This past Shabbat, we celebrated the Bar Mitzvah of Aldo. Aldo’s parashah (Torah portion) was Toldot. Toldot literally means something like “lineage;” it is related to the common Hebrew words yeled and yaldah, which mean boy and girl, respectively, and which come from the root י-ל-ד, which means to give birth. In the context of Aldo’s parashah, whose first words are eleh toldot yitzchak (Genesis 25:19), the word is used in a figurative sense, and the opening phrase means something like, “These are the stories that flow from Isaac,” the middle of our three ancient forefathers, whose foundational stories, establishing the relationship between God and the forebears of the Jewish people, make up much of the book of Genesis.
The stories that flow from Isaac include three distinct episodes, in which Aldo found an important theme. In the first, the elder of Isaac and his wife Rebecca’s twin sons, Esau, a hunter and outdoorsman, comes home from the hunt, famished, only to find his younger brother, Jacob, the homebody, cooking stew. Demanding some of the stew, Esau is confronted by the proposition from Jacob that Esau relinquish his birthright in exchange for the stew. Esau relents, and the seeds for Jacob overtaking his older brother for the privileges that come with being firstborn are sewn.
The next episode features Isaac as the main character. Isaac has brought his family to Gerar, a Philistine royal city, in search of greener pastures. His agriculture yields much bounty there, so much so that the Philistines envied, and their King, Abimelech, ultimately banished, him.
Finally, we encounter the episode so notorious to us by now in which Rebecca takes matters into her own hands, urging her favored son Jacob to take advantage of Esau’s absence from the home front, as well as Isaac’s ailing health and poor eyesight, by disguising Jacob as Esau to have him steal the blessing.
What possible theme could connect all three of these stories? Well, Aldo noticed that in each of these, the issue of characters experiencing a sense of scarcity arose, leading them to act according to their harshest instincts, whereas had they shifted their frame and perspective, a sense of the abundance around them might have become present, allowing them to act out of love and kindness, which ultimately, too, would have been in their interest.
Jacob felt the need to use his brother’s own hunger against him, thereby sewing the seeds of animus between them. He was never ultimately able to make use of the birthright, as he had to flee the scene due to his brother’s wrath. King Abimielech was so focused on scarcity that he banished a source of blessing and abundance, Isaac, from his own community. Jacob and Rebecca got caught up in the illusion that there wasn’t enough blessing to go around, betraying their brother and son in the process.
Aldo invited us to shift our frame of mind, asking ourselves how the circumstances in which we find ourselves might be viewed from the perspective that there is enough to go around, how an understanding that the Source of Blessing is infinite, that blessings permeate the universe, might change our behavior, our experience of the world, and our inner being.
It was a truly profound message.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi K.