Parashah Toledot

Sixth in an ongo­ing series

Toledot (Gen­e­sis 25:19–28:9)

Rebecca, Issac’s wife, is bar­ren. Sarah, Avraham’s wife, was bar­ren. Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, would later be barren. Surely this is more than a coin­ci­dence. Why would Jew­ish leg­end, in gen­eral, and the bib­li­cal writ­ers, specif­i­cally, state that three of the found­ing matri­archs were bar­ren? (Leah, Jacob’s other wife, is the exception.)

The sim­ple answer is that the Jew­ish peo­ple are to view them­selves as a mirac­u­lous occur­rence (espe­cially because we also sur­vived 2,000 years of exile and per­se­cu­tion). We should not even be here. In the view of the bib­li­cal authors, it is only by the grace of God that we are alive — so we must devote our­selves that much more to fol­low­ing His commandments.

But bar­ren­ness is not the only com­mon thread in the found­ing fam­i­lies. In the sec­ond third and fourth gen­er­a­tions, the younger son was favored over the older — Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, and Joseph over his older brothers. As I men­tioned in an essay on a prior parashah, this is a metaphor for Judaism turn­ing the dom­i­nant social par­a­digm – pagan, poly­the­is­tic cul­ture – on its head. Everything had changed. The young (monothe­ism) is over­tak­ing the old (poly­the­ism). The fact that Jacob was born with his hand on Esau’s heel only empha­sizes this point fur­ther (although it also fore­shad­ows the injury that Jacob would later receive while wrestling with an angel).

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While for­bid­ding Isaac from find­ing refuge in Egypt fol­low­ing a famine, like what Avra­ham had done, God also states that “Avra­ham obeyed Me and kept My charge: My com­mand­ments, My laws, and My teach­ings” (Genesis:26:5). This presents a con­fus­ing prob­lem. Avra­ham and Issac lived hun­dreds of years — and one book of the Bible — prior to the Israelites’ recep­tion of the Torah fol­low­ing the exo­dus from Egypt. There were no com­mand­ments, laws or teach­ings to follow.

So, what was God talk­ing about? So far, the covenant between God has been fairly one-sided. The Hebrews did not have to do much. God promised the land of Canaan to Avraham’s descen­dants, and all He has asked in return so far was for all male chil­dren to be cir­cum­cised and for the Hebrews to “walk in [God’s] ways and be blame­less” (Gen­e­sis 17:1). How­ever, we’re not sure at this point in the Torah what the sec­ond com­mand­ment exactly means. No laws have been intro­duced. The only reli­gious prac­tices that the Torah has men­tioned so far has been the con­struc­tion of alters, the offer­ing of sac­ri­fices, and the liv­ing in the land of Canaan.

Dif­fer­ent Hebrews — or Israelites, Jews, or what­ever term you wish – have kept their parts of the covenant in dif­fer­ent ways. Avraham, Issac and Jacob didn’t have to keep kosher. From the time of Avra­ham until the giv­ing of the Torah on Mount Sinai, it was pretty sim­ple to be a Hebrew. The dif­fer­ences between Hebraic reli­gion and the sur­round­ing poly­the­is­tic ones were cir­cum­ci­sion and the wor­ship of (and per­haps a belief in) only one spe­cific god. (Both types of reli­gions built alters and burned sac­ri­fices.)* Jews did not receive their 613 laws until cen­turies after Avra­ham lived.

The les­son here is that God starts out small. (Human­ity, after all, is metaphor­i­cally descended from a sin­gle cou­ple.) When God assigns a mis­sion to a per­son, He usu­ally starts with some­thing they can han­dle. Peo­ple need to grow into their roles — after all, Moses did not go directly from the burn­ing bush to lead­ing the exo­dus out of Egypt. His role evolved and grew. The Hebrews could not have han­dled the respon­si­bil­ity of being God’s cho­sen peo­ple and car­ry­ing out all 613 com­mand­ments straight away. They needed to evolve into that role by first rec­og­niz­ing that one god exists, then hon­or­ing that one god, then per­form­ing a rit­ual act to dis­tin­guish them­selves, then try­ing to live as eth­i­cally as pos­si­ble. Finally, hun­dreds of years later, they were able to accept the respon­si­bil­ity of the Torah. The type of bur­dens that the Hebrews had to endure changed over time. More specif­i­cally, they went from a sim­ple covenant with God to slav­ery in Egypt to obe­di­ence to 613 spe­cific rules. There is no rea­son that the bur­dens could not change again.

This is one of the reli­gious jus­ti­fi­ca­tions that I cite in defense of lib­eral forms of Judaism — Con­ser­v­a­tive, Reform, Recon­struc­tion­ist, Renewal, among oth­ers – from their Ortho­dox detrac­tors. The bur­den car­ried by Jews did not remain sta­tic after Mount Sinai just as it did not remain sta­tic after Avra­ham. While God called to the Hebrews as a group at Mount Sinai, God can call to dif­fer­ent Jews indi­vid­u­ally today. Dif­fer­ent Jews are led to carry dif­fer­ent bur­dens, and they should not be con­demned for their choices. Dif­fer­ent parts of the Torah — and even the spe­cific com­mand­ments them­selves — can be viewed as lit­eral, metaphor­i­cal, or his­tor­i­cal. The writ­ten word, by its very nature, always neces­si­tates an interpretation.

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The idea of his­tory, moder­nity and change is also one of the points of another story from this week’s parashah:

And Isaac departed thence, and encamped in the val­ley of Gerar, and dwelt there. And Isaac digged again the wells of water, which they had digged in the days of Abra­ham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abra­ham; and he called their names after the names by which his father had called them. And Isaac’s ser­vants digged in the val­ley, and found there a well of liv­ing water. And the herd­men of Gerar strove with Isaac’s herd­men, say­ing: ‘The water is ours.’ And he called the name of the well Esek; because they con­tended with him. And they digged another well, and they strove for that also. And he called the name of it Sit­nah. And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said: ‘For now the Lord hath made room for us, and we shall be fruit­ful in the land.’ (Gen­e­sis 26:17–22)

Issac gave the orig­i­nal names back to his father’s wells after he had re-dug them. This is to demon­strate the impor­tance of hon­or­ing one’s roots and his­tory. Isaac, how­ever, gave new names to new wells that he had dug. This is to show that peo­ple some­times need to rein­ter­pret their lega­cies in light of chang­ing cir­cum­stances and mod­ern times. (I must give credit to Rabbi Jeremy Mor­ri­son of Tem­ple Israel in Boston for this interpretation.)

Jews inher­ited a legacy and tra­di­tion, and many of them also adjusted those beliefs and prac­tices to suit mod­ern ideas. Judaism as a whole ben­e­fited as a result. Water sym­bol­izes life, and the pres­ence of water in this story implies that peo­ple need to honor their lega­cies while mak­ing them rel­e­vant in their daily lives. Some­times tra­di­tions need to change.

* Pagan reli­gions in the Mid­dle East also con­tained prac­tices like child sac­ri­fice and the pres­ence of sacred vir­gins (or sacred pros­ti­tutes), but this is a dif­fer­ent issue.

Else­where: Other com­men­taries on this parashah are here, here and here. Prior por­tion: Chayei Sarah.