A Thousand Life Lessons

Parshas Toldos

Posted on November 8, 2007 (5768) By Rabbi Label Lam | Series: Dvar Torah | Level: Beginner

And he (Essau) said, “Is he not rightly called Yaakov? Since he has gone behind me these two times, he took my birthright and see now he took away my blessing…” (Breishis 27:36)

This is a lightning bolt from the deep past. Essau for the first time betrays his woefully mistaken impression of the sale of the birthright that had had occurred fifty years earlier. Sure Yaakov under executive orders from his mother had just usurped his blessing. Rivka had observed his lack of readiness for those blessings. She held the long kept secret of the potentially negative prenatal prophecy that Essau may not turn out right. Why had his character stagnated and even worsened over the next five decades? Who was to blame for that? Let us appreciate the relevance of that false accusation he launched at his brother in his hour of crisis.

The verse openly testifies that after the sale of the birthright Yaakov had given him not only the beans he so desperately requested but bread and apparently some drink too because it is written, “And he ate and he drank and he got up and he left and he despised the birthright!” (Breishis 25:34) If it is true that Yakkov had taken advantage of him in a vulnerable state and not that he was tricked into forfeiting the birthright then he should have protested then and there when his stomach was full. Why should he leave the scene of the crime silently? That proved how little he valued the birthright. Now we find out that for fifty years Essau is telling himself the story that he was a victim of deception. For fifty years he tricked himself. Playing the victim keeps one from getting past their tragic flaws. If one blames others then he is not responsible. Others are! This may be fine for spinning perceptions in a political universe but for personal growth it’s a crippling mentality.

Someone asked me if there was some diplomatic or delicate way that he could ask the young woman he had been dating, who was a divorcee, about her first marriage. It occurred to me that rather than ask, “What went wrong?” which is an invitation for a flood of negativity, he should rather ask, “What did you learn from your first marriage?” If all she can say is that her husband was a no good such and such, then history may likely be readying to repeat itself. It’s hard to imagine that anyone going through such a trauma didn’t glean some personal life lessons.

In super contradistinction to Essau’s blame game let us bathe in the light of someone who took a completely different approach. One of my good friends was shocked and terribly dismayed when he heard of his older brother Avrumi’s horrific car accident in Israel three years ago. Avrumi was driving someone to the airport in his minivan when a driver in the on coming direction decided to pass a truck. He glanced off of a police car, spun out of control and struck Avrumi’s van. Boruch HASHEM Avrumi survived but tragically he lost both of his legs. Months after the accident Avrumi, was allowed to leave the hospital temporarily and arrangements were made for him and his family to go to a hotel for Pesach. Once there, he phoned the fellow whose driving indiscretion had caused the whole episode. He told him that he would like to meet him and that he shouldn’t be nervous about it because he had no malice against him.

Remarkably he showed up. There standing before him was a man with a yarmulke and sporting a beard. Avrumi had expected to see a secular Israeli. The young fellow told him that because of all the problems the accident has caused he started to think a great deal and that eventually caused him to become a Baal Teshuva! He told that young man, “It’s worth it that I lost my legs so that you should become an observant Jew.”

I was with Avrumi this past Motzei Shabbos and I was amazed to meet a person who would have reason to play the blame game, as Essau did, and stay stuck in the past but rather chose to embrace reality and to learn a thousand life lessons.

DvarTorah, Copyright © 2007 by Rabbi Label Lam and Torah.org.

 

Raising Perfect Children?

Parshas Toldos

Posted on November 19, 2014 (5775) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

Perfect parents do not always produce perfect children. This week’s parsha is a perfect illustration of this truism of life and family. There apparently was very little that Yitzchak and Rivka could do to reclaim Eisav to their way of life and level of morality. He was, perhaps, incapable of moral improvement the moment he was born.

There existed, and perhaps still exists, a great debate about whether genetic makeup or social and family environment determine a child’s personality and behavior patterns. But no matter how we judge this question, it still is perplexing, if not even unthinkable, that Yitzchak and Rivka parented Eisav and raised him in their holy home.

It is one of the Torah’s prime examples of the power of freedom of choice that children and all human beings possess. Parents naturally berate themselves over the bad behavior of their children. Yet, in my admittedly limited experience, these parents are hardly ever to be blamed for the free- will wickedness of their offspring.

We ascribe too much power to parents in raising children. Of course family and environment are important, but a child’s choices will trump all other factors and circumstances. And thus we have an Eisav emerging from the house and family of Yitzchak and Rivka.

The Torah’s message to us in this matter is direct and blunt – there are no guarantees or perfect successes in raising children. One could say that though Avraham fathered Yishmael, perhaps it was Hagar’s influence that formed him. But what can we say about the house of Yitzchak and Rivka that could produce an Eisav?

The Torah poses for us the unanswerable questions of life that we encounter daily. And it never truly provides us with satisfying answers. Such is the nature of life itself – its mystery, uncertainty and unpredictably. The great question as to why the righteous suffer and the evil person apparently prospers lies at the root of the struggle for belief and faith. And as we read in the book of Iyov, the Lord chooses, so to speak, not to answer that question.

The Torah does not explain to us how an Eisav can arise from the house of Yitzchak and Rivka. Apparently it is satisfied just to notify us that it occurred and, by inference, to teach us that other inexplicable things will occur throughout Jewish and human history.

Eisav, whether genetically or environmentally influenced, was a free agent – as we all are – to choose between good and evil, peace and violence, compassion and cruelty. These choices were his and his alone to make. Somehow, Heaven also must have taken into account the heartbreak of Yitzchak and Rivka over the behavior of Eisav. But that is certainly secondary to the judgment regarding Eisav himself.

There is a tendency in our modern world to try and understand and sympathize with the evil one at the expense of the good and decent victims of that evil. The Torah is not a fan of such misplaced compassion. Rivka makes the painful decision to abandon Eisav and save Yaakov. By so doing she ensures the civilization of the human race.

Shabat shalom

Rabbi Berel Wein

Raising Children and Good Mazal

Parshas Toldos

Posted on November 24, 2011 (5772) By Rabbi Berel Wein | Series: Rabbi Wein | Level: Beginner

The rabbis of the Talmud declared that children – having them, raising them and how they turn out – are dependent on a degree of mazal, good fortune and luck. In this week’s parsha, where the twins Yaakov and Eisav are described and contrasted, this cryptic statement is apparently relevant and pertinent. Both are products of the same parents, raised in the same home and apparently given the same type of education yet they turn out to be opposite personalities.

In fact, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch sees in this the cause for Eisav’s evil behavior – Eisav who is a completely different personality than Yaakov should not have been given the same education as Yaakov. It was the inability to raise Eisav according to his own tendencies and needs that turned him into the alienated, rebellious and hateful person that he became.

The story of the twin sons of Yitzchak and Rivkah certainly illustrates the uncertainty associated in raising children no matter how pious the parents and how moral the home involved in raising them. It is this element of unplanned and unforeseen mazal that the rabbis of the Talmud are referring to.

This in no way absolves parents of their responsibilities and duties regarding the raising of their children. But, it does point out they have a will of their own and that there are no guarantees as to how they develop and what their beliefs and actions in later life will be.

In the nineteenth century entire generations and communities of Jewish children turned their backs to Torah life and traditional values. It was due, to a certain degree, to the obvious deficiencies present in Jewish life In Europe – poverty, governmental persecution, social discrimination and the apparent backwardness of the then Jewish society. But I feel that the major driving force of this secularization of Jewish society was the zeitgeist (the ideas prevalent in a period and place, particularly as expressed in literature, philosophy, and religion) – the prevailing spirit of the times that then was dominant in European society and life.

Perhaps one can say that this zeitgeist is itself the mazal that the rabbis spoke of. We are all products of the ideas and times in which we live – we are influenced by everything. Some, like Yaakov, are able to shut out much of the outside world by sitting in the tents of Torah for decades on end. Eisav, who did not have that ability to sit for years in the tents of study, though he certainly had that opportunity, was swept away by the zeitgeist of the Canaanites, of Yishmael and the allure of power and wealth.

Following the zeitgeist never excuses bad and immoral behavior in the eyes of Torah. But it does explain how such alienation and rebellion, hatred and prejudice is instilled into children who were raised by great parents and in solid homes and families. Since zeitgeist can never be completely eliminated from our home environments it behooves us to be aware of its presence and attempt to deal with it wisely and realistically. And for that to happen, we will all require a large helping of undiluted good mazal.

Shabat shalom,

Rabbi Berel Wein