By Rabbi Debbie Young-Somers

One of my favourite little books is called ‘Children’s Letters to God’. It does what it says on the tin. And one letter in particular came to mind this week:

Dear GOD, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my brother. -Larry

Although the story of Cain and Abel was read a few weeks ago, it seems our Biblical ancestors hadn’t made a huge amount of progress by the time brothers Esau and Jacob were born. I’m not sure what the biblical bedroom arrangement was like, but it is clear that Esau and Jacob would probably both have benefitted from being seen as their own people, and being loved and respected by both their parents, rather than being chosen as one’s favourite due to their differing traits and passions.

Esau and Jacob are set up in the Genesis narrative as differing and opposing archetypes. Rather than celebrating that they have both a hunter and a farmer to support the household, Isaac and Rebecca each nurture and devote themselves to one, and their parenting seems to be a huge contributing factor to the stresses and strains of the brothers jealousy, competition and Jacobs sly trickery against his brother.

In one of my first lectures at university, I remember renowned Biblical scholar Deborah Sawyer exploring the idea that while men seem to be the main actors in our biblical stories, quite often, particularly when it comes to the matriarchs and patriarchs, the women are working away in the background to make God’s will happen. While there does seem to be a lot that Rebecca enables behind the scenes, and the story of the Jewish people is begun, can we know that the conflict that ensued was really God’s will? The events of Toldot set in motion not only years of estrangement between Rebecca’s sons, but thousands of years of intercommunal fighting and trauma, with Esau being associated with great nations that oppressed Jews , such as Rome and Christendom, despite the fact that in many ways it is Jacob that appears to be the bully and the victor.

Meanwhile, in the Christian world, many commentators saw themselves as the victor Jacob, and Judaism as the hard done by brother, unable to fully take his place in history. The impact of this one dysfunctional family has provided thousands of years of analysis and mirroring of the brothers tense relationship onto other situations.

Some Jewish commentators suggested that the dichotomies the brothers inhabit are of the physical (Esau) versus the spiritual (Jacob). But for me one of the great strengths of Judaism is the emphasis on ensuring we work in our lives to balance the physical and the spiritual; the working week and Shabbat, 6 years of farming one year of sabbatical, the shift from the spirituality of Yom Kippur straight into the physicality of Sukkot – neither is bad, both are necessary, and each needs balancing with the other.

On a meta level, it seems that Jacob and Esau come to represent some kind of eternal human struggle, perhaps the struggle we all face to make the balancing act of life work. It will be a few weeks of Torah readings before Esau and Jacob are able to come back together and make peace with one another, just as Isaac and Ishmael had done before them, though sadly not even separate bedrooms could help Cain and and Abel. I wonder if young Larry has an important point though. We need to appreciate the fullness of both the material and the spiritual in life. Both offer us different elements of meaning and growth in life, and can be appreciated in their own right. Similarly in the case of the brothers, their parents could have celebrated them both as unique individuals, who together contributed their own different skills and talents to the household.

Toldot, meaning generations, is perhaps a chance to remember that to strengthen the generations to come, we need to celebrate every individual and the skills, talents and diversity they add to the whole. They don’t need to bring the same things to the table, indeed we are strengthened if they don’t, but finding ways to hold all our diversity will be key to making it work going forward.

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