Rebecca: The Mother of Jacob and Esau

Rebecca: The Mother of Jacob and Esau
Rabbi Rebecca Rosenthal

Sometimes it is imperative for rabbis to comment on the important cultural issues of the day, especially when they span international borders and affect vast swaths of our people. I’m talking, of course, about Taylor Swift, who concludes her massive Eras Tour next weekend. I promise this has to do with this week’s Torah portion, and not just because the most devoted Swifties could rival the rabbinic commentators with the level of detail and story they unspool from each lyric, outfit choice, and social media posting.

There is a moment in 2014, after the release of her album 1989, where Swift’s stardom shifts into the stratosphere, and with it, any number of expectations about who she is, how she should behave, and what kind of relationships she should have. In early 2017 she backed off from public life, looking to redefine who she was and what she stood for without the weight of the whole world trying to tell her what to be. Later that year, after months off the grid, she released the album “reputation”, which begins with the words, “the old Taylor can’t come to the phone right now. Why not? Because she’s dead!” This marks a moment in the trajectory of her career where she makes it clear that she is going to be who she wants and who she thinks is best, in spite of what everyone around her is telling her and expecting her to be.

And this is where we find the connection to Parashat Toldot. Like an early-career Taylor Swift, Rebecca lives in a world defined by other people’s expectations, put on her by her family, her husband, and by God. At the beginning of this week’s parasha, Rebecca is pregnant and uncomfortable. She goes to ask God what’s going on and God tells her that there are two nations at war in her womb and that the older will serve the younger. Rebecca is expected not to question God, and just accept that her children will always be in conflict. When the twins are born, they are an immediate study in contrasts and we are told that Isaac, who does not know the prophecy, favors his older son Esau, while Rebecca, who does know what is supposed to happen, favors Jacob.

This plays out in a number of ways, but most dramatically towards the end of the parasha when Isaac is getting older and knows it is time to bestow the blessing on his eldest son. He sends Esau out to hunt game and cook him a meal, after which time he will give him the blessing and pass on the inheritance of the Jewish people. Rebecca does not want to allow this to happen. After all, she knows that Jacob is the one who is going to carry on the Jewish line. God told her so. She devises a plan that allows Jacob to take advantage of his father’s diminished eyesight and together they trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing. Esau is incensed and threatens to kill his brother, and Jacob runs away from his family home.

Rebecca is behaving exactly as she thinks she is supposed to, the weight of God’s expectations, and the expectations of her society and family, pushing down on her. She feels responsible for ensuring the continuation of the line of the Jewish people. She sees that Esau is about to get the blessing, in direct contradiction to what she has been told by God, so she intervenes to make sure that doesn’t happen, at great emotional cost to her husband and to both her children. Rebecca thinks she is carrying out God’s will in the world, doing what God expects her to do, and creates a rift that will take decades to heal. Rebecca is so singularly focused in doing what she thinks she is expected of her that she forgets to stop and ask herself if this course of action is what she should be doing. She thinks only as the mother of Jacob – of his feelings, of his future, of his blessing.

But then, there is a moment at the very end of the parasha that upends how we understand Rebecca and how she understands herself. As Jacob flees from his brother after stealing his blessing, the text tells us that he is going to be with his relative Lavan, the brother of Rebecca, the mother of Jacob and Esau. As we have seen many times before, the Torah does not use unnecessary words, so the commentators ask why the text reminds us again that Rebecca is the mother of Jacob and Esau. We already know this! In fact, we have just read an entire parasha that makes that clear, a parasha that begins with Rebecca’s pregnancy and the twin’s birth.

So of course, the commentators are going to talk about this, beginning with Rashi. But, in one of the most intriguing moments in Rashi’s commentary, he says, anyni yodeah mah m’lamdeinu – I do not know what this phrase teaches us. This is a really strange thing for Rashi to say. First, it's hard to stump Rashi! He has an opinion on everything. Second, if he doesn’t know what it is teaching us, why bother commenting at all?

A number of commentators jump on this phrase from Rashi (yes, there are commentators on the commentators), and try to figure out why he says this and what the phrase could mean. Many different rabbis give their opinions, but the one that speaks to me is from 19th century Italian Kabbalitic rabbi Elijah Benamozegh. He says that, as Jacob is fleeing from his brother’s wrath, Rebecca suddenly realizes the consequences of the manipulation she just assisted Jacob in committing. She realizes that, at this moment, she has the potential to lose both her children at once. He teaches that, if Esau succeeds in killing Jacob or vice versa, one brother will be dead and the other will be “detested by me as an enemy and stranger, and will be, in my eyes, as non-existing.” Rebecca will be so angry at one brother for killing the other, that the living brother will cease to exist in her eyes.

Why doesn’t this occur to Rebecca before this moment, as Jacob is fleeing for his life? It is a foreseeable outcome of Jacob supplanting Esau that Esau might get angry and lash out. And we already know from the text that Esau is the more volatile and aggressive of the two brothers. Rebecca acts as she thinks she is supposed to, without thinking through the consequences. Whether we are an international pop superstar, a biblical matriarch, or just a regular person, this is a trap that so many of us can fall into, living with the weight of expectations instead of considering a new path. And the longer we live like this, the harder it is for us to do what Swift does in her reputation era or what Rebecca does at the end of our parasha: change.

Rav Kook teaches that there are two kinds of teshuvah, two different ways we can be spurred to change. He teaches, “Regarding its length of time, teshuvah may be divided into two types: sudden teshuvah (teshuva pitomit) and gradual teshuvah (teshuva d’ragit).” Rebecca has a moment of sudden teshuvah – like a lightning bolt, she realizes that she has to behave differently towards her children and be a different kind of mother. Rebecca can no longer see herself as just a mother to Jacob, as just the mother of the one who will carry on the Jewish people. She remembers that she is mother to both – Jacob and Esau.

But for most of us the change process is not as dramatic as Rebecca’s; it is more gradual. We realize that we are going along a path that is not of our own choosing. Maybe it is the expectations of our parents or our upbringing, maybe the expectations come for our society or our community. But no matter the source, we need to figure out if these expectations are serving us or if we need to find another way. And when we do, we can come out stronger than we were before, more committed to caring for our families and communities, and better able to be the people we are meant to be in the world.