Rabbi Sandra Kviat

“Scientists think they have discovered Neanderthal flatbread – thought to be around 70,000 years old! The charred remnants were recovered from the Shanidar Cave site – a Neanderthal dwelling around 500 miles north of Baghdad in Iraq” .

I love news like this, when we discover that what we eat, or love to do isn’t very new, but rather stretches back thousands of years. The conclusion to finding this flatbread suggests that Neanderthals weren’t only eating seed and berries and raw meat, but used fire to create experimental meals. That’s quite intriguing, and suddenly brings the past much closer to us. Kesra, manoush, khubz, saboob, laffa, pita – the humble flatbread has many names in the mediterranean area, and is as we know still a popular thing to eat.

Imagine your leftovers being found 70.000 years from now? And what it could tell future researchers about us?

Food matters, what we eat, when we eat it and how it is prepared. And very importantly, who is invited to eat it with us. Food and hospitality is not only about good manners, it is a core part of Jewish life. ‘All who are hungry come and eat’ as we say at the seder, inviting people over for shabbat lunch, sharing our food with those who need it, whether they are destitute or just passing by (like in the story of Abraham and the three messengers/angels). The kiddush at the end of the Saturday shabbat service can be seen as an integral part of prayer, not only the ‘dessert’ so to speak. Eating and sharing is integral to who we are.

And that is why Jacob’s earlier behaviour in the long narrative we are reading at the moment seems so galling. His brother Esau returned famished after having been hunting for several days, but instead of helping him, Jacob made him pay for his food, by asking for his birthright.

There is precious little of the admonishment we get later in the Torah of וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ “v’ahavta le’reeicha kamocha” – you shall love your neighbour like yourself. Here not even being a sibling helps. Or perhaps it is exactly because he is a sibling that Jacob reacts the way he does. Jacob and Esau are twins and yet purely by the arbitrariness of having been born a few minutes before him, Esau is set to inherit everything. And because of this, the narrative of Jacob dressing as his older brother and lying to their father, unfolds the way it does.

Loving your neighbour is hard, it does not come easily to many of us, or at least not all of the time. Our world is complicated, it is full of cruelty, of violence, of people doing things for themselves without caring about the consequences to others. There is so much illness, destruction, fear and hunger. How are we to get up in the morning and look at the world with optimism and joy, and then go out and greet others with positivity or even love?

The American chaplain rabbi Judith Beiner puts it simply; “[Yet] I’ve found that when I bring someone comfort and healing, I receive it in return. As I fulfill that commandment to ‘love my neighbor, I am loved. And that’s how I get up the next day, and do it all over again”.

When we help others, whether it’s our elderly neighbour who you got to know during Covid, delivering a hot meal to parents who have just had a baby, sweeping up the leaves not just in front of your own house but others, when volunteering, when we look after our ill relatives or have a brief conversation with someone in distress, when we bring comfort and healing we also receive it in return. It’s an age old wisdom, that when we give we receive and yet it’s easy to forget in this hurried world of ours. Giving to our neighbours, does not mean that we are giving something away, that we end up with a deficit. By giving others strength we leave our souls fulfilled, we become strengthened.

Rabbi Beiner goes further though, and reminds us of a piece of wisdom by V (formerly Eve Ensler), the American playwright who wisely says: ‘Give what you want the most. When we give the world what we want the most, we heal the broken part inside each of us”.

It’s a profound interpretation of ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, -‘give what you want the most’. Love your neighbour as you are loved.

This week’s parasha ends the long story of Jacob and Esau’s rivalry, which began with want and with jealousy and ends with the words;
וַיֹּ֥אמֶר עֵשָׂ֖ו יֶשׁ־לִ֣י רָ֑ב אָחִ֕י יְהִ֥י לְךָ֖ אֲשֶׁר־לָֽךְ׃ Esau said, “I have enough, my brother; let what you have remain yours.”

I have enough my brother. How different is this situation from when it all began. Perhaps after all this time Esau is the one who has learnt the most, and now knows how to love as he is loved. He is now able to give the world what he wants himself. Jacob also reaches out, towards the brother he cheated and treated so badly. Perhaps he too had an opportunity to learn and to change, although as we know the story does not end here, and nor does the preference for one child over another. And so the story keeps unfolding.

From these stories of deceit, broken promises, and wrong choices we can reflect on what is broken in them, and by extension in us, and what we need to give to the world in order to heal.
What do you want the most, the story asks us, and how can you give that to the world, to your neighbours and to your loved ones around you?

וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ “ Love your neighbour as you are loved.

Shabbat shalom

^[1] Neanderthals flatbread discovered in caves in Iraq

^[2] Rabbi Judith Beiner | kol isha

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