Thankfully, when it was my turn for guard duty at Yeshivat Hamivtar, outside Efrat, the most interesting parts of the experience were the conversations with the reserve-soldiers who would be paired with us for a three-hour guard shift, one from 12 until 3, another from 3 until 6. There was the Internet Service Provider customer-service representative who was a hero to his co-workers because he was able to tell-off customers who got too angry better than anyone else. There was the recent oleh from Russia who told me that Israel made a mistake when it allied itself with the United States instead of the Soviet Union. “If Israel were a Soviet satellite state,” he said, “Stalin would have solved our problems for us.”
But the most memorable interaction I had with my Israeli reserve-solider counterpart was a long conversation about Jewish identity and modern Israel with a young man who was a madrikh, a counselor and advisor with HaNo’ar Ha’Oved, the Labor Party’s youth-movement. He took his responsibility for the next generation of Israel very seriously and was committed to giving his students a strong sense of Jewish identity alongside their Zionism. Not every madrikh in HaNo’ar Ha’Oved insists on reciting kiddush at each Friday night pe’ulah – activity.
As we talked and patrolled the yeshiva compound where my classmates and our families were sleeping, we looked through the barbed-wire fence surrounding the yeshiva towards the empty blackness of the surrounding hills, and my interlocutor, without warning, turned to me and said, “Yaakov may have been able to fool Yitzchak his father, but he was not able to fool God. The words that Yitzchak said to Esav, “v’al harbekha tihyeh” and you shall live by your sword – have been applied to us.
Standing there, in the middle of the night, with a loaded machine gun in my hand, it certainly seemed true – v’al harbekha tihyeh – we were living by our swords.
That was among most dramatic moments of my life – the sort of occasion that seems only possible in Israel when the words of Tanakh materialize in front of our eyes.
Although it was certainly a dramatic moment, I don’t think it represents an accurate understanding of the interactions between Yaakov, his brother Esav, and their father Yitzchak.
The story of Yaakov and Rivka conspiring to steal Esav’s blessing is complicated greatly (all stories in Tanakh can be complicated greatly) by paying more careful attention to the content and to the context of the blessings that Yitzchak gives to his children.
At the risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld: Yitzchak blesses Yaakov, thinking he is Esav, then he blesses Esav, knowing that he, and not the individual he had already blessed, was in fact Esav, and finally, Yitzchak blesses Yaakov, while knowing that he was blessing Yaakov.
The first blessing that Yitzchak gives to Yaakov, while thinking that he is blessing Esav, is a blessing for physical prosperity, wealth, and power:
וְיִֽתֶּן־לְָ֙ הָא-ֱלהִ֔ים מִטַל֙ הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם ומִשְׁמַנֵּ֖י הָאָ֑רץ וְר֥ב דּגָ֖ן וְתִירֽש׃
יַֽעַבְד֣וָ עַמִּים וְיִֽשְׁתַּחֲוֻ֤ לְָ֙ לְאֻמִּים הֱוֵ֤ה גְבִיר֙ לְאַחֶ֔יָ וְיִשְׁתַּחֲו֥ו לְָ֖ בְנֵ֣י אִמֶָּ אֹרר֣יָ אָר֔ור וֽמְבָרכֶ֖יָ בָרֽוְ׃
“So God give you of the dew of heaven, And of the fat of the earth, And plenty of corn and wine.
Let peoples serve you, And nations bow down to you. Be master over your brothers, And let your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be every one that curses you, And blessed be every one that blesses you.”
When Esav then shows up for his blessing, Yaakov immediately realizes that he has been tricked, and he does not quite know what to do. Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch points out, quite perceptively, that Yitzchak chooses not to bless Esav with the blessing he had intended to give to Yaakov. That blessing would not have been appropriate for Esav – even Yitzchak understood that. Instead, he struggles to formulate a blessing that can be bestowed upon Esav:
וַיַּ֛עַן יִצְחָ֥ק אָבִ֖יו וַיֹּאמֶר אֵלָ֑יו הִנֵּ֞ה מִשְׁמַנֵּ֤י הָאָ֙רץ֙ יִהְיֶ֣ה מֽושָׁבֶָ֔ ומִטַּל הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם מֵעָֽל׃
וְעַל־חַרבְָ֣ תִֽחְיֶ֔ה וְאֶת־אָחִ֖יָ תַּעֲבֹ֑ד וְהָיָה֙ כַאֲשֶׁ֣ר תָּר֔יד ופָרקתָּ֥ עֻל֖ו מֵעַ֥ל צַוָּארָֽ׃
“And Isaac his father answered and said unto him: Behold, of the fat places of the earth shall be your dwelling, And of the dew of heaven from above;
And by your sword shall you live, And you shall serve you brother; And it shall come to pass when you shall break loose, That thou shalt shake his yoke from off thy neck.”
After mistakenly giving Yaakov a blessing for strength and wealth, Yitzhak then gives Esav a less-good version of that same blessing for strength and wealth.
Later, before leaving his parents home, Yaakov, as Yaakov, goes to his father and receives a blessing in his own name. This time, and for the first time, Yitzhak bestows a blessing that has a spiritual focus:
וְא-ֵ֤ל שַׁדּי֙ יְבָרְ֣ אֹֽתְָ֔ וְיַפְרָ֖ וְיַרבֶָּ וְהָיִ֖יתָ לִקהַ֥ל עַמִּים׃
וְיִֽתֶּן־לְָ֙ אֶת־בִרכַּת אַבְרהָ֔ם לְָ֖ ולְזַרעֲָ֣ אִתְָּ֑ לְרשְׁתְָּ֙ אֶת־אֶ֣רץ מְגֻר֔יָ אֲשֶׁר־נָתַ֥ן א-ֱלהִ֖ים לְאַבְרהָֽם׃
And God Almighty bless you, and make you fruitful, and multiply you, that you may be a congregation of peoples; and give you the blessing of Abraham, to you, and to children with you; that you may inherit the land of your sojournings, which God gave unto Avraham.
What should we make of this confusing mix of blessings?
Yitzchak was not fooled by Esav. He always understood that Yaakov would be the spiritual inheritor of the Avraham, the one who would receive “birkat Avraham” and it was never Yitzchak’s intention to give that blessing to Esav. However, Yitzchak had thought that it could be possible to hand over the responsibility for physical concerns – providing for the family and keeping it safe – to Esav, the worldly and powerful hunter rather than Yaakov who sat in the tent all day.
Rikva understood that this strategy was problematic. The values that Yaakov developed in the tent, which the midrash interprets as ohalei Torah – the tents of Torah study – need to be protected in the real-world if they are going to endure and create an impact in the world. And the exercise of power needs, always, to be in the hands of those who represent the very best of the moral and spiritual ideals of a community. Protecting oneself and earning a living are too important to be out-sourced. And the spiritual ethical legacy of the patriarchs is too important for it to be relegated to a life’s periphery.
Indeed, that night when I was on guard duty, I was not living out the fate of Esav. I was protecting the tents of Yaakov, making sure that the Torah that we studied and the values that we cultivated in the yeshiva, would be able to survive and flourish in a dangerous world.
Writing more than fifty years ago, trying to explain the spiritual significance of Zionism to a skeptical religious audience, Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote:
“For the first time in the history of our exile, divine providence has surprised our enemies with the sensational discovery that Jewish blood is not free for the taking, is not hefker!…A people that cannot defend its freedom and tranquility is neither free nor independent.”
And Rivka understood that Yaakov’s achievements in the tents, in the ohalei Torah, could not endure nor could they impact the world if Yaakov did not also receive the berakhah for the family’s physical, and not just spiritual, survival.
How horribly ironic that among the victims of this week’s cruel terrorist attack in Yerushalayim was Rabbi Moshe Twersky, perhaps the favorite grandson of Rav Soloveitchik.
I know I’m not the only one in this community who has been profoundly shaken by the tragic, heart-breaking news from Yerushalayim this week. Four saintly Torah scholars were killed in an exceptionally cruel fashion, and a heroic police officer, a young father who demonstrated the very best of Israel’s multi-cultural democracy, lost his life in a brave act of citizenship.
Even as I obsessively read news accounts and analyses, I’ve wondered why this attack, more than the other murderous attacks on Israelis – just in the past weeks alone, has been so exceedingly shocking and upsetting. It could be the personal connections to some of the victims. Many were Americans with ties to communities I have lived in. It could be the dignity and nobility of the Anglo-Haredi community in Har Nof which surprised the international media by its stoic and faithful reaction to the murder in their mist.
Or the answer could be one presented in a letter that an old friend of mine, Rabbi Ben Siris sent in the aftermath of the attack.
Ben Siris grew up in a conventional, suburban Conservative Jewish home in New Jersey. During high school he embraced Orthodox observance and before and after studying at Harvard, he was able to spend some years as a student at Yeshivat Hamivtar and Yeshivat Har Etzion, and he made a strong impression at all three of those institutions of higher learning that was still felt – he was still spoken about – when I was a student at those institutions a few years later. Ben has continued, however, to study Torah, in one beit midrash after another, for year after year after year. A short book that he wrote after his young wife succumbed to a rare form of cancer is a profound reflection on faith under challenging and tragic circumstances. Ben currently lives with his second wife and children in Har Nof and, in a typical day, spends 7-8 hours studying in the same beis medrash that was the scene of Tuesday’s horrific murders.
Ben wrote:
“To violate the lives of people in tallis and tefilin is more than about just killing people (as if that weren’t evil enough). It is to violate our deepest sense of purpose. It is about violating everything that we as Jews are about.”
I believe that is true. I was so very shocked by the attack this week because the attack was an attack on something so very valuable, so very holy, and something that it is so important for us to cherish and cultivate.
I expressed last night just how there is a tension when Shabbat follows a week as challenging as this past one has been surrounding how much we bring the week and its concerns into Shabbat and how much we isolate Shabbat from the week that was and cultivate the experience of Shabbat as “me’ein olam habah – as though the world were already redeemed. As we’ve faced this tension, more than once in the past year and a half, I have tended to emphasize the need to protect Shabbat as a sanctuary in time where we experience the world as though it were redeemed, even when it is in fact far from being redeemed.
At the same time, as I shared last night, it was quite helpful for me, personally, to see so many of you in shul yesterday, and again, to see so many of you here today. Just being together, for each other, and dedicating ourselves to Torah and tefilah, is a source of comfort for me personally. More than what it means to me personally to be able to go to shul and be together with this community, dedicating ourselves in this way to Torah and tefilah is an appropriate reaction to this week’s attack.
There is a custom of appending the letters “heh,” “yod,” and “dalet” after the name of a Jew who has been murdered by our enemies. The letters stand for “Hashem Yakom Damo” – may God avenge his blood. It’s a strange request to make under current circumstances since the murderers were killed on the spot and there is no real address for vengeance.
But I do believe that we can rededicate ourselves to the values that were attacked so viscously in Yerushalayim. And if living well is the best form of revenge, then living with holiness is the only appropriate revenge for an attack of this sort.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 