Vayetzei - Difficult tradeoffs

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.

 

Toldos - Indiscretions of the righteous

Facing a famine in the land of Canaan, our forefather Isaac moves to the land of Gerar. Fearing that the local townsmen might slaughter him in order to seize his wife Rebecca, he comes up with a familiar ruse – he tells people that she is his sister (26:7). This masquerade, however, ends quite differently than did Abraham’s strikingly similar deception in the same place, six decades earlier.  This time, none of the locals attempt to take hold of Rebecca by force and, after some time, the king of the Philistines: “looked out at the window and saw and behold Isaac was sporting with Rebecca, his wife.” (26:8). The King figured out that Isaac and Rebecca were indeed married and called out Isaac on the ruse.

What are we to make of this explicit reference to the patriarch Isaac sporting (the word in Hebrew, MiSaChayk- has various connotations of joking, playing, and/or physical intimacy)?  How are we to understand that a man noted by numerous commentators for his reserve and quiet dignity is seen by a stranger as sporting with his wife? And what is this sporting?

Writing in the 16^th century in Safed, Rabbi Moshe Alshich suggested that we understand this instance of MiSaChayk as follows: after some time in Gerar, Isaac let his guard down and the king saw Isaac give Rebecca a gentle caress. The king knew that a righteous man like Isaac would only intimately touch his wife. I find this answer quite plausible, as it conforms with both the meaning of the word and the known character of the biblical personality.