Drash Toldot

Rabbi Gary Robuck

Now Love Him Even More

Two children are raised in the same home yet turn out entirely different.  One is cultured, mature, thoughtful and accomplished.  The other is rough, unsophisticated, kind but “untamed”.  One excels educationally: drawing praise from teachers and winning awards while the other shows little interest in reading and is shuttled from school to school.

Many will have reckoned with the question: how is that two children, raised by the same parents, in the same home, could turn out so different?  Perhaps the answer is hinted at in this week’s Sidra, the story of the twin brother’s Jacob and Esau in which our Torah and later our Sages seem to suggest that the two boys were different from the very start, destined to be different.  Sure Rebeccah loved Jacob (more) and Isaac loved Esau, which may have skewed the maths some, but these two appeared to have always been like chalk and cheese.  Even while still in the womb, they contested with one another and later, once having emerged…

“Esau became a skillful hunter, a man of the open country, while Jacob was a quiet man, staying among the tents. Isaac, who had a taste for wild game, loved Esau, but Rebekah loved Jacob.” (Gen. 25:27-28)

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, whose 5th yahrzeit was observed only last week, explains that their parents nurtured them differently and as such, may have been responsible ultimately, for their nature.  I’m not so sure.  Could it be that some kids are just going to be a trial no matter how much good parenting, love and attention you give them?

Yet if Esau was “bad to the bone” from an early age, if Isaac knew Esau wasn’t going to be the scholar-athlete, the top student, the high achiever nor for that matter the keeper of Judaism’s religious flame, we ought to ask ourselves: why did Isaac love Esau so much? He loved Esau because he knew that Esau was tough, because Esau could be trouble.

Isaac did not gravitate to him because he admired his hunting abilities or his ruggedness: he did not call him to his tent before Jacob just because he was confident that Esau could secure for him the best meat for his dinner.  It wasn’t that Isaac was blind to his faults, on the contrary.  Isaac knew, davka that Esau had many, that he was not a talmid chacham, he was more like the ben sorer u’moreh – the wayward and defiant child or the rasha – the rebellious child and for that reason, because he understood him so well, he loved him even more.

In the early twentieth century someone brought to the great Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak Kook, first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel the following dilemma. He had given his son a good Jewish education. He had always kept the commands at home. Now however the son had drifted far from Judaism. He no longer kept the commandments. He did not even identify as a Jew. What should the father do? “Did you love him when he was religious?” asked Rav Kook. “Of course,” replied the father. “Well then,” Rav Kook replied, “Now love him even more.”

From this week’s Sidra we learn that sometimes love can do what rebuke cannot. Again according to Rabbi Sacks:  “it may be that the Torah is telling us that Isaac was anything but blind as to his elder son’s true nature. But if you have two children, one well behaved, the other liable to turn out badly, to who other should you devote greater attention and spend more time?”

On this Shabbat, let us pray for all the children who never achieved as much as their siblings, for the wicked and the rebellious and for those unable to find their derech, their direction.

May God guide them, comfort those who love them, and extend protective care over each one.

Amen