Tag Archives: Peace

Re’eh, Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/reeh

Entering a Land of Peace

By Rachel Farbiarz

In Parashat Re’eh, the Israelites are given intimation of the shape of their future society across the Jordan River. The portrait of the Israelites’ world-to-come generally radiates an exuberant sense of well-being—reflecting a society contentedly organized and functioning smoothly.

The desert nomads are regaled with how they will yearly process to a central site for the dedication of their agricultural bounty. Here, they will “rejoice before the Lord your God with your sons and daughters and with your male and female slaves…” And if the way is too long to travel with such plenty, the pilgrim will exchange his bounty for money to spend at God’s designated site on “anything you may desire.”

In this halcyon world, the bounty of the land will be mirrored in a generous social order: Debts will be remitted and slaves freed each seventh year—sent off with gifts from their masters “out of the flock, threshing floor and vat.” The “stranger, the fatherless, and the widow” will celebrate the festivals with each household. And, if God’s commands are hearkened: “There shall be no needy among you…” With these tantalizing promises of communal celebration and a caring civil society, Parashat Re’eh holds out the promise of idyll, plenty and joy.

There are, however, fissures veining the serene portrait. Until the people have “come to the resting place, to the allotted haven,” this bountiful existence will not be fully realized. The world of festive in-gatherings and pilgrimages will not be established until God “grants you safety from all your enemies around you and you live in security.” Realizing the promise of the well-ordered, abundant society that our parashah describes depends thus not only on arrival in the land, but also on reaching a state of peace therein.

The Israelites accordingly are commanded to eliminate sources of conflict—both external and internal—in settling their new world. They are to destroy all vestiges of Canaanite idol worship. Israelite cities that have strayed into idolatrous practice must be razed, and false prophets are to be cut down. Until they have emerged from this period of destruction, the parashah seems to imply, the Israelites will not realize the golden promise of their thriving society.

This approach to achieving peace and stability—the total eradication of conflict through violence—is of course understood today to be facile, cruel and ultimately unwise. Conflict cannot simply be excised tumor-like from society, and such blunt efforts to do so will likely only bring on its metastasization. Indeed, we have come to understand that conflict’s debilitating effects linger long after formal hostilities have ended.

In his lucid book, The Bottom Billion, economist Paul Collier identifies violent conflict among the several “development traps” that keep those in the world’s poorest countries—“the bottom billion”—from thriving. Specifically focusing on internal conflicts—civil wars and coups—Collier details how such instability stalks and then dismantles progress in the world’s poorest regions, effecting “development in reverse.” Collier reports that 73 percent of people in the world’s poorest countries are currently in, or have recently been through, a civil war, and that the experience of these persistent conflicts plays a significant role in “trapping” countries in poverty.

Civil wars, in Collier’s estimation, reduce growth by 2.3 percent per year. And critically, economic decline persists well after fighting has ceased. Lasting about seven years, a typical civil war thus leaves a country about 15 percent poorer than it would have been at peace. The war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo, for example, will require about 50 years of continuous peace at its current growth rate to simply return to its income levels of 1960.

With such debilitating consequences, violent conflicts are thus a formidable barrier to poor countries’ development—much less to achieving the sort of serene society depicted in our parashah. But here Collier’s analysis provides some hope and circles back to the symbiosis between peace and societal flourishing articulated in Parashat Re’eh. The strongest predictors for conflict, Collier argues, are not a country’s political, historical or ethnic configurations, but their economies. More than any other factors, low income and slow growth make it likely that a country will become mired in war. That is, while conflict impedes growth and reduces income, the relationship simultaneously holds the other way too: poverty breeds conflict.

To build societies in our parashah’s image, it may thus be wisest to heed its own admonishment: “Do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy brother. Rather, you must open your hand and lend him sufficient for whatever he needs.” When we do so, we invite the possibility that from our open hands will not only fall seeds of prosperity—but also of peace.

Farbiarz, Rachel. "Parashat Re'eh 5774." American Jewish World Service D'var Tzedek." (Viewed on August 20, 2014). http://ajws.org/what_we_do/education/publications/dvar_tzedek/5774/reeh.html

See and Observe

By Rabbi Yaacov Finn

This week’s parshah, Re’eh, contains an eclectic mix of laws including the laws of kashrut, tithes, remission and the pilgrimage festivals: ostensibly there is no connection between them. However, when considered in the context of the opening line – ‘See, I set before you today a blessing and a curse’ (Deuteronomy 11:26), I believe that an approach encompassing all these elements can be built. For this phrase starts somewhat oddly: it could simply have stated ‘I have set before…’. The addition of the word ‘Re’eh(See)’ is not only calling the listeners to attention but instructing them to direct their sight toward a set of options.

In doing so it is also suggesting the theme with which to connect the disparate elements of the ensuing parsha, namely, the religious requirement of sight.

Implicitly (as I hope to show), Moses is saying that to be religious and to follow a code of law takes perception: it requires the ability to ‘see’ between different choices, to ‘observe’ realities and to react accordingly. Starting with the laws of kashrut (fitness, correctness, especially for food) as presented in this week’s portion, they all focus on observable elements: Does this animal chew the cud and have split hooves? Is this bird a bird of prey? Does this fish have fins and scales? All these are objective criteria, and thus require the individual to observe, to see whether an item is permissible or not.

Moving to the laws of the tithe – the requirement either to share one’s harvest with the Levites, or the poor or to eat the produce in Jerusalem (depending on the year) – it is clearly a tool to promote a re-awakening of religious sight. By forcing the farmer to forego part of his foodstuffs, the giving of the tithe is supposed to encourage the farmer to observe how it is through divine will that the field yields its bounty. Furthermore, it is supposed to focus the farmer’s attention on those in society who are in need of support, e.g. the poor.

The laws of shemita (the remission year), require masters to let servants free and creditors to release individuals from their debts. Again, these demand an element of perception; one cannot help the poor if one doesn’t notice the poor! These laws require one to leave his or her own bubble, to ‘see’ those around them and act accordingly. Again the message is clear – ‘look’, ‘see’.

Finally, we must consider laws of the pilgrimage festivals for this is the slight exception. No longer an exaltation to be ‘observant’, the festivals are supposed to serve as a reminder of how the Jewish people are being watched over by G-d. ‘Three times in the year, every one of your males shall appear before the Lord, your God, in the place He will choose:’ (Deuteronomy 16:16). Three times a year Jews during the temple era would have to make the trek to Jerusalem to be ‘seen’, to remind them that G-d is forever watching, eternally observant.

I acknowledge I have not addressed every law (and there are many) in this week’s parshah. But based on this simple analysis it seems the whole portion is a plea by Moses in his final moments for the Jews to become a discerning people, an ‘observant’ people. This parshah is all about the requirement to be perceptive: to see, to observe and, on occasion, to be aware that we are being observed.

Finn, Yaacov. "Re'eh 5774." Limmud on One Leg. (Viewed on August 21, 2014). http://limmud.org/publications/limmudononeleg/5774/reeh/

Pinchas, Numbers 25:10-30:1

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/pinchas

Torah: Touched By God

By Rabbi Tony Bayfield

God spoke to Moses saying: Pinchas, son of Eleazar son of  Aaron the Priest, has turned back My anger from the Israelites by displaying among them his zeal for Me, so that I did not wipe out the Israelite people in My zeal. Say, therefore, ‘I grant him my pact of friendship. It shall be for him and his descendants after him a pact of priesthood for all time, because he was zealous for his God, thus making expiation for the Israelites.’ (Num. 25:10–13)

I stand up in honour of the Torah, follow it round the synagogue out of respect with my eyes and my posture. But not as a sacred totem, nor as a manifesto carefully crafted for ease of maximum buy-in. What tells me that this is a document touched by God is its elusive character, its deceptive complexity and the depth of challenge it throws down. Like God, it will not be possessed or summoned to yield simple truths. It does not provide an incontrovertible programme with which to capture the souls of others. Rather, it bothers, provokes, disturbs. Sometimes even ‘touched by God’ will not do. There are dark passages and characters in the Torah, passages displaying zealotry and applauding violence. By men.

Pinchas.

We are near both the end of the Book of Numbers and the Promised Land – in fact, at a place called Shittim (which means ‘acacia trees’). The sons of Israel have become involved with women from the locality and have embraced them in immoral and idolatrous practices. A plague is raging. Just as Moses is about to deal with the situation, a man called Pinchas (Phinehas), grandson of Aaron and son of Aaron’s son Eliezer, grabs hold of a spear, rushes into a private chamber, finds an Israelite man called Zimri having sex with a Midianite woman called Cozbi and despatches them both through the stomach. The plague is checked, the defection is halted and God rewards Pinchas with the pact of hereditary priesthood. That is the story.

By and large, the traditional Jewish sources are accepting and approving of Pinchas’ act of zealotry. The end amply justifies the means. How could that not be so, since the text of the Torah itself explicitly endorses Pinchas’ act? Yet hereditary priesthood is high reward indeed for the work of an impulsive, murderous moment. Characteristically male.

I remember, in my student days at the Leo Baeck College in London, being introduced to a particular midrashic sequence from a collection known as Midrash Tanhuma in which both the ancient authors and my teacher, Professor Raphael Loewe MC, revelled in the details – of where precisely the spear had entered and exited and of the exact position that Zimri and Cozbi had adopted at the moment they were caught in flagrante delicto. This midrash turns Pinchas into something of a strong man and has him running round the camp with the unfortunate couple impaled on his spear like an exotic kebab.

Pinchas turns up in later midrashic history in all manner of positive places – at the head of the Israelites in their campaign against Midian, intent on completing the good work he himself had begun by slaying Cozbi (Num. R. 22:4.); avenging his maternal grandfather Joseph, who had been sold into slavery by the Midianites (Sifrei Num. 157; B.T. Sot 43a.); miraculously slaying Balaam (B.T. Sanh. 106b.); as one of the two spies sent by Joshua to Jericho (Targum Yerushalmi Num. 21.22.), where he managed to make himself invisible like an angel (presumably he could be trusted to enter Jericho without having recourse to the services of its best-known inhabitant).

The Mishnah goes so far as to codify the incident: ‘If a man …. cohabits with a gentile woman, he may be struck down by zealots’ (M. Sanhedrin 9:6.) and a midrash has Pinchas recalling this halakhah (law) as legal justification for his own behaviour (Sifrei Num. 131.) – even without Moses’ permission, a Moses paralysed by his own marriage to a Midianite woman (Exod. 2:16–21; B.T. Sanh. 82a; Num. R. 20:24).

But what I find truly fascinating, terrifyingly fascinating, is the way that the story is dealt with in contemporary Jewish Bible commentary. I want to quote at some length from Gunther Plaut, that renowned rabbi and scholar from Canada, whose major commentary appeared in 1981.

Plaut raises the moral question of how a priceless reward could be given for an act of killing and says: “ By post-biblical and especially contemporary standards, the deed and its rewards appear to have an unwarranted relationship. But the story is biblical and must be appreciated in its own context. To begin with, Phinehas is rewarded not so much for slaying the transgressors as for saving his people from God’s destructive wrath. But, even if we assume that the text concentrates on the former merit, we must remember that the Moabite fertility cult was, to the Israelites, the incarnation of evil and the mortal enemy of their religion.”  He then goes on to quote George E Mendenhall, who identifies the plague with bubonic plague and suggests that Zimri was following a pagan precedent for dealing with the affliction (it is remarkable what one used to be able to get in public health benefits!). Plaut, however, concludes: “ Phinehas did not act out of superior medical knowledge. He saw in Zimri’s act an open breach of the Covenant, a flagrant return to the practices that the compact at Sinai had foresworn … This was the first incident in which God’s power over life and death (in a juridical sense) passed to the people. Phinehas’ impulsive deed was not merely a kind of battlefield execution but reflected his apprehension that the demands of God needed human realisation and acquired a memorable and dramatic example against permissiveness in the religious realm.”

There are some voices from the classical period which sound much more disturbed by Pinchas than Plaut appears to be. A passage in Tractate Sanhedrin (82a) struggles with the legal problems. Why no warning? Why no evidence? Why no trial? The answer that emerges is that the act was licit only because the couple were caught in flagrante delicto. Had they finished fornicating, then Pinchas’ zealotry would have been murder. If Zimri had turned on Pinchas and killed him first, he would not have been liable to the death penalty, since Pinchas was a pursuer seeking to take his life. Even here the rabbinic anxiety is more convincing than the conclusions at which they arrive to allay it. The question was taken up again in the nineteenth century by Samson Raphael Hirsch, who offers the same lame explanation: “Phinehas acted meritoriously only because he punished the transgression in flagrante delicto, in the act. Had he done it afterwards it would have been murder.”

That same passage from Tractate Sanhedrin also reports Rabbi Hisda as stating explicitly that anyone consulting ‘us’ about how to act in a similar situation would not be instructed to emulate Phinehas’ example. Interestingly, a connection is made between Pinchas’ slaying of Zimri and Cozbi and Moses’ slaying of the Egyptian overseer. Because the Exodus text offers little comment and refrains from explicit praise of Moses, the rabbis felt more able to voice doubts here. Some even connect Moses’ act of killing with the punishment of not being allowed to enter the Promised Land. But they are still a minority.

I want, at this point, to go back to the passage that I quoted from Gunther Plaut. “This was the first incident in which God’s power over life and death (in a juridical sense) passed to the people.”  I have severe doubts about God’s power over life and death being taken up by religious traditions and religious authorities and those four words ‘in a juridical sense’ only increase my discomfort. For there is no juridical context to Pinchas’ act. He acted alone; as the text implies and tradition makes explicit (Jerusalem Talmud 25,13.), without the approval of Moses or the religious, political and legal authorities of his time; no warning was given, no evidence adduced, no trial took place. As Plaut says: “ His act reflected his apprehension that the demands of God needed human realisation and required a memorable and dramatic example against permissiveness in the religious realm.”  In this, Plaut is absolutely at one with an early twentieth-century, Orthodox commentator, Baruch Epstein, author of Torah Temimah. According to Epstein there is justification if such a deed is ‘animated by a genuine, unadulterated (sic) spirit of zeal to advance the glory of God.’ (Torah Temimah on Num 25 v7).

That, for me, is the clearest remit for and definition of zealotry and fanaticism that I know. It is the ultimate reversal of a wonderful hasidic adage “ Take care of your own soul and another person’s body, not of another person’s soul and your own body.”  It encapsulates that terrifying absolute certainty that you know what God requires and that others do not. It declares with total conviction that human beings can stand in God’s place and hold sway over life and death, that we can execute, not in self-defence, not in the defence of the lives of others but to advance our own religious agenda and protect our own religious point of view. It seems to me to be a peculiarly male failing.

I do not have to spell out contemporary examples of those who appear to have seen in Pinchas and in similar scriptural authorities not simply justification but inspiration for becoming God and doing God’s supposed murderous will. In fact, part of my discomfort with Plaut may be explained by just how much the world has (apparently) changed over the last twenty-five years, how much more we are aware of the resurgence of fundamentalist zealotry, religious fanaticism and violent patriarchy.

Jews recall Brooklyn-born physician Baruch Goldstein who, apparently with the story of Esther in mind, went out just before Purim in 1994 and murdered twenty-nine Muslims in the Ibrahimi Mosque over the Cave of Machpelah in Hebron. And Yigal Amir who believed he was saving Israel by shooting Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Christians too have their fundamentalist zealots prepared to threaten violence, bomb and murder at abortion clinics in many parts of America. Islam has been hideously defaced by kidnappers and suicide bombers, for whom every conceivable act of inhumanity – and some that were even inconceivable before they were perpetrated – is justified by their religio-political goals and suitable Koranic texts.

Zealotry and fanaticism represent a facet of religion which disturbs me deeply. Pinchas is a terrifying role model, a dark character who seduces his fellow men from dark passages in our holy Torah.

So there we have it. A text, a sidrah against which I rebel from the very heart of my being. It is not that I cannot wrestle with it; it is not that I mind being challenged by it; and it is certainly not that I cannot find some things of merit, interest and religious quality within the narrative. But I rebel because it can be read and heard as having authority, as being worthy of reverence, as being God’s word. Which it is not. It can be taken up and used in ways which are absolutely antithetical to religion, to humanity and to the name of God. Too much of the commentary on this text, both ancient and modern, is self-justifying rather than self-critical, supporting blind obedience and justifying zealotry and fanaticism.

I stand up in honour of the Torah, follow it round the synagogue out of respect with my eyes and my posture. For this is a document touched by God. Like God, it does not offer a simple menu of impressive sound bites, homely truths and responsibility-absolving instructions. Rather, it challenges us even to the extent of asking us to struggle with texts which we ourselves can misunderstand, misuse or leave as hostages to fortune. It demands that we accept the fact that there are dark passages which are not God’s but ours, still ours – we men – even in Torah.

Bayfield, Tony. "Parashat Pinchas: 2009." Leo Baeck College Publications Weekly D'Var Torah. (Viewed on July 12, 2014). http://www.lbc.ac.uk/20090710914/Weekly-D-var-Torah/parashat-pinchas.html

Pinchas: A Covenant of Peace

By Rabbi Sylvia Rothschild

No biblical figure is so identified with zealotry as is Pinchas.  He steps out in the closing verses of last week’s sidra, so  outraged by the sight of a prince of Israel and a Midianite woman cavorting together that he acts immediately, not waiting for any legal process – he thrusts his spear into the couple as they lie together, and kills them both.

It is horrible to read, but more horrible still is God’s response.  Pinchas is to receive a special reward – “Pinchas is the only one who zealously took up My cause among the Israelites and turned my anger away so that I did not consume the children of Israel in my jealousy.  Therefore tell him that I have given him My covenant of peace” (Num 25:11-12)

Pinchas’ action ended an orgy of idolatry and promiscuity that was endangering the integrity of the people.  But while the outcome was important, the method was terrible. And this rage which led him to act without any inhibition or process is not unique in bible. Remember the young Moses who murdered the Egyptian taskmaster?  Or Elijah who slaughtered the priests of Baal?

These are events in our history which we cannot ignore, but neither can we celebrate. We have in our ancestry jealous rage and zealotry.  So for example Elijah, having killed hundreds of idolatrous priests and demonstrating to his own satisfaction the falseness of their faith, finds that being zealous for God does not guarantee safety. Queen Jezebel is angered and Elijah had to run for his life to the wilderness.  There he encounters many strange phenomena, but ultimately hears God not in the storms but in the voice of slender silence.

Moses’ act of killing was a little different – a young man who had only recently understood his connection to an enslaved people, he found their treatment unbearable, and when he found an Egyptian beating a Jew he looked around, saw no one so struck him and hid the body in the sands.  Only the next day when he realised he had been seen, did he flee into the wilderness, there to meet God at the bush which burned but which was not consumed.

And Pinchas, whose act of violence grew from his anger against those who were mingling with the Midianite women and taking up their gods was rewarded by God with a ‘brit shalom’, a covenant of peace and the covenant of the everlasting priesthood.

Each of these men killed in anger – anger that God was not being given the proper respect, anger that God’s people were being abused.  None of them repented their action, although Elijah and Moses were certainly depressed, anxious and fearful after the event.  And God’s response seems too mild for our modern tastes.

Yet look at God’s responses a little more closely.  Elijah is rewarded not by a triumphalist God but by the recognition of God in the voice of slender silence –the ‘still small voice’. That voice doesn’t praise him but challenges him – “What are you doing here, Elijah?”  After all the drama Elijah has to come down from his conviction-fuelled orgy of violence and recognise in the cold light of day what he has done.  Only when he leaves behind the histrionics does God become known to him – in that gentle sound of slender silence, and with a question that must throw him back to examine the more profound realities about himself and his own journey.

Moses too is not rewarded with great honour and dramatic encounter – his fleeing from the inevitable punishment is about survival and there is a tradition that Moses did not enter the promised land, not only because of what had happened at the waters of Meribah, but because that action brought to mind the striking of the Egyptian – Moses hadn’t learned to control his temper and his actions even after forty years of wandering in the wilderness.

Moses’ first encounter with God too was so gentle as to be almost missable.  In the far edges of the wilderness alone with his father in law’s sheep this miserable young man saw a bush which burned but which wasn’t burned out.  It is a story we know from childhood, but something we generally don’t recognise is that to notice such a phenomenon in the wilderness where bushes burned regularly, took time – Moses must have stood and watched patiently and carefully before realising there was something different about this fire. There is gentleness and the very antithesis of drama and spectacle, of the immediacy and energy of the zealot.

The reward for Pinchas is also not as it first seems.  God says of him “hineni notein lo et breetee, shalom”.  “Behold, I give him my covenant, peace”.  The Hebrew is not in the construct form, this is not a covenant of peace but a requirement for Pinchas to relate to God with peace, and his method for so doing is to be the priesthood.

The words are written in the torah scroll with an interesting addition – the vav in the word ‘shalom’ has a break in it.  The scribe is drawing our attention to the phrase – the violent man has not been given a covenant of peace but a covenant to be used towards peace – that peace is not yet complete or whole- hence the broken vav – it needs to be completed.

One of the main functions given to the priesthood is to recite the blessing of peace over the people, the blessing with which we end every service but which in bible is recited by priests as a conduit for the blessing from God.

Rabbi Shimon ben Halafta tells us “there is no vessel that holds a blessing save peace, as it says ‘the Eternal will bless the people with peace’”  In other words, the eternal priesthood given to Pinchas forces him to speak peace, to be a vessel of peace so as to fulfil his priestly function.  In effect, by giving Pinchas “breetee, shalom” God is constraining him and limiting his violence, replacing it with the obligation to promote peace. It is for Pinchas and his descendants to complete the peace of God’s covenant, and they cannot do so if they allow violence to speak.

Each of the three angry men – Moses, Pinchas, Elijah – are recognised as using their anger for the sake of God and the Jewish people, but at the same time each is gently shepherded into a more peaceful place.  And this methodology is continued into the texts of the rabbinic tradition so that by Talmudic times self-righteous zeal is understood as dangerous and damaging and never to take root or be allowed to influence our thinking.

Times change, but people do not – there are still many who would act like Pinchas if they could: every group and every people has them.  Their behaviours arise out of passionate belief and huge certainty in the rightness of those beliefs.  Rational argument will never prevail against them, but gentle patient and persistent focusing on the goal of peace, our never forgetting the need for peace, must temper our zealots. Every tradition has its zealots and its texts of zealotry, but every tradition also has those who moderate and mitigate, who look for the longer game and the larger goal. We must keep asking ourselves, which group are we in today?

Rothschild, Sylvia. "Parashat Pinchas (2014)." Leo Baeck College Publications Weekly D'Var Torah." (Viewed on July 12, 2014). http://www.lbc.ac.uk/201407101866/Weekly-D-var-Torah/parashat-pinchas.html

Tol’dot, Genesis 25:19-28:9

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Link to Parsha: http://www.hebcal.com/sedrot/toldot

Toldot: Hunting Down One Good Prayer

By Chaya Lester

In this week’s parsha we read that Isaac prayed for his barren wife Rebecca. It is notable that the term used here is “lanochach eshto”, which can be read literally as he prayed “standing before”, or “opposite” his wife. Midrash Rabbah picks up on this curious phrase and paints a picture of Isaac and Rebecca standing together, facing each other in shared prayer. It’s a poignant image of a couple working together in a striking face-to-face pose; an admirable Biblical model for partnership.

So one might ask, if this is such a partnership, why is it that it is Isaac’s prayer alone that is recorded & answered by God. Rashi explains that his prayers were heard because he was the son of a saint, whereas Rebecca is the daughter of an evil man. The poem I’m about to share attempts to take that answer one step further.

But first, let’s look briefly at a little of what we know about Isaac’s psychological makeup. Later in the parsha we read that Isaac’s eyes grew dim in his old age. The Midrash explicitly links Isaac’s blindness to his experience of being bound upon the altar beneath his father’s sacrificial blade. It records that angels witnessing the binding wept tears that dropped into Isaac’s eyes. Those very tears were taken as the cause of his blindness later in life.

Aviva Zornberg likens Isaac’s blindness to a type of psychological vertigo. She notes a remarkable phenomena where people who suffer traumatic experiences earlier in life can often, in later years, suffer from serious vision impairment. It is as if their compromised vision in old age is an expression of years of repressed emotion. Their blindness manifests a psychosomatic drive to un-see all the horrors that they had witness so long ago.

According to these findings, blindness can be an indicator of unprocessed trauma. As the text itself says, “Isaac’s eyes became dimmed from seeing.” His eyes were dimmed from the impact of all that he had seen. And so we return to the scene of Rivka and Isaac’s prayer for children with this in mind.

Yes, God hears Isaac’s prayers because he was the son of a saint; a man so saintly that he was willing to sacrifice his beloved son! We must ask ourselves what psychological impact did that near-sacrifice have on Isaac? And, most pointedly, what sort of an impact did it have on Isaac’s stance towards begetting and parenting his own children.

In keeping with their model of an honest face-to-face relationship, Rebecca in this poem urges her husband to do the laborious work of processing his past. She, in her own desire for children, begs him to confront whatever resistances he may have to generating his future generations.

It is striking that the opening & title of the parsha, “Toldot Yitzchak”, means the Generations of Isaac. Such a title could thus be seen as a testimony to his successfully stepping up to the task of continuity and child-rearing in the face of his own complex childhood.

STANDING OPPOSITE ISAAC
You were broken
like
porcelain.
Dashed against a desert.
Shattered neath a father’s
          dagger.
And a flinty mirror streaked
          with tears
          dripped
          not blood
          but blindness
          into your grey hairs.
Your pieces plastered
back together
hold me tender
a fragile tendon
– tiptoed to the next generation.
You, the quiet casualty
of your father’s spiritual
ambitions.
Perhaps you fear
that G-d demand
you do the same
if you were to father
your own ambitions.
– Would you?
Or would you rather
          pray?
Pray for me.
Here –
where you were
born up
on that unforgiving rock,
beneath an angel’s eye
and ram’s horn
fortuitously caught.
Would you pray a future
to fill this vacant womb?
Would you pray for continuity?
Would you
– continue?
And tell me, husband dear,
can you eye your own
resistance
and defy your very fears?
Forgo the blindness
that has plagued you
and face your own
descendants
with a faith
that here
is holy
and life
is weighty
and no more waiting
for safety
but rather brave the gaze
of a world that is
crazy
beautiful
and full of grace.
And shun the blade
that bids you to
accuse your father
or mourn your mother
or resent your God
or blame anyone other
than yourself
for your own debilitating
fears?
For the hand that
you are dealt
is but yours to
commandeer.
So let’s move on
to making our own
glaring
parenting
mistakes.
To risking inflicting
some untold & unending
trauma onto our children.
And with a
well-intentioned will,
sacred and sincere,
let us lift our prayers
to God’s awaiting ears.
With the knowledge
that beyond old traumas
and emotions on the mend
there is meaning
to the riddle
of Moriah
though our tongues
are twisted
and our eyes are dimmed.
Come, husband
to this field
with me
and hunt down
one good prayer.
For the fixing of your childhood
is through fathering your children.
          if you dare.
Lester, Chaya. "Hunting Down One Good Prayer." Spoken Word Torah. (Viewed November 2, 2013). http://blogs.jpost.com/content/toldot-hunting-down-one-good-prayer-0

Sharing The Blessing

Isaac’s decision to bless both of his sons gives us hope for achieving a peaceful solution to the conflict between Jews and Palestinians.

By Rabbi Daniel Bronstein

Even by biblical standards, few statements are as stark as God’s words to Rebekah after the matriarch had conceived twins. “Two nations are in your womb,” God explains, “And two peoples shall be separated…And the elder shall serve the younger.”

Indeed, few Biblical struggles, few familial conflicts–in a book filled with stories of intra-family struggles–are as tragic as the confrontation between Jacob and Esau.

It seems that from that moment, the twin brothers clashed and competed over the family birthright and legacy. The twin grandsons of Abraham and Sarah were, from their birth onwards, locked in a constant struggle over inheriting the prophetic mantle of Abraham and Sarah, inheriting the leadership over the family, and of course, inheriting the riches of the land which God had first promised to Abraham.

As the Torah portion Toledot unfolds, we witness Jacob, the younger brother, gaining through guile what had first been granted to Esau by virtue of being born first. Together, Jacob and Rebekah successfully conspire to transfer the blessing Isaac had intended for Esau over to the younger brother. More than being mere words, Isaac’s blessing was critical because it served as the instrument for bestowing the family legacy, leadership, and ownership of the land.

Yet, in the end, we read that Isaac also rejects playing a zero sum game and grants an alternative blessing to Esau. Although the two blessings are not identical, Isaac, nonetheless, chooses to depart from the tradition of granting a single blessing to his eldest son and instead blesses both of his children.

Some of the sages are puzzled over the multiple blessings, while others attribute Isaac’s actions to a father’s compassion for a grieving child. But whatever the reasons, Isaac’s deed offers us an important lesson in the contemporary struggle for peace. Far from being a perfect analogy, there are still many elements in this story all too reminiscent of the conflict between Jews and Palestinians.

This present-day conflict is also the story of two nations at war with one another from the moment of conception. And as the tragic violence continues between the contemporary nations, we are also reminded that Jacob and Esau also fought over being blessed with the Land. Finally, we are reminded that along with Jacob and Esau, Jews and Arabs are also descendents of Abraham. Like Jacob and Esau, today’s conflict seems unsolvable, and we lament over being locked into what appears to be an eternal struggle.

However, Isaac’s blessings for Jacob and Esau leave us with a measure of hope, even now when many despair of ever achieving peace in the holy land. Isaac blesses both sons with inheritances of fruitful land. Facing different circumstances and possessing different traits, both twins nevertheless receive their father’s blessing–and with it a measure of hope for future descendants of Abraham.

One Jewish tradition teaches that possession of sufficient food and drink is of itself a profound blessing. Still, “if there is no peace,” argued our sages, “there is nothing at all, for “peace equals all else.” Today, we must also reject facile zero sum games, and find ways to share the blessings.

While we may possess sufficient sustenance, we still live without peace. Today, against expectations and against the odds, we also must struggle to share the blessings of our ancestors and to share in the blessings of the land. Now more, than ever, let us remember Isaac’s deeds, and remember that ultimately, “peace equals all else.”

Bronstein, Daniel. "Sharing the Blessing." My Jewish Learning. (Viewed November 1, 2013). http://www.myjewishlearning.com/texts/Bible/Weekly_Torah_Portion/toldot_socialaction5761.shtml?p=0