In last week’s Torah portion we read how our patriarch Jacob, urged on by his mother Rebecca, presented himself as his brother to his near-blind father Isaac so that he (Jacob) could receive the blessing Isaac intended for Esau. Commentators through the ages have grappled with this difficult episode, as it appears to present one of our ‘founding fathers’ as a deceitful person taking advantage of his father’s infirmities, rather than dealing directly or honestly, in order to gain an advantage – however justified Jacob might have been in claiming the preferred blessing.
Nechama Leibowitz, in an essay “Your Brother Came with Deceit,”1 suggests that scripture itself attests that while Jacob’s ends were just, the means he used to achieve them were quite unsavory. In a similar vein Rabbi Francis Nataf, in an essay “The Inevitability of Choice,”2 draws on a number of sources and makes the claim that the personalities in Genesis were often faced with difficult choices. He asserts that they understood implicitly that a course of action favored by God could, nonetheless, involve painful trade-offs and difficult consequences. We can see this in the deceptions that afflict Jacob in this week’s Torah portion, such as the switch of Leah for the desired Rachel on the wedding night and his father-in-law’s repeated changes of his wages. We can also see this in the deceptions that befall Jacob later – his two sons’ peace treaty with and then stealthy massacre of the town of Shechem and the eleven brothers’ sale of Joseph and cover-up story that an animal devoured Joseph.
The message of the Torah is clear – if you start your ‘career’ with deception, it will gain a life of its own.
1. New Studies in Bereshit (Genesis), by Nechama Lebowitz. Published in Israel, 1977 (?); p. 264–270.
2. Redeeming Relevance in the Book of Genesis: Explorations in Text and Meaning, by Rabbi Francis Nataf. Published in Jerusalem, 2006; p. 41-56.
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