David Ben Gurion, the first prime minister of Israel was a short man but a larger than life figure. In addition to an outsized role in Israel’s first governments, he was a dominant figure in Israel’s culture. He was a politician and a public intellectual. He wrote about Buddhism and about Socialism, and he wrote about the Hebrew language. One of Ben Gurion’s opinions about the Hebrew language was that Hebrew did not need a specific word to indicate a direct object.
English does not have any word to signify a direct object; we can tell a direct object by word order. I eat the sandwich. I pet the dog. I read these words. But Hebrew, at least until Ben Gurion, is flexible when it comes to word order and indicates direct objects through the word “et” and it is this word that Ben Gurion wanted to eliminate from Hebrew. Not only did he take the word out of his speech, but he crossed the word out of his Tanakh.
[Those of you who are following daf-yomi also encountered a discussion this week about whether or not the word “et” adds additional legal meaning to Biblical verses. It’s a dispute between Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Akiva….]
Ben Gurion failed in this linguistic endeavor. Indeed, Israeli Hebrew has some additional uses of the word “et” that are not found in classical Hebrew. But there is an example in this week’s Torah portion that shows just how much confusion can arise in the absence of a simple and modest “et.”
I know some of you went to hear Rabbi Dr. Lord Jonathan Sacks when he was in town last weekend. He is on a book tour across the United States and although I was not able to attend any of his lectures last weekend I did purchase his new book and have found it very rewarding to read.
The core of his new book, “Not in God’s Name: Confronting Religious Violence” is an original and sustained interpretation of the story of the patriarchs and matriarchs in Sefer Bereishit. And our parsha is at the heart of that story.
At first glance, it all seems fairly simple. Rivka, pregnant with twins, is told by God that her younger son, Yaakov, would be served by her older son, Esav, “rav ya’avod tza’ir.” In order to actualize this message from God, Rivka conspires with Yaakov to steal the blessing that Yitzchak had intended to bestow upon Esav.
It sounds like a simple story. But, the end of the story and its aftermath undermines this simple message. If this story is no more than the simple unfolding of a Divine plan, why must Yaakov flee for his life at the end of the parashah? The hero shouldn’t have to do that! If Yaakov and Rivka were doing God’s will to ensure that the appropriate brother emerges with the right blessing, why does Yaakov eventually give back to Esav a hundred fold the wealth he received from this stolen blessing when they reconcile years later? The very beginning of the story, Rivka’s troubled twin pregnancy and the message she receives from God about her children can also be read in two opposing ways.
When Rivka, who is troubled by her unusual pregnancy “inquires of God” – the Hebrew phrase “lidrosh” demands explanation (pun intended…) Drisha means to inquire, to investigate, and to demand. How did she make this inquiry? Where did she study? To whom did she lodge her complaint against God? And who helped her interpret God’s words. Rabbi Sacks reminds us that this story almost reads as though Rivka consulted an oracle for a prediction into the future.
If Rivka somehow received an oracular prediction of the future, then the ensuing story is like any Greek tragedy revolving around a destiny or a fate. The end is known at the beginning of the story and cannot be escaped. Rabbi Sacks writes:
“The surface narrative tells the story as if it were a Greek tragedy – a story of sibling rivalry of a kind found in all mythological cultures. The cunning younger brother outwits and displaces his stronger, elder sibling, only to find himself threatened by revenge…the entire Jacob Esau story from oracle to victory to fear of revenge is written to be heard at first reading like a myth.”
But, Rabbi Sacks reminds us, the Hebrew Bible is not populated by oracles who offer predictions of the future. The Hebrew Bible is a work of prophecy. A prophet does not predict, a prophet warns and encourages. An oracle whose prediction comes true is successful. A prophet whose prediction comes true has failed.
The Torah is telling us two stories at the same time. There is a archetypical mythological story of Yaakov stealing the birthright of his simple minded and wicked older brother. But that story, when read carefully, undermines itself. Esav is not a wicked character in the peshat, the plain sense meaning, of the text. Esav is portrayed in the Torah with great sympathy. The Torah records his loving relationship with his father. The Torah records with great pathos his tears when he realizes that his younger brother has stolen his blessing. The Torah records the pain that father and son, Yitzchak and Esav experience together, when Yaakov’s subterfuge is exposed.
The Torah is telling two stories at the same time. The successful account of Yaakov stealing his wicked brother’s birthright, is told along with the story that undermines this first story. The Torah subverts its own shallow reading by inviting us to a deeper meaning. Yaakov gives back the stolen blessing to Esav. Yaakov chooses reconciliation over victory.
Rav yaavod Tzai’r . The older shall serve the younger brother. RaDaK, the great medieval pashtan, points out that without the word “et” this phrase can mean two different things. The older shall serve the younger – or – the younger shall serve the older. Rivka received a message from God that was open to a multitude of possible meanings. Indeed, as the contemporary Tanakh teacher Rabbi Tzvi Grummet has pointed out – this is always the way of prophecy in Tanakh. It is always subject to interpretation and prophecy’s meaning shifts in response to the free choices that human beings make in response.
Rabbi Sacks argues, and I will never read Sefer Bereishit the same way again, the Torah is intentionally sensitizing us to the suffering and the emotional lives of other people and other nations. We celebrate Yaakov as our patriarch but we also are meant to feel sympathy with Esav.
The secret, Rabbi Sacks argues, to reconciliation is solidarity and sympathy with outsiders, with “the other” whomever the other may happen to be. Sefer Bereishit, the Book of Genesis, is all about this. Time and again in this book some are chosen and others seem to be rejected. The book is an unending list of stories of sibling rivalry and hated siblings from Abel to Joseph from Hevel to Yoseph. But the Torah, when read closely, tells us that the sibling who is excluded from the covenant is never rejected by God. We are allowed to cultivate love for particular individuals and to feel solidarity with our people, but we must never think that our own affections and favoritism reflects Gods affections.
This, Rabbi Sacks, concludes, is the secret to peace between religions. We need to learn from Sefer Bereishit how to sympathize with others and see the world from their perspective too. This isn’t the vision of world peace that John Lennon called for a world with “no religion” and no differences between people. We can be proud of who we are and the ways that we are different, and also cultivate empathy.
I don’t know if world peace is on any of your agendas. But even if it isn’t. This trick also works on a smaller scale. Communal strife within the Jewish community, and we’ve seen no shortage of that in recent days, can also be mended through cultivating our ability to see the world from the perspective of others.
And, on a personal level, restoring family relationships between spouses, between siblings, or between parents and children also requires this skill. I cannot promise that we will usher in world peace if we all double-down on our capacity for empathy. But I can promise that your relationships with others in your life will be transformed if you expand your capacity for empathy. And that alone should make the effort worthwhile.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 