Unconditional Love

Toldot

Gen. 25:19-28:9

 

Précis: The introductory phrase to this parasha is “These are the generations (“toldot”) of Isaac.” What follows is the birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob. Their childhood is omitted from the narrative. We learn that Jacob is a quiet man while Esau is a cunning hunter, that their mother Rebecca prefers Jacob, and that Isaac prefers Esau. Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of porridge (or lentils). A famine takes place, and Isaac visits the Philistines where he claims that his wife Rebecca is actually his sister (as Abraham did with Sarah in Lech Lecha) and again, the woman escapes unharmed. The story turns to the “great deception” where Jacob pretends to be Esau in order to obtain the primary blessing from his father Isaac. Esau hates Jacob and threatens him; Rebecca urges Jacob to escape to her family in Haran, and he sets off at the conclusion of the parasha.

 

Gen. 25:27-28 “The boys grew up. Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the outdoors; but Jacob was a mild man who stayed at home among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebecca loved Jacob.”

           

Rabbi Sacks, has written about how parents treat their children, and the results of familial discontent (Covenant and Conversation,1/24/22).  

            We have no difficulty understanding why Rebecca loved Jacob. She had received an oracle from God in which she was told that the older twin would serve the younger (Gen. 25:23). But why did Isaac love Esau? Is it simply because he had a taste for game, and Esau satisfied that craving? He must have known that Esau had sold his birthright for a bowl of porridge to Jacob, and he knew that Esau had made his home with the Hittites, and married two Hittite women. Esau could not be the one to carry on the Abrahamic tradition. Nevertheless, Isaac loved Esau.

            While Esau was out hunting for his father, Jacob dressed like Esau and received the blessing for the firstborn. The text tells us very little about the emotions of the actors (as is usually the case with Torah). The Sages suggested that the phrase “skillful hunter” means that Esau was a deceiver, pretending to be more religious than he actually was. Sacks rejects this idea, and says simply that “Isaac loved Esau because Esau was his son, and that is what parents do. They love their children unconditionally.”

            That does not mean that Isaac ignored the faults of his children, or that he was not pained or angered by Esau’s transgressions. But, says Sacks, “a parent does not disown their child, even when the child disappoints their expectations.” And it is important that this lesson is taught to us by Isaac, who knew the pain Abraham felt when he exiled Ishmael, and remembered all too well the Akedah, leaving Isaac with the most severe psychological scars. Isaac was determined not to repeat the exile of his son. Sacks suggests that in “some way, then, Isaac’s unconditional love of Esau was a tikkun for the rupture in the father-son relationship brought about by the Binding.”

            Perhaps we should remember that in “Avinu Malkeinu” we see God first of all as a parent. Just as Jacob is to be renamed Israel (one who wrestles with God), we acknowledge that God wrestles with us, as a parent does with a child. The relationship between parent and child can be painful and filled with conflict, but while the bond may seem at times to disappear, it is never broken beyond repair.

            Sacks concludes aptly: “Unconditional love is not uncritical, but it is unbreakable. That is how we should love our children – for it is how God loves us.”