Temple Emanu-El

SERMON—JACOB OR ESAU; OR JACOB AND ESAU
Rabbi Jonathan Miller
Temple Emanu-El
Birmingham, Alabama
November 9, 2007—29 Heshvan 5768

This is the perfect Bar Mitzvah weekend at Temple Emanu-El, because the Torah portion fits, exactly, the Bar Mitzvah family. Well, not exactly. It is the story of twins, and a mother and a father. But unlike Blake and Kyle, these twins are not identical, and they do not live at peace with one another.

Here are the words of the Torah:

19This is the story of Isaac, son of Abraham. Abraham begot Isaac. 20Isaac was forty years old when he took to wife Rebekah, daughter of Bethuel the Aramean of Paddan-aram, sister of Laban the Aramean. 21Isaac 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. 22But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire of the LORD, 23and the LORD answered her,
“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.”
24When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. 25The first one emerged red, like a hairy mantle all over; so they named him Esau. 26Then his brother emerged, holding on to the heel of Esau; so they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.

So who were Esau and Jacob?

They were brothers. They were bound together in the womb. They never had a moment’s peace with each other. Jacob was favored by his mother. He was thoughtful and kind and liked to cook and was cautious and was a real mama’s boy to his Jewish mother. Esau was favored by his father. He was aggressive, a hunter, and an outdoors kind of kid—filled with testosterone. All of his strengths were his father Isaac’s weaknesses. Esau was physical. Jacob was intellectual. Esau liked football. Jacob played the piano. Esau majored in physical education. Jacob was a poet. Esau ate with his hands and wiped them on his tunic. Jacob used a fork, knife, and spoon, and he knew which was the salad fork and which was the desert fork and he always served from the right and cleared from the left. Esau had tickets on the fifty yard line. Jacob had his seats at the Alys Stephens Center. Esau was a fighter. Jacob was a lover. Esau went to school on an ROTC scholarship. Jacob majored in Literature and Philosophy. Esau was big and strong. Jacob was delicate. Esau was always hungry. Jacob was always thinking. Esau was corporate. Jacob was the entrepreneur. Esau lived for today. Jacob planned for tomorrow.

The dichotomy between Jacob and Esau existed not only between the two boys, even when they were in their mother’s womb, even when they were growing up together, even when they separated from their families and struck out on their own, even when they reconciled for a moment before they went on their separate ways, and even after they died. The dichotomy between Jacob and Esau continued beyond their death and became exemplified in those who followed after them.

Jacob becomes Israel. He is a spiritual wrestler. More than anyone else in the Bible, he gets close to God. Moses dwells with God. Abraham talks with God. Jacob gets with God in the ring. He gets his hands on the Divine being and wrestles with him through the dark night. Jacob, the boy of words becomes a man of action, of intimacy with the holy. Even as his life falls apart, and his sons overtake him, Jacob never forgets the power of laying his hands on the Divine, of throwing Him to the ground, of being subdued by Him and then overtaking him with the coming of the dawn. Jacob gets his name changed as his blessing: Israel, the one who struggles and overcomes his struggle still struggles some more. Israel is of the effervescence of spirit, who survives on energy that is fleeting, who dwells on the spiritual plain that is not of this world. That is our name too. We are Israel, Jacob’s children.

Who was Esau? Esau was Edom, who like Adam comes from the earth. Edom/Adamah means that he is everyman. Edom is the color of red, the red of the blood that courses through the veins of every human being. Edom is our baser instincts, our libido, our opposing thumbs, our constant hunger, our desire to conquer and to possess. Esau became the father of the Edomites, the Biblical nation that lived in the south, in that region of the Negev and the Jordan. He is the red-hued rock that makes up the impenetrable mountains that you see when you drive from the Dead Sea to Eilat, in the area that was once the nation of Edom.

Later in Jewish tradition, long after the Edomites were gone, Edom still remained. Our rabbis talked about Edom long after the Edomites themselves had vanished. Who was this new Edom? Edom became the code word for Rome and then Byzantium and the Christian empire. Edom was the Roman legion. Edom was the Coliseum where animals and people battled to their death for the amusement of the crowds. Edom was the force that put Israel into captivity. Edom was the toga and the gymnasium and the hippodrome and the Forum. Edom was the selling of human beings and the exertion of the powerful over the weak. Edom destroyed the Temple, exiled our people, and tortured our sages and our scholars. Edom marched under the banner of the cross to lead its people in conquest. The spirit, Israel, was subdued by Edom—as Jacob was subdued by Esau. The rabbis could not directly criticize Rome and Byzantium. That would be too dangerous. They would be accused of sedition. Instead, they criticized Esau and his progeny, the Edomites for the pain that the world imposed upon Jacob and his children, the children of Israel. Esau was Jacob’s eternal enemy. Edom was Israel’s eternal enemy. Throughout the ages, everybody, Jew and Gentile, who knew the Bible, knew exactly what the Torah meant when it said, “Two nations are in your womb”.

The Torah tells us that we have to choose. Are we to be Jacob or Esau, Israel or Edom, the spirit or the body? What is it to be?

And so the story unfolds. By stealth, Jacob defeats Esau, but his victory is only a moral one. He connives the birthright from his ravenous brother. He disguises himself in the manner of the earthy Esau, and presents himself before their dim-visioned father. He lies to his father to tell him, “I am my brother. (I am the eternal wannabe.)” But this is a chimerical victory. Esau is still more powerful and stronger than Jacob, regardless of the birthright and regardless of the blessing. By the Esau calculus of force, birthrights and blessings mean nothing.

Isn’t it interesting: Esau never endeavors to become Jacob. Esau could never imagine the life of the spirit. For Esau, it is all about his physical comforts. The spiritual life would be as mysterious to him as it would be to a baboon. But Jacob, who is enmeshed into the life of the spirit, longs for the physicality and the earthiness of his twin brother. The blessings of the spirit mark him as different from the common pursuits of his brother. He cannot hunt. He cannot spend his days on the earth meeting his physical needs and his physical comforts. Jacob is repulsed by Esau, even as he is attracted to him. Esau doesn’t have a clue about his brother Jacob, he cannot imagine the Israelness, the spiritual personality, of his brother Jacob. One brother seeks to be the other. The other cannot imagine—at all. He simply cannot imagine.

So the Torah tells us: Choose. What is it, Jacob or Esau? And we choose Jacob, sometimes to our detriment and sometimes to our peril. We choose to be forever Jacob, of this world but not quite of this world. On the surface we are just like every Esau, but we are different from everybody, too. Choose: Will we be Israel apart from the nations, or Jacob apart from Esau; what will be our choice? And we choose, not always happily, and not always to our pleasure. But we choose to be Jacob. We are Israel, what else can we do?

But these two are brothers. They are linked to the same father and the same mother and come from the same womb, which they inhabit together. The choice to choose between the two, to be Jacob or Esau, is not the best choice for us as Jews or as human beings. We ourselves are an amalgam of Jacob and Esau. We are both brothers. We are both of the spirit and of the flesh. We are both football and the symphony. We are both the fighters and the lovers. We are both the hunters and the philosophers. That is what it means to be fully human. Jacob and Esau are twins. Even in their differences, they belong together, two sides of the complex human coin.

Living fully as a human being is an art. It is not easy. Living fully means going back to being mother Rebecca, through whom this whole story flows. It means living with both our spirit and our earthiness. It means not letting the physical nature of our being extinguish the delicate light of our spirit. It means that we control ourselves and our appetites, that we live our physical lives in ways that our spiritual lives can grow and prosper. It means finding the proper balance between our Jacob and our Esau. It means that we have an ability to grow in ways uniquely Jewish and be the same as the peoples of Esau, the peoples of the earth. But we never lose sight of our Israel. It means that at the end of our days, the Jacob in us can transcend the demise of the Esau in us, that the ephemeral spirit will eventually vanquish the physical body. But until that time, we must endeavor not to choose to be Jacob and not Esau, or Esau and not Jacob. But we must be both. Jacob and Esau, living in harmony----as best we can. And the battle continues. And that battle is what it means to be fully human and fully Jewish—both at the same time.

Shabbat Shalom

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