Torah This Week
Welcome to Torah This Week, where you will find thoughts and reflections by CLAL faculty and associates on the Torah portion of the week.
PARASHAT TOLDOT
(Genesis 25:19 - 28:9)
Though Jewish commentaries find many justifications for Rebekah and Jacob's behavior in deceiving Isaac into thinking that Jacob is Esau, the whole incident is still unfortunate. A friend told me that his eight-year-old son, traumatized when he learned the episode in his day school, asked him: "How could Jacob have lied to his daddy?"
Strangely enough, however, although the Bible commands honesty - "Keep far from a false charge" (Ex. 23:7) -- Jewish tradition does not condemn all deceptive behavior. For example, when God commands the prophet Samuel to anoint David as king even while Saul is still reigning, Samuel protests: "How can I go? If Saul hears of it, he will kill me" (I Samuel 16:2). God advises Samuel to be deceptive, to announce that he is going off to offer a sacrifice.
Where human feelings are involved, Jewish tradition often favors "white lies." Hence we follow Hillel who instructs us to describe all brides as "beautiful and virtuous," in contradiction to the more truthful ruling of Shammai who instructs us to describe every bride precisely "as she is" (Babylonian Talmud, Ketubot 16b).
How, therefore, are we to regard Jacob's act of deception, his pretending to be Esau so as to procure his father's "innermost" and irrevocable blessing?
The better question might be, what was Jacob's alternative? Had he remained silent, the blessing, and the future leadership of the Hebrews, would have gone to Esau, a man of violence whose primary pleasure in life was hunting.
What confronted Jacob, therefore, was a choice between evils, truthfulness which would have led to Esau's supremacy, or dishonesty which led to Jacob's ascendancy and the survival of the monotheist idea. Choices between evils invariably yield somewhat distasteful results. But would it have been better for Jacob to have acted nobly and aboveboard and allow Esau the hunter to become Abraham and Isaac's heir?
(Joseph Telushkin)
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