hadn’t even known to worry about. Before I could process my fear, the care team had called a code. Nurses and doctors flooded the room. A midwife pushed on my belly, set my daughter free, and placed her hot on my chest.

When I recall your story, Mother Rivkah, I relive my own birthing experience, and I am awestruck. I ask with the intonation of wonder, “If this is so, how is it possible that I even exist?” If this is what it means to bring new life into the world, what are the odds that each cell would understand its assignment, that the myriad openings and closings would work according to plan?  

Pregnancy is perilous to begin with and pregnant people and their medical teams need every tool and resource available to care for them. In recent years in this country, legal protections have been stripped away from women. We have been denied reproductive healthcare at the expense of our lives, bouncing between emergency rooms and crossing state lines to seek out medical assistance, the way you went from tent to tent looking for anyone who could help you.

Rivkah, for your sake, I pray for the courage to ask and to act so that pregnant people receive the healthcare they need to live. May we feel safe enough to bring every question to our care providers and our communities, to give voice to each hope and each doubt. May we share the stories of what it means to live in our own bodies, each one of us, a singular soul.

Elohei Rivkah, God of Rivkah,
Harahaman, God of Compassion,
Choreographer of Wombs,
Be with us as we birth a new world into being.
Hold us when we are floored by your wonders.
See us when we sit in darkness,
afraid for what may come.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l). 

In the entire Torah, it seems, there is no bigger schlimazel than Isaac.

At the beginning of his life, he’s nearly killed by his father. At the end of his life, he’s deceived by his son. He barely participates in the courtship of his own wife. Isaac is hapless, passive, an eternal victim—the archetypical schlimazel.

That’s why the 26th chapter of Genesis is so fascinating. Sandwiched between Rebecca’s evocative pregnancy plea in chapter 25 and her and Jacob’s “Great Berakhah Caper” in chapter 27, Isaac’s adventure in the land of Gerar is understandably often overlooked. But it actually offers a key to his character: he is not so much defined by his passivity as by his active choices—specifically, his choice not to deviate from his father Abraham’s actions.

Again and again in chapter 26, Isaac follows in Abraham’s footsteps, sometimes literally. Just as Abraham did, Isaac takes his family to the land of Gerar. Just as Abraham did, Isaac tricks King Abimelech into believing that his wife is actually his sister, and eventually establishes with him a peace treaty. Isaac re-opens the exact wells that Abraham first dug—and the Torah is quick to note that Isaac “gave them the same names that his father had given them” (Gen. 26:18). Most importantly, God speaks to Isaac and promises to “bless you and increase your offspring,” like God had done with Isaac’s father before him—though, notably, the blessing is “for the sake of My servant Abraham,” not for anything that Isaac himself has done (Gen. 26:24).

It’s not that Isaac could not escape his father’s shadow. To give Isaac credit as a person with agency, one must assume that he chose to copy his dad because he believed that this was the way, perhaps the only way, to live a holy life—and presumably was vindicated by God’s blessing, which so closely tied Isaac’s reward and legacy to the fact that he was his father’s son, and not that he was his own man.

So it’s no surprise that Isaac would have thought that others should follow precedent as well. This belief was so strong that, according to one midrash (Bereishit Rabbah 65:9), physical suffering did not exist in the world until Isaac pleaded to God that it should be so. “When a person dies without suffering, the attribute of Divine Judgment [rather than Divine Mercy] is placed upon them,” Isaac said. “If You were to bring suffering upon them, the attribute of Divine Judgment would not be placed upon them.”

“You have demanded a good thing,” God replied, “and I will begin with you”—and so God gave Isaac suffering through the blindness that afflicted him in his old age.

Isaac’s belief that earthly suffering leads to eternal rewards is an old one within Judaism (though pushback against that idea is just as old). But while the midrash describes the “first suffering” as being the first example of physical pain or disability, it’s not hard to look at Isaac’s life and conclude that the first historical example of suffering was actually his traumatic experience on the altar, looking up at his father holding a knife to his throat. It makes sense, then, that Isaac, devoted to upholding the burden of history and driven by his belief in having been vindicated by God’s blessing, would have believed that since emotional or physical pain was good for him, it ought to be the standard for everyone else.

In his book Heavenly Torah, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel explains how Judaism welcomes diversity of opinion: “Jewish thought is nourished from two sources, and it follows two parallel paths: the path of vision and the path of reason. With respect to those things that are given to objective measurement, reason is primary. With respect to things of the heart, vision is primary . . . . Torah can only be acquired in two ways: With reason’s lens and the heart’s lens” (707–709, emphasis added). He then quotes from the Talmud: “One who is blind in one eye is exempt from the obligation to go on pilgrimage” (Hagigah 2b).

In other words, the Torah—God’s instructions for how to live an ethical and holy life—can only be understood by using both the head and the heart, by having both reason and vision. Without both, one cannot be expected to have the capability to encounter or understand that which is holy.

In both of these categories, Isaac missed the mark. He did not demonstrate enough intellectual reasoning to realize that he had options beyond those chosen by his father. And his emotional vision was also deficient: he wished for others to have pain just because he experienced it himself—a common sentiment, one that is often expressed in the phrase “hurt people hurt people,” but not one to be emulated. And so ultimately Isaac’s intellectual and emotional blindness was made manifest in his physical blindness—in both eyes, not just one. No wonder that God’s continuation of the covenant with Isaac was nonetheless instead made “for the sake of My servant Abraham.”

What Isaac could not see, even while he still had physical eyesight, was that while Jews are called to uphold the mitzvot and our traditions, we should not be so beholden to them as to inhibit our own individuality—or worse, cause suffering upon others who do not fit the historic mold. When the students of the Hasidic master Reb Zusha found him crying on his deathbed, they asked him, “Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham.” Reb Zusha answered, “When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won’t ask me, ‘Zusha, why weren’t you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham?’ Rather, they will ask me, ‘Zusha, why weren’t you Zusha?’” Isaac was trying so hard to be Abraham that he nearly failed at being Isaac.

But Judaism also teaches us that everyone, even late in life, is capable of change, and so too is Isaac: when Esau asks him for a blessing to replace the one that Jacob stole, Isaac at first reverts to his pattern of relying on precedent, saying that nothing can be done once the original blessing has been uttered. But then, in response to the tears of his firstborn son, Isaac finally makes an independent choice—listening to both his head and his heart—and offers a blessing nonetheless. It is then, finally, in his last recorded act before he dies, that Isaac leaves behind schlimazel-dom and becomes a patriarch worthy of emulating, an independent and empathetic thinker; to use another Yiddish word: a mensch.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

“I have loved Jacob, but Esau I have hated.” This is, to say the least, not only an extreme formulation of the enmity that characterizes the relationship of Jacob and Esau, but also a distortion of subsequent history. For if the Lord has loved Jacob and hated Esau, God sure has a funny way of showing it. One does not have to subscribe to the lachrymose theory of Jewish history to believe that since the moment of the prophecy to Rebecca, in fact it is Esau who has been ascendant, while Jacob has been downtrodden.

In the world of the ancient Rabbis who gave us Judaism—the world of the Talmud and the Midrash, from the first century through the seventh century CE—our Rabbis identified Esau / Edom with the Roman Empire. In doing so, they took on both aspects of that Empire—the earlier pagan Roman Empire and the later Christian Roman Empire, and conflated them into one image of Esau, forever at odds with Jacob / Israel. For the Rabbis, Esau most often was depicted as the enemy, our oppressor, “The Man” who kept us beneath his boot.

But the Rabbis never forgot the first part of Malachi’s prophecy, which confirms the earlier biblical oracle given to Rebecca. For all that there has been enmity and opposition, Esau is also our brother, indeed our twin brother. He may be red-hued, hirsute, and macho, while we tend to be pale and scholarly, but brothers are we. The tension between being brothers on one hand and enemies on the other is well represented in the Talmud:

Rabbi Judah son of Converts said, “How admirable are the deeds of this nation, [Rome]. They have built markets, bridges, and bath-houses.”

His colleague Rabbi Yosi was silent.

But Rabbi Shimon ben Yokhai retorted, “Anything they have built has been for their own needs. They build markets so their whores have a place to ply their trade. Bathhouses to pamper themselves, and bridges to collect tolls and taxes.” ()

Well, that pretty much says it. On one side is the curiously named Rabbi Judah, who tends to see our brotherhood, while the zealous Rabbi Shimon can only see our enmity. The truth about this age-old sibling rivalry is, of course, somewhat more complicated.

Our rabbinic Jewish heritage has been deeply influenced by Esau / Rome. There are thousands of loan words from Greek and, to a lesser extent, Latin found in the Talmud and the Midrash. Some are familiar, but it helps to remember they are Greek in origin: for example, “synagogue” or “Sanhedrin.” The former speaks for itself. The latter name, used in Hebrew for the Jewish courts, is not only Greek, but had been the name for the Roman senate. Another word commonly used in synagogues is “bimah,” the raised platform from where the Torah is read. Yet it, too, is Greek, originally meaning the dais where a tribunal sat.

The Rabbis repeatedly number the books of the Hebrew Bible as 24, even though others count as many as 39. Why so few? It’s not coincidental that there are 24 books in both the Iliad and the Odyssey. In fact, the Rabbis in the Mishnah (Yada’im 4:6) refer to the writings of Homer by name.

The same Rabbis present themselves as philosophers, and in their thinking they largely align themselves with Roman Stoics. Their art and architecture is largely Roman—synagogues in the Galilee are built as Roman basilicas. In fact, those same synagogues are replete with Roman mosaics, including, mysteriously, images of the Greco-Roman god Zeus-Helios, who is found in the center panel of a number of synagogue floors!

When explaining how the rabbis came to be comfortable with Roman art, the leader of the Jewish community in the late first century, Rabbi Gamaliel, is quoted in the Mishnah () commenting on the statue of Aphrodite in the bathhouse he attends. It’s art, he explains, and is not used for pagan worship. As art, it is permissible. From then until today there has been pictorial art in synagogues.

The influence of Roman culture on rabbinic Judaism is pervasive. In my recent book on this topic (), I remind my readers that well before we Jews lived in Christian America, our forbears struggled to find their Jewish identity in first pagan and then Christian Rome. In the aftermath of the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple, they adopted the best of Roman culture to create a Judaism that would survive and ultimately flourish. This remains our challenge as Jews today. How can we adapt the best of American culture while making Judaism a vibrant religion that will flourish for the next two millennia?

Originally published in 2016

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

“I overheard your father speaking to your brother Esau, saying, ‘Bring me some game and prepare a dish for me to eat, that I may bless you, with the Lord’s approval, before I die.’ Now, my son, listen carefully as I instruct you. Go to the flock and fetch me two choice kids, and I will make of them a dish for your father, such as he likes. Then take it to your father to eat, in order that he may bless you before he dies.” (Gen. 27:6–10)

Scholar Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg notes that when reading the text closely, it seems that “nowhere, at first formulation of the plan, does she refer to impersonation or deception” (The Beginning of Desire, 147). She simply suggests that Jacob pre-empt his older twin with a meal of his own. In other words, Rebekah is asking her favored son to simply get there first, which is unfair, but perhaps not as completely immoral as deceit. It is Jacob who assumes from her suggestion that impersonation is the only way to receive his father’s blessing, as he responds, “But my brother Esau is a hairy man and I am smooth-skinned. If my father touches me, I shall appear to him as a trickster and bring upon myself a curse, not a blessing” (27:11–12). Afraid to be seen as a deceiver, yet assuming that is the only way, he then somewhat reluctantly goes along with the plan. Rebekah takes charge and responds to his concerns by draping his arms with goatskin, to better impersonate Esau’s hairy arms.

Jacob’s turn to deception is puzzling for another subtle reason: we already know that Jacob himself is a very skilled cook! In this very same parashah, Jacob serves his famished twin a dish of “red stuff” so enticing, that Esau is willing to give up his birthright to eat it (25: 29–34).

Jacob assumes that impersonation is the only way to fulfill his destiny. Perhaps he forgets that he possesses the prowess to prepare a feast of his own, that his hands are certainly capable of the task. Jacob is not alone in this conclusion. How many throughout history and in our own time have turned to deception (from embezzlement to performance enhancing drugs) to advance in ways that their own abilities could have achieved if they had only trusted them?

For whatever reason, Jacob, with trepidation, resorts to impersonation, and in his encounter with his father, another truth emerges regarding his skilled but now concealed hands.

As Isaac lies in bed, weak, but perhaps underestimated in his cognitive awareness, he calls his son to approach, and feels his arms. Thinking out loud as he tries to determine who is before him, he muses: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau” (27:22). He seems to know that an attempted deception is taking place: either Esau is pretending to be Jacob, or Jacob is pretending to be Esau. Of course, given that he asked for Esau to come to him, he surely knows it is the latter. Yet, incredibly, he still allows the ruse to play out, eating the meal his wife prepared, and conferring his first-born blessing upon Jacob. The Keli Yakar (Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz 1550–1619), as part of a longer comment on this verse, suggests a reason for Isaac to reject any other option: “In the end, Isaac used common sense and judged that hands determine more than the voice.”

The hands determine more than the voice. While Isaac seemingly chose incorrectly (though some commentators believe he knew exactly what he was doing), the statement reveals a deeper truth: one’s character is shaped far more by one’s actions than one’s speech. Jacob’s hands do tell us so much about who he is, not just in this moment, but throughout his life.

Unlike other patriarchs and matriarchs, who regularly conversed, argued, and negotiated with God, Jacob occasionally received divine messages, but was truly a patriarch who used his hands. And despite being the “simple tent dweller” in contrast to his active hunter brother, Jacob too has a physicality to his character.  He was born grasping the heel of Esau. He traded a stew that he cooked for a birthright. He deceived his father by concealing his hands. He toiled for 14 years to marry Leah and his beloved Rachel. He wrestled with an angel. He embraced his brother, Esau, and son Joseph in two very emotional reunions. And finally, in one of the final acts of his life, he crossed his arms to bless his grandsons, so that the hand meant to bless the older child blessed the younger. Jacob’s hands held blessing, manipulation, and aspiration throughout his life, and the work of those hands helps us to deeply understand the complexity of his character. 

The deeds of our hands can determine our identity. Far more than what we say, we become known by what we do. Midrash Tanhuma Vayak-hel states, each person is known by three names: one that was given by their parents, one that others call them, and one that they acquire for themselves. Perhaps we can learn from Isaac that we become known far better by what comes from our deeds than from our mouths. And perhaps we can learn from Jacob’s quick assumption that he needed to deceive to achieve that our own hands are not inadequate, but rather capable of earning and conferring countless blessings.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).   

The first belongs to murdered Abel, whose blood cries out from the ground for justice (Gen. 4:10). Another belongs to Hagar as she watches her son wither to his death (Gen. 21:16). Israel screams in servitude in Egypt (Exod. 2:23) and later during their trials in the wilderness (Num. 14:1).

Perhaps the most piercing scream of all occurs in Parashat Toledot when first-born Esau realizes that his younger brother, Jacob, had tricked him out of receiving his father Isaac’s blessing. Esau approaches his father to receive the blessing only to learn that just moments before, Jacob had stolen his identity and his blessing. When Isaac informs him of this, Esau releases a great and bitter primal scream (Gen. 27:34).

Esau screams. He screams for the loss he feels and for the deception he experienced. At their core, Esau’s screams communicate his frustration at a world that does not conform to communal norms nor to his personal expectations. His father’s blessing belonged to him as the eldest son. In ancient Israel, first-borns had a unique status (Exod. 13:2) and received double the family inheritance (Deut. 21:17). For Esau, Isaac’s blessing Jacob defied all his assumptions of the way the world should work and how his life should unfold.

I have always felt for Esau, whose brother and mother betray him. But in the last years of political turmoil, natural disasters, rising antisemitism, and COVID-19, Esau’s screams resonate with me more. Like Esau, I feel as if I live in a world that does not conform to my expectations.

For the first time in my life, my basic assumptions about how I live and work, how my children are educated, how my family and friends gather, how we live Jewishly are challenged. Nothing feels certain. What seemed to me to be fundamental truths about the way the world should work have been upended. Often, I want to scream like Esau.

Blessedly for me, the Torah reflects this topsy-turvy world. It tells a story of individuals that defy norms and expectations to become a people that defy norms and expectations. Abraham abandons his father’s house. Younger sons Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph all rise to prominence. Against norms and odds, God chooses Israel, Jacob’s descendants and not Esau’s, to become God’s first-born (Exod. 4:22).

Like our own, the Torah’s topsy-turvy world is difficult to inhabit, but I firmly believe that it offers deep religious insights and reflects the world I prefer to live in personally and religiously. I do not want to live in a determined world.

A determined world—a world in which norms are fixed and expectations met—does not allow for change, growth, and surprise. It does not allow for miracles that interrupt and defy the natural world, showcasing divine power and changing the course of human history.

A determined world does not make room for God, but it also does not make room for humanity. A world in which paths and futures are fixed disempowers humans and does not allow them to make change and set their own course. Even more unappealing to me is that a determined world does not allow for intimate relationships among human beings or between humans and God. Intimacy thrives in a world that allows for change, growth, and surprise.

In the Torah’s undetermined world, God can disrupt nature, part seas, and choose a humble unworthy people to love (Deut. 7:7–8). Human beings also have the power and freedom in this world to set their course, to defy norms, and even to choose God. Jacob makes this clear in next week’s parashah when he vows to be in relationship with God only if God protects and provides for him (Gen. 28:20–22).

In the Torah’s undetermined world, God can have an intimate relationship with Israel—a relationship that erupts in a moment, is founded on desire and choice, and that develops over time. This relationship is not fixed and cannot be manifest in a determined world. It changes. God and Israel can love and reject each other only to come together again in love (Isa. 54:7).

I do not want to live in a determined world. I do not want to live in the world described by the biblical outlier Kohelet in which the earth remains the same forever. I do not want to inhabit religiously a world in which nothing is new under the sun—where assumptions are never challenged—or where my relationship with God cannot develop and deepen.

Rather, I want to live in a world that sometimes makes me want to scream, but that allows for change and repair—a world in which an intimate relationship with God is possible—a world in which Esau’s primal screams and my own, in time, become joyful cries of reconciliation (Gen. 33:4).

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).

Humility. It is like water in the desert—not only in the academic world, but even more so in the political sphere and religious communities. It is a character trait both rare and seemingly out of favor. (The exception may be Anthony Rendon of the World Series champion Washington Nationals who eschewed all the superlatives offered about his game-winning performance, “I feel like there are bigger things going on in this world. . . . We’re not taking bullets for our country in Afghanistan or wherever it might be. This should be a breeze.”) We bestow accolades for knowledge, academic achievement, political conviction, religious insight—but rarely for acknowledging uncertainty or what we don’t know.

This reflection on humility brings us to this week’s Torah portion, Toledot. One of the principal themes of the parashah is the relationship between Rebecca and her twin sons, Jacob and Esau. While the two boys are still in her womb, Rebecca—and Rebecca alone—becomes a confidant of God in the divine plan to place Jacob and his descendants above Esau and the nation that will descend from him. (Gen. 25:22-23). To effectuate that plan, she concocts and participates in the deceitful scheme to secure Isaac’s deathbed blessing for Jacob rather than the older child, Esau, thereby subverting not only Isaac’s intent but also the established rule of primogeniture. (27:5-29). Rebecca then engineers Jacob’s escape to safeguard her son from the wrath of his older brother and to prevent Jacob from marrying a Hittite woman as Esau did—an act that “disgusted” her and clearly led to a deterioration in her relationship with her elder son. (27:41-28:5).

Because Rebecca is clearly the protagonist of this saga and her relationship with her children is front and center throughout, one of the concluding verses of the parashah is baffling: “Then Isaac sent Jacob off, and he went to Paddan-aram to Laban the son of Bethuel the Aramean, the brother of Rebecca, mother of Jacob and Esau.” (28:5) Why, Rashi asks, does the verse have to identify Rebecca as the mother of Jacob and Esau when the entire preceding story makes that relationship abundantly clear? Since, according to Rashi’s method of biblical interpretation, no words are superfluous in the text, what do these seemingly unnecessary descriptive words convey?

Rashi’s answer is straightforward: “I do not know what it teaches us.” Here the greatest Bible scholar and teacher of all time demonstrates his humility by proclaiming to the world his ignorance on this point. More than that, his public acknowledgement of ignorance is gratuitous. As Nechama Leibowitz points out, Rashi could have remained silent. He could have simply moved to the next verse on which he comments; after all, Rashi does not comment on every phrase of every verse. (Studies in Bereshit, 287). So why did he decide that it was important to acknowledge his ignorance on this issue publicly?

Rashi did so, I believe, not out of a sense of humility for its own sake; but rather, he wanted his humble acknowledgement to encourage others to seek meanings and resolutions that escaped his grasp. If Rashi had remained silent, others might have missed the issue entirely and therefore not addressed it. On the other hand, if Rashi—to protect his reputation as a Bible scholar—had proposed a solution that he did not feel was authentic, others might have been intimidated from offering more cogent explanations. So Rashi laid out the problem and left it to future generations to tackle (which they did).

How refreshing is Rashi’s humility when compared to our present political discourse! Viewing the contemporary political landscape, I am struck by the certitude expressed about the correctness—indeed, the (self)righteousness—of the positions taken in respect to complex problems that cry out for subtlety and compromise. , we have become like a modern-day version of Diogenes walking the streets with a lantern looking for the one righteous person—we turn the lamp on ourselves and call off the rest of the search. (“True Virtue,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 24, 1985) Perhaps we could improve our political discourse and begin to heal the divisiveness in our society by acknowledging, in the words of Robert Bolt, that “The currents and eddies of right and wrong which you find such plain-sailing, I cannot navigate.” (A Man for All Seasons, 39).

So too could humility bring a refreshing perspective to religious life. It has become accepted to confidently take a knife to traditions or discard them entirely when they no longer are “meaningful” to us. Innovation, while necessary in a changing world, has become a fetish—an objective for its own sake, an easy route to avoiding the difficult, discomforting, and even downright offensive parts of our tradition. But perhaps in the face of a tradition that has given succor and meaning to generations of the Jewish family, we should be humble enough to at least pause before excising significant portions of that tradition. The late Rabbi Richard Israel, formerly the Jewish chaplain at Yale University, once admitted that the second paragraph of the Shema had lost all meaning for him, speaking as it does of divine reward and punishment through changes in atmospheric conditions. Even so, he continued to include the entire Shema in his prayer practice: “If I drop bothersome aspects of the tradition, I will never again have the opportunity to be challenged by its difficult ideas, nor will I give the generations that come after me the opportunity to recover a meaning which I have lost. I am involved in a holding action.” (The Condition of Jewish Belief, 100).

Rashi’s humility, like Rabbi Israel’s, gave future generations the opportunity to find meaning that those great religious leaders could not uncover. As we read Parashat Toledot—the parashah of “generations”—may we seek to cultivate the same level of humility in ourselves for our own sakes as well as for the sake of future generations.

The publication and distribution of the 91�첥 Commentary are made possible by a generous grant from Rita Dee (��”l) and Harold Hassenfeld (��”l).