Many of you know that our twins have been serving as weekday gabba’im since they each became bar mitzvah about 18 months ago. It has been a big relief for me to have them help to keep everything running smoothly on weekday mornings when we read Torah. They have been taking turns being gabbai rishon who calls people up for aliyot and gabbai sheni who allocates the various kibudim and roles among the worshippers. Sometimes there are disagreements about whose turn it is to be gabbai rishon and whose turn it is to be gabbai sheni. This happened on Thanksgiving morning, otherwise known as the first day of Rosh Hodesh Kislev. You may not know this, but identical twins like our children are incapable of resolving disputes using the Rock, Paper, Scissor game since they always manage to throw down the same hand. They decided to use a more contemporary method and see who could solve the day’s Wordle online quiz first. That effort ended in a tie. Finally, they used Google’s random number generator and a gabbai rishon and gabbai sheni were selected.
This was all unfolding during Hazarat HaShatz as my own aggravation grew alongside my worry that it would soon be time for Torah reading and no aliyot would be allocated and I would have no one to assist me. When it all worked out well, just in time, I told Akiva and Hillel that their punishment for making me so nervous was that I would share this story as the opening anecdote for the drasha to Parashat Toldot.
Esav and Yaakov caused distress to their parents even before they were born. But the responses of their parents to the first twin pregnancy in Jewish history was distinct and informative.
At first glance Yitzhak led a charmed life. Alone among the patriarchs, Yitzhak never left Eretz Yisrael and alone among the patriarchs, Yitzhak was only married to one woman. Yitzhak was spared the arduous journeys to and from Eretz Yisrael that Avraham and Yaakov undertook. Yitzhak and Rivkah had the only monogamous marriage of our avot and imahot. But, of course no life is without challenges and Yitzhak and Rivkah, like so many others, struggled with infertility. Unlike most of the instances of infertility in Tanakh, Yitzhak does not have children with a concubine or another wife, but instead turns to God for a child with his one and only wife.
וַיֶּעְתַּ֨ר יִצְחָ֤ק לַֽה֙ לְנֹ֣כַח אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ כִּ֥י עֲקָרָ֖ה הִ֑וא וַיֵּעָ֤תֶר לוֹ֙ ה׳ וַתַּ֖הַר רִבְקָ֥ה אִשְׁתּֽוֹ׃
Yitzhak pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD responded to his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived.
Yitzhak pleaded, וַיֶּעְתַּ֨ר יִצְחָ֤ק on behalf of his wife, לְנֹ֣כַח אִשְׁתּ֔וֹ, which can also mean “in the presence of his wife.” Rashi adds that Yitzhak and Rivka both prayed, each in one corner of the room, in separate locations but with one common request. And Yitzhak’s plea is answered: וַיֵּעָ֤תֶר לוֹ֙ ה׳ God responds and Rivkah is pregnant.
This paradigm for a prayer being answered is simple and direct and quick. וַיֶּעְתַּ֨ר יִצְחָ֤ק לַֽה֙ is followed in the same verse with וַיֵּעָ֤תֶר לוֹ֙ ה׳. The Torah here adopts the perspective of Yitzhak who felt that his prayer was indeed answered in a physical and natural way through the pregnancy of his wife.
But, as we soon find out, things are not as simple as Yitzhak had thought. And that should not surprise us. How often do we hope or even pray for some event to occur, only to learn later on that the actual real-life version of the thing we had longed for is extremely different from the version that had existed in our imagination? To some degree every pregnancy and every choice to become a parent has some element of this dynamic. The philosopher Mara Benjamin explains that while we may have a choice to become parents, we do not have a choice about whom we will parent. Our children always surprise us and we are never able to predict who they will be and what they will need from us as parents.
Rivka’s own interactions with God demonstrate that uncertainty.
In the very next verse after we learn that Rivka was pregnant, the Torah alerts us to trouble.
וַיִּתְרֹֽצְצ֤וּ הַבָּנִים֙ בְּקִרְבָּ֔הּ
“The children are struggling inside her.” With this phrase the Torah reveals to us that Rivka is pregnant with twins before she has found this out. We know before she does. Something about their struggle, or something about the difficulty of her pregnancy, causes enormous distress and agitation.
וַיִּתְרֹֽצְצ֤וּ הַבָּנִים֙ בְּקִרְבָּ֔הּ וַתֹּ֣אמֶר אִם־כֵּ֔ן לָ֥מָּה זֶּ֖ה אָנֹ֑כִי וַתֵּ֖לֶךְ לִדְרֹ֥שׁ אֶת־ה’׃
But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire of the LORD.
Something about the pregnancy sparks an existential crisis for Rivka. She responds, אִם־כֵּ֔ן לָ֥מָּה זֶּ֖ה and that, in turn, inspires her, not to plead with God as Yitzhak did (and as she had perhaps done before she was pregnant) but to undertake a journey of discovery וַתֵּ֖לֶךְ לִדְרֹ֥שׁ אֶת־ה. She leaves home to find an answer. According to the midrash she goes to the Yeshiva of Shem v’Ever that was established by Noach’s children. The midrash here is picking up on the word lidrosh, which means to seek, to delved into – the same root as the word midrash itself. She wants to inquire, to figure things out, and where better to inquire than a beit midrash?
The answer that Rivka receives is certainly appropriate for a beit midrash because it is an answer that generates new questions:
וַיֹּ֨אמֶר ה׳ לָ֗הּ שְׁנֵ֤י (גיים) [גוֹיִם֙] בְּבִטְנֵ֔ךְ וּשְׁנֵ֣י לְאֻמִּ֔ים מִמֵּעַ֖יִךְ יִפָּרֵ֑דוּ וּלְאֹם֙ מִלְאֹ֣ם יֶֽאֱמָ֔ץ וְרַ֖ב יַעֲבֹ֥ד צָעִֽיר׃
Unlike Yitzhak, Rivka merits a verbal response from God:
“Two nations are in your womb, Two separate peoples shall issue from your body; One people shall be mightier than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.”
But God’s words do not provide any obvious answer to Rivkah’s existential questions. How is she helped by knowing that she is pregnant with twins each of whom will be the progenitor of a nation? And, what is the meaning of the phrase וְרַ֖ב יַעֲבֹ֥ד צָעִֽיר? Word order is not dispositive in Hebrew in the same way that it is for English syntax. Direct objects are indicated in Biblical Hebrew with the word “et” which is absent from this phrase. This allows for two opposite interpretations. We can understand the verse to mean the older shall serve the younger, as though it were written “rav ya’avod et ha’tzair” or we can understand the verse to mean that the older shall be served by the younger “v’rav ya’avod tza’ir.”
Rivka’s existential prayer is met with an enigmatic response from God. And, most prophetic messages have a degree of ambiguity inherent in the words themselves and require further interpretation or require acting on our best guess as to what God wants us to do. When we pray, we speak to God, Prophecy is God’s side of that conversation but God’s Infinite message requires finite human beings to make sense of words that can be understood in infinite ways. Rivka’s greatness was demonstrated by the decisive steps she undertook to fulfill her family’s destiny in light of God’s message to her despite its ambiguity.
Rabbi David Bigman, the rosh yeshiva at Yeshivat Ma’aleh Gilboa has noted that a similar dynamic is true as well when it comes to Torah study. There too, we encounter answers to our questions. Sometimes the answers are simple. Sometimes the answers are not at all simple and set up the next level of question. As Rav Kook said, prayer is when I talk to God, Torah study is when God talks to me. The messages we receive from God through Torah study should be like the messages that Rivka received from her derisha her search or her quest. They should be open ended and create the need for a next round of questions and the need for further study.
And we should respond like Rivka to our encounters with God’s word. We should never ignore the ambiguity inherent when finite human beings try to comprehend the will of an Infinite God. But we should not let our doubt dissuade us from acting, as Lincoln expressed it so powerfully, “with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right.”
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld 