As we round the bend toward Labor Day, I am laser-focused on three overriding goals:
Free and fair elections in the US and Israel, resulting in a transfer of leadership to parties bent on justice, accountability, democratic values and kindness.
Laying the moral groundwork for reconciliation between groups to occur once the new leadership is in place.
Focusing on the constructive role that religion can play (in particular Judaism) in cleaning up the massive moral morass produced by Trump and Netanyhu and their corrupt, utterly loathsome regimes.
I am singularly dedicated to those goals, which means that I will not be sucked down rabbit holes of hate being troweled so impetuously by those who wish to divide us, on the left and especially on the right. I’m being ultracareful in screening and verifying rumors, quotes, videos - anything online that seems to have the goal of raising my blood pressure. And I will think more than twice before reacting to postings from questionable sources. I suggest you do that as well.
But with verifiably horrible things being done to people, whether to Jews in Manhattan, Palestinians on the West Bank or Somali or Haitian immigrants in Minnesota and Ohio, can we possibly put civilized society back together again, even once those initial goals are achieved?
I believe we can. And so does the Bible.
Let’s look at how it happens in Genesis, where peace prevails in even the most toxic relationship imaginable, that of estranged siblings, specifically, Isaac and Ishmael and then Jacob and Esau. We can find the keys to reconciliation by looking at their stories in five different ways. In drawing these lessons, I’m inspired by the scholarship of Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory, the trailblazing chief rabbi of the British Commonwealth.
Sacks explained that in Greek philosophy, truth is a system, whereas in the Bible, truth is a story. Right now, we need to look for pathways to peace within our common stories. We may not share views with various neighbors about abortion, guns, voting rights or Zionism, but we do share the following with them: Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Ishamel, Jacob and Esau. We share stories.
So let’s start the dialogue there.
Looking at the plain, surface meaning of the Genesis text, we’ve got two parallel narratives: Pairs of sons are born - Ishamel and Isaac to Abraham, and Jacob and Esau to Isaac - and in each case the younger becomes the dominant child and the elder is sent away. The spurned child is portrayed as being less than deserving of the number one spot, at the very least, and downright evil at worst. Simple enough.
But let’s look at things from a second perspective, specifically from the point of view of the father. In both cases, with Abraham and Isaac, the father defends the rights of the eldest child. Abraham did not want Ishmael to be sent away. He loved him – and Isaac favored Esau.
From this perspective, the text is telling us two things: first, that maybe, just maybe, Ishmael and Esau weren’t so evil after all. There is a counter-narrative here, running alongside the established truths of the first interpretation.
Second, we learn from this that dads always get it wrong. At least these dads did. Abraham’s parental judgment was less than ideal, but compare him to Isaac! Just about every parental decision that Isaac made was the wrong one. From beginning to end. This is our patriarch? He sets his kids up for failure – he loves Esau best. Why? Because he hunts and cooks up delicious venison. He can’t even tell his kids apart at the most important moment of their lives. Isaac is blind, literally and morally.
But when we consider that Abraham’s primary purpose in life was to be a father, nothing more and nothing less – his very name means “father of nations” – and that Isaac’s most significant role was to bless Jacob, this counternarrative begins to puzzle and disorient us. What is the Torah doing here?
Maybe the Torah isn’t just giving us a pilot episode of the series “Father Knows Worst.” Maybe father does know best. Just maybe. Maybe Ishmael and Esau were more worthy. Maybe it’s better to hunt like Esau than to be an intellectual like Jacob. Maybe this Ward Cleaver - Red State perspective supersedes the more feminist Blue State Bible of Rebecca and Sarah. Maybe. Just maybe.
I’ll bet you didn’t know that there is a Blue State Bible and a Red State Bible. Neither did I. But this story is a blend, with a healthy dose of each (though I personally have a problem with the hunting).
Let’s move to a third level of interpretation, which shows us that the counternarrative goes beyond just the father’s point of view. In fact, the Torah itself makes it impossible for us NOT to be sympathetic toward Ishmael and his mother, the Egyptian handmaid Hagar. They are chased away, thanks to Sarah, and the child nearly dies.
The Torah’s vocabulary used here is filled with emotion. “For she said: ‘Let me not look upon the death of the child.’ And she sat over against him, and lifted up her voice, and wept.” Hagar weeps.
Compare that with the Binding of Isaac, just one chapter later. You won’t find anyone crying. The Akeda reads like an AP report just come over the wire. Dry, emotionless, nothing evocative. No tears. Abraham is told to kill his son and the dialogue sounds like an infomercial.
So we have two stories, back to back – one is deeply emotive, and the other not in the least. The Torah is taking us by the hand as if to say, “Have sympathy for that one – for Ishmael – not for Isaac, for Hagar, and not for Abraham.”
Skip ahead a generation and again, the tears come from the least likely source: Esau. He cries to his father, “Have you got one blessing left for me???” The rabbis had to completely rewrite this story in later commentaries to cast Esau in a less sympathetic light. The plain meaning of the text clearly supports Esau, not Jacob, whose very name means heel. So now we are even more puzzled: Why is the Torah sending us such counterintuitive messages?
We move ahead to perspective four. Let’s look at the final act: How do these stories end? When Abraham dies – and by the way, it was the most serene death ever – he was one happy dude when he died: six more kids, a slew of grandchildren. Got a new wife, got a new life and the family’s fine - he gives everything to Isaac, great dad that he was, but at least before he kicks everyone else out, which he does, he gives them all presents.
But the big picture we see at Abraham’s death is of Isaac and Ishmael standing together at their father’s grave. And one generation later, when all is said and done, the last time we see Jacob and Esau together, they are embracing.
This is the most happily-ever-after that the Bible ever gets, unless you count the coming of the messiah, which, Jewishly speaking, hasn’t happened yet. Seriously, tell me about a single story in the Hebrew Bible that ends as perfectly as Isaac-Ishmael and Jacob-Esau.
Again, the Torah seems to sending us down an unexpected track. Everything we thought we knew about these relationships is that things ended badly. But they decidedly did not. It’s like finding out that Haman was in fact a great philanthropist, or the Wicked Witch was actually good.
Oh, she was? Never mind.
We expect the worst, but here all we see in the text is a Not-Maybe Happy Ending. Of course dad has to be gone for that to happen; but it happens.
Reconciliation happens.
In each case, beneath the Torah narrative there is a counter-narrative running in the exact opposite direction from what we’ve been led to believe. In each case, the conflict that seems to be created by the story is simultaneously being resolved by the same story.
A fifth reading of these stories calls upon us to look at them in the most challenging way imaginable: through the eyes of the Other, from the perspectives of Moslem and Christian commentaries. Galatians calls the Jews the children of Ishmael, not Isaac. Romans calls the Christians the heirs of Jacob, while the Jews are the heirs of Esau. Our Midrash, of course, says just the opposite. For Moslems, Ishmael is the chosen son, Isaac the rejected one. In the Koran, the victim of the Akeda is Ishmael.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks calls this disconnect the root of the theological poison that has existed between the three Abrahamic groups for so many centuries.
If only we all could appreciate the brilliance of the Torah in utilizing a literary device almost unbelievable in its subtlety. The texts that we have seen as the root of the problem are – in fact - the key to the solution.
For in the Torah, at the end of the tale, there is reconciliation.
In the Torah, the parent loves the rejected child – so the child is not really rejected.
No child is left behind.
The Torah allows us to look at life through the eyes of the rejected one – we can hear his cry, feel his tears. The Torah gives us a sampling of what it is like to be…. the Other.
The fundamentalist never gets beyond the first interpretation. The staunch traditionalist never gets beyond the second. The one who sees things only from the perspective of one faith tradition will never make to the fifth and highest level of commentary.
When Jacob ran for his life to escape the anger of Esau, he rested for the night and had his famous dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder to heaven. When his eyes opened, he looked around and was amazed, awestruck – and when he sensed that something sacred imbued this place – it was indeed a House of God, a Beit El.
Jacob was about to turn his back on the Land of Israel. He was headed into a self imposed Exile. But at the moment of his departure he saw the potential of that place to be an example for good throughout the world, a haven of harmony. Where once there was victimization and tears, there could someday be the dream of a universal Abode of God, a place of true reconciliation for all faiths and peoples.
As a special treat, listen to this spectacular concert from Tanglewood celebrating America’s 250th, featuring the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Yo-Yo Ma, James Taylor, Heather Cox Richardson and a host of others. It took place last week.
In an interview prior to the concert, Yo-Yo Ma said:
Music is restorative….And I think in this moment, there's a lot about the future and about the present that we don't understand. And usually, when things are not quite right, what do we do? We come to one another and we go to our loved ones to get some form of reinforcement, right? And nature is one of those renewal places, right? You're upset, you go for a walk, you see a tree, you realize the tree is much older than you are and has seen many more things than you have, and somehow you feel a little bit better.
We feel the same way about our sacred stories. They’ve nourished hundreds of generations all over the world, and yet we can look at them with fresh eyes today. And maybe they can bring us hope.
Shabbat Shalom and enjoy the end of summer! And join me NEXT Friday evening and Shabbat morning, as I return to Temple Beth El in Stamford.
Another wonderful post. Shabbat Shalom.
Thank you for the addition of Yo-Yo Ma´s words. Among great musicians are also often great thoughts. It is their music that helps us to rise above the quandaries of the day, leaving behind, if only for a few moments, the cheap, easy and vulgar so manifested in our culture (and politics). Your essays elevate us as well, Rabbi Hammerman 🙏 .