Yitzchok/Isaac Loved Conditionally – Rivka/Rebecca Loves Unconditionally

 וַיֶּאֱהַ֥ב יִצְחָ֛ק אֶת־עֵשָׂ֖ו כִּי־צַ֣יִד בְּפִ֑יו וְרִבְקָ֖ה אֹהֶ֥בֶת אֶֽת־יַעֲקֹֽב׃

Now Isaac loved Esau, because he did eat of his venison; and Rebekah loved Jacob.

- Bereishit/Genesis 25:28

 

Something that strikes me about this psuk/verse is that Yitzchok/Isaac loved Esav conditionally – that is, a reason is given for his love of Esav – that he ate of the food Esav provided (literally, “Yitzchok loved Esav because the game was in his mouth”). There are various interesting rabbinic commentaries about what, exactly, this means – and I encourage you to check them out – but the main thing that jumps out at me is that Yitzchok does not love Esav unconditionally, because he is his son – rather, he loves him because of what Esav can do for Yitzchok.

 

In contrast, Rivka/Rebecca loves Yaacov/Jacob. No reason is given. No justification. She just loves him. Now, the rabbis come up with various reasons why she loves him – but these are additions to the text – no reason is given, in contrast to the reason given for Yitzchok’s love for Esav. The most interesting commentary to me comes from the Chizkuni (unsurprisingly – I often find his commentary very illuminating) – the verb used for Yitzchok is in the perfect, or past tense – because the love is conditional and will at times cease to exist. However, the love provided by Rivka is described in the kal participle, effectively the present tense – because it continues at all times. He does not quite make the leap to it being unconditional, but I think this makes sense as a reading of the psuk/verse.

 

I believe that the conditional love that Esav received from his father contributed to his path in life being very negative. He takes much longer to mature – when he sees how displeased that his father was with his choice of wives, so he marries a cousin, a daughter of Yishmael/Ishmael – just to please his parents, not out of love. Meanwhile, the unconditional love that Rivka generously gives Yaakov helps set him on a better path, being able to have a profound experience of prayer in his dream of the ladder to heaven with the angels, choosing a wife he loves, Rachel (we won’t get into his marriage to her sister Leah at this time), and wrestling with the man/angel/G!d who gave him his new name.

 

Of course, the fact that each parent had a favorite child set them up for conflict, and there was bitter rivalry that led Yaakov to trick first his brother and then his father to get the birthright and the good blessing – one wonders how different the story would have been if both sons were loved equally and if there were good blessings and birthrights for both of them. In the end, in Bereishit/Genesis 33:4, Esav is able to kiss his brother and they embrace (yes, I know of the midrash that assigns very negative motives to Esav for this – but I like the positive possibilities inherent in the pshat, or literal reading, of this verse.) And Bereishit/Genesis 36 gives a detailed genealogy of Esav’s descendants, which does not necessarily make sense given the broader context of the book and of the Torah – and there is rabbinic commentary that this perek/chapter contains some of the deepest Kabbalistic mysteries – which I see as making up for the lack of unconditional love from his parents.

 

I find that the family relationships in Bereshit/Genesis are so revelatory, and this set of relationships is no exception.

The House of God and the Gate of Heaven: Meditation for Parashat Va-Yetzei

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven. (Genesis 28:17

In Parashat Va-Yetzei, Jacob is on the run. He and his twin brother Esau never got along from the moment of their birth – in fact, Jacob was fighting with Esau to see who could get out of the womb first, and although Esau won that competition, Jacob had his heel in his hand when he came out. Esau was the favorite of his father Isaac, and Jacob of his mother Rebekah. Jacob bought Esau’s birthright as the firstborn with a bowl of lentil stew, and he and his mother conspired to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the better blessing by having Jacob pretend to be Esau. Esau threatened to kill Jacob after their father's impending death, and their mother sent Jacob to stay with relatives for awhile to be safe (and find a suitable wife).

But as scared, and as demoralized as Jacob must have felt – and as rootless as he was, fleeing from the place he had lived his entire life to a place he had never been – it was at the place he camped out for the night on his journey that God chose to appear to him. God appeared in the dream, showing Jacob a ladder with angels ascending and descending from earth to heaven and back again. And his response was to say, “How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven”. He took a stone and made a pillar to commemorate this profound encounter with God – the first time we are told in scripture that God talked to Jacob. He named the place “Bethel”, which means “House of God” in Hebrew.

Jacob schemed, from birth, to get the things he needed by tricking his brother – and he ended up on the run, alone and scared. It was only when he got to that place, where his own efforts had failed him and he had no other resources, that God appeared and promised him great blessings. It was in this place of loneliness and fear that God was able to establish the House of God – the Gate of Heaven.

And so it is with us. We scheme, we struggle, we strive – and our own efforts, which may get us material wealth, social prestige, intellectual achievement – or not – cannot satisfy our spiritual hunger. But God comes to us, in our greatest hour of need, and puts down a ladder between our temporary sojourn, and heaven, and builds for us the House of God, and opens the Gate of Heaven. We may not even always be aware of the presence of the Lord – “Surely, the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it.” But when we look back, we see the evidence of God’s presence.

So let us allow God to build within us the House of God, the Gate of Heaven.

Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place – this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.