TARGETING THE TRUTH: PARSHAT TOLDOS
Shira Smiles shiur 2019/5780
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
Arguably the key
events of Parshat Toldos revolve around the birthright. Near the beginning of
the parsha, Esau sells his birthright to Yaakov for a bowl of soup, and near
the end of the parsha, Yaakov receives the blessings of the firstborn through
seeming subterfuge.
How did Yaakov get
the blessing Yitzchak had meant for Esau? Rivkah overheared Yitzchak’s
instructions to Esau, to prepare for Yitzchak the food he likes so that
Yitzchak will bless him. Understanding the dire ramifications this wold present
for Yaakov, Rivkah sets about a plan so that Yaakov will get these blessings
instead of Esau, and she commands Yaakov to obey her instructions. Yaakov is to
go to the herd and bring his mother a goat to prepare and cook. He will then
don Esau’s special clothes and go in to get the blessing from Yitzchak.
Yaakov even argues, “What if [uly] my father touches me?” So Rivkah
instructs him to put the hairy goatskins on his arms so that he resembles the
hairy Esau.
Naturally, Yaakov
resists. Yaakov is the model of truth and integrity. How can he deceive his
father? But Rivkah insists, even accepting responsibility for the consequences
of this deception, “Oliy killiloscha, Beni/Your curse [punishment for
this sin] will be on me, my son.”
With that, Yaakov
goes in to his father. Yitzchak asks who is there. Yaakov answers, “It is I,
Esau [is] your firstborn.” At first Yitzchak is suspicious at the speed his son
has come back from the hunt to serve him this meal. Yaakov reassures his father
that God made him succeed. Yitzchak is still suspicious. Asking him so to come
closer, Yaakov approaches him, Yitzchak feels Yaakov’s arms, proclaims, “The
voice is the voice of Yaakov and the hands are the hands of Esau.” With that,
Yitzchak gives Yaakov the blessing of the firstborn.
Two major
questions arise. First, why go through this elaborate ruse? Why couldn’t Rivkah
go to Yitzchak and explain why Esau was unworthy of the blessing? And then,
having gone through this deception, how can we still claim that the overriding
characteristic of Yaakov is truth?
It must be noted
that Yaakov hoped he would not succeed in this deception. His argument of uly/what
if implies a desire for that outcome, and the deception would be revealed. If
Yaakov wanted to avoid being discovered, he would have said, “pen/Lest.”
There’s more to
Truth than what meets the eye or the ear.
A medrash may
throw some light on our discussion. When Noah built the ark, all the creatures
entered in pairs. Falsehood came and requested entry. Noah told falsehood that
it needed a partner. Noah knew that the falsehood of the serpent caused Adam’s
downfall, and he did not want it to survive for the future in the ark. What
entered the ark as falsehood’s partner? Destruction; everything that falsehood
touches will eventually be destroyed. Falsehood has no reality and cannot exist
over time. When Noah saw falsehood’s partner, he gave them both entries,
assuming falsehood would self-destruct, since this world is by nature transient
and temporary. Absolute reality and truth exist only in the spiritual world.
Our mission, writes the Sifsei Chaim, is to invest this temporal,
physical world with the eternal truths of the spiritual world.
Hashem created the
world by contracting Himself and creating space within Himself for the universe
and for ourselves. This is the reality. We truly exist while we live our lives
as spiritual beings rather than as physical creatures. Rabbi Moshe Schwab z”l
in Maarchei Lev presents a wonderful metaphor to highlight this
difference. Children playing a game of Monopoly will complain to their mother
if their sibling swiped some money from them. They take it very seriously. But
the adults know that this “money” is only paper and has no true value.
Unfortunately, we tend to view this world through the lens of Monopoly, a
common tactic of the yetzer horo, when the only thing of true value is the
Torah and a life lived according to Torah values. The money we earn can become truth
when it is used in the performance of mitzvoth.
There is often a
conflict between apparent reality and essential truth, writes Rabbi Lopiansky
in Golden Apples. For example, while we will all agree that theft is
evil, the apparent reality is that the thief has gained something. In contrast,
the one who gives tzedakah seems now to have less in the apparent reality of
this world, but has gained much in the true reality of the spiritual world. The
challenge lies in aligning the two realities and living one’s life in this
physical world of apparent reality with the essential truth of the spiritual
reality, to maintain that integrity.
Yaakov, continues
Rabbi Lopiansky, needed to reveal the falsehood of Esau using Esau’s own
deceitful tactics.
The Shvilei
Pinchas adds another, deeper layer to the conflict between truth and
falsehood. The battle in olam hazeh, this physical, temporal world
exists because of two opposing systems in the world - truth, represented by
Torah, and falsehood, represented by the yetzer horo and sin. At the
very beginning of creation, mankind was presented with this conflict. The
primal serpent, the manifestation of the yetzer horo, knew it would not
succeed in causing Adan and Chava to sin through truth or logic. It
needed to resort to falsehood and deceit, telling Chava that if she ate from
the tree, she would be like God and be able to create worlds. God was jealous,
the serpent said, and therefore forbade her from eating of this tree. The
scheme worked, Chava shared the fruit with Adam, and falsehood brought death to
the world.
Esau was now using
this same kind of falsehood to trick Yitzchak into giving him the blessing
designated for the firstborn, even though he had already sold it to Yaakov. He
kept deceiving his father into believing he was righteous, asking questions of
halachah that he knew were spurious questions. The gravest sin would have been
for Yaakov to stand idly by and allow sheker/falsehood to succeed and
get the blessing.
Now Rivkah who,
according to the medrash, was a gilgul/reincarnation of Chava had come
to repair that breach. She tells Yaakov to listen to her voice, now for a
mitzvah, and repair the sin of Adam when he listened to her and ate of the
forbidden tree. She clothes Yaakov in the clothes of sheker to rectify
the original sin based on sheker.
In reality,
eternal truth doesn’t need clothes, writes Rabbi Goldwicht z”l. Adam before the
sin was unclothed. After the sin, the clothing was an outer accoutrement that
covered his internal essence. That external clothing can be a metaphor for how
we change our outer selves, our demeanor and actions to conform to different
circumstances. Yaakov had to wear the clothing of sheker to play the
part of Esau. As Rebbetzin Smiles so succinctly put it, “Yaakov wore the
clothing in order to unclothe the naked truth.”
The physical world
must be aligned with truth, and sometimes it takes a disguise of external
clothing to reveal that truth. Tamar used this tactic in luring Judah to the
truth of her claim as part of the Judean family. And Ruth dressed in her finery
to meet Boaz on the threshing floor. Between them, these women became the
ancestresses of the Davidic Dynasty. Hashem wanted Yaakov to dress up as Esau
to reveal the truth, that Esau had already sold the birthright for a measly
bowl of soup.
Where does the
Torah tell us that Esau was deceitful, asks Rabbi Mordechai Ezrachi in Birkat
Mordechai? When the Torah describes how the twins diverged as they grew up,
it parallels Yaakov ish tam/Yaakov was a pure, innocent man with Esau
being an ish yodea tzayid/a man who knows how to hunt. Hunting, by
definition, notes the Ibn Ezra, is based on deceit, on luring one’s prey
with falsehood. A man of integrity does not become a hunter [excluding hunting
in order to eat CKS].
Yaakov, because he
is being deceitful, is crying when he goes in to his father albeit he will
benefit from the blessing. In contrast, Esau would be joyful under similar
circumstances, knowing he is getting material benefit from his ploy. Yaakov is
desperate to maintain his integrity, so when Yitzchak asks him who he is, he
answers with words that can be understood on multiple levels, “Ani, Esau
bechorecha/It is I, Esau [is] your firstborn.”
What we perceive
as truth is not necessarily the ultimate truth, but our perception is the only
gauge we have. Rabbi Ezrachi presents an analogy. If you want to hang a picture
on a wall, you measure the distances so that the picture will be straight. But
what if the wall itself is not plumb? You will still undoubtedly hang the picture
as it is straight in relation to the wall, having no other barometer of true
alignment. What was Yaakov’s barometer? His mother told him that she had gotten
the prophecy from Hashem when she was pregnant that “the elder shall serve the
younger.” This was ultimate proof from Hashem, not subjective proof from his
perspective, and so he listened to his mother.
Rivkah had another
advantage in this scenario. Having been raised in the home of Besuel and Lavan,
explains Rabbi Zwei in Infinity of Torah, she knew about deceit and
manipulation. But her manipulation was to benefit others rather than herself.
She understood, for example, that when Eliezer asked her for a little water, he
was too embarrassed to ask her for enough water for himself and his entourage,
let alone his camels. She intuited his needs and met them all.
When it came to
the blessings, Rivkah knew that if Yitzchak were cognizant of all the facts, he
himself would want to give the firstborn blessing to Yaakov instead of to Esau.
But if she told him outright about Esau’s character, it would hurt Yitzchak
terribly. Instead she devised this ruse to get Yitzchak to bless Yaakov instead
of Esau. She was later proven right. When Esau returns to find that Yitzchak
had given the blessing to Yaakov, Esau cries out, “He has twice tricked me.”
The truth now comes out, that Esau had sold the birthright to Yaakov, and
Yitzchak validates the blessing he unknowingly had given to Yaakov.
Rivkah brought
about a revelation of truth by getting Yitzchak to do what he truly
subconsciously wanted to do. And Rabbi Mintzberg explains that for this same
reason of bringing Yitzchak to the reality of what he actually wanted to
do, to bless the firstborn, Yaakov was permitted to enter into this deception.
We live surrounded
by falsehood, tells us the Sifsei Chaim, and it is hard to figure out
what Hashem wants from us. It would be beneficial to take a few minutes each
day to contemplate some aspect of your life and plan how you can align it more
closely with your goal of living a true Torah life. In my family, am I giving
my full attention to the children and not being distracted by the phone or
other chores. In my business dealings, am I always totally honest both in
speech and in action. When I take a drink of water and recite, “Shehakol
nihiyeh bidvaro/Everything exists through His word,” do I observe the glass
of water in my hand with the thought that this exists, as does my whole world,
because Hashem wills its existence. Truth is higher bar than our personal
perception.
This absolute
level of truth is what Yaakov was afraid of transgressing writes Rabbi Dunner
z”l in Mikdash Halevi. While Rivkah could take upon herself the anger of
Yitzchak and particular punishments, Yaakov was more afraid of the effect such
falsehood would have on his own character. The Torah admonishes, “Cursed is the
one who puts obstacles in the path of the blind.” Even though the purpose of
this deception was for the good and for absolute truth, there could still be
consequences, and perhaps Yaakov’s character would begin on a path of
corruption and deceit. Falsehood knows how to deceive us and, together with its
partner, achieve destruction. Be careful: “Midvar sheker tirchak/Stay
far away from falsehood.”