This week’s Torah portion is Toldot, in which an exhausted Esau eats the lentils, but what was he doing before that? Excessive speculation ensues. Also, bonfires herald a new month!
Before we get to Esau, there is something special about this time that we wanted to discuss – It is Rosh Chodesh Kislev, the first day of winter in Israel according to the Talmud, and it was traditionally celebrated in a way that was both beautiful and useful. The first Torah tidbit we picked from books we published is about this time. It’s from Rabbi Jill Hammer’s The Jewish Book of Days, which has something timely for every day of the Jewish calendar…
In Kislev, the darkest month, a sliver of moon appears like a dusting of snow. In ancient times, the Rabbinic court of Jerusalem would send messengers to announce the coming of the new moon on six months of the year: Kislev, Adar, Nisan, Av, Elul, and Iyar, to remind people of upcoming holidays. The new moon of Kislev was the first of these occasions, and it heralded the coming of Hanukkah.
We note that even back then, people liked to have specific times when they knew it was time to start preparing for the next holiday! This was not invented by American businesses.
And now come the sparkles!
Once the new moon was announced, bonfires were lit in the hills above Jerusalem. Far-flung communities would see the bonfires and light their own, until all the Jewish communities knew that the new moon had come. As stars help a ship locate itself on the sea, the bonfires helped Jews locate themselves in time, joining them to the root consciousness of their people.
According to Rabbi Judah, the 1st of Kislev is the first day of winter in Israel (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzi’a 106b).
If you click through, you can see that of course, the Talmudic sages disagreed about everything!, also including the first day of winter. Some divided the seasons not by the start of months, but by the middle of months.
We are close now to the darkest days of the year, and the new moon bonfires remind us of the Hanukkah candles growing each night. The flames teach that when the moon is dark, we can expect its face to shine again, and when the sunlight is dimming, soon it will begin to grow again. This is true also for us: The quiet of introspection can and should lead to outward action in the world.
It can also lead people to start setting up the Chanukah holiday display, and one-up the neighbors, if you have Jewish neighbors; but that’s another topic! Now that we move on to one of the most famous scenes of the book of Genesis, we’ll see plenty of other strife.
This is the scene where Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of lentils. I put a bowl of lentils into the title image just to show that it is ENTICING.
Lentils today! Who knows what will happen tomorrow. But then why is Esau so maligned?
To start the discussion, I chose a poem from Isidore Century’s From the Coffee House of Jewish Dreamers, which book covers all the Torah portions and offers much else besides. (Incidentally, Kislev is the month of dreams!)
This one is written from the perspective of Esau, and includes much resentment – that tips into complaints about Rebecca which might or might not be fair…
Toledoth – Rebecca
by Isidore Century
She was a nice Jewish girl,
but suffered from depression.
At night she had dreams of rotten red apples
from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil
falling on her head.
She had migraines,
she hated red.
When I emerged from the womb, she saw
her worst nightmare come true;
I, Esau, her first-born son, was as red as blood,
as hairy as an orangutan.
As an old saying goes,
“If they that look at thee
doth a monster see,
a monster thee will be.”
From the start she saw me to be a bad apple,
my twin brother, Jacob, was the apple of her eye.
Together they stole my father’s blessing from me,
then covered up their theft
by making me a midrash monster.
Holy I am not,
nor am I the monster they made me out to be.
What did they expect of me,
a yeshiva bucher?
Century uses the anachronisms of East Coast Jewish life in his poems with great abandon, but actually he is not the only midrashic author that projects the present back to the past. There are many midrashim about the ancient yeshiva of Shem and Ever…
And also there are many where every bad thing that happens to Esau is justified in a way it isn’t in the Biblical text. Which was the reason I picked this poem – it explicitly reflects on how midrash has made Esau into a monster.
And there is also this tension where in the poem, Esau does sound very deliberately dismissive of Rebecca the “nice Jewish girl”. We don’t get to find out how much of what was heaped on Esau is justified, after all. And a lot was heaped on him in the midrash – He was supposedly a murderer, robber, rapist and more.
Some of this is present in key texts, including the Talmud, where Rabbi Yochanan gives 5 reasons for what Esau did before eating the lentils that tired him out. That’s a lot for one day and it includes multiple violent crimes, plus also some apostasy for good measure. In case we might miss this in the Talmud, Rashi also points out something like this for us in the world’s most popular Jewish Torah commentary!
AND HE WAS FAINT through murdering people, just as you mention faintness in connection with murder, (Jeremiah 4:31) ‘‘For my soul fainteth before the murderers” (Genesis Rabbah 63:12).
We do note that some commentators do say that he was simply tired and hungry from hunting, and don’t read any more into it. E.g. Chizkuni: “it is usual for hunters to be worn out after chasing their prey.”
The question is ultimately what the poem poses, too: how compelled do we feel to make Esau bad to justify that Jacob and Rebecca teamed up to cheat him out of the blessing from Isaac?
To finish up, I chose a poem that will bring at least some emotional resolution to all this turmoil – from the poetry collection we who desire by Sue Swartz.
(Isaac’s eyes were dimmed)
by Sue Swartz
And Rebekah instructed Jacob to put on his brother’s skins–
Are you really my son Esau?
How willing we are to believe
the other of what is.
Is there no blessing for me too, Father?
There is no absence
that cannot be replaced.
This is a short piece, but the ending hits hard – Esau does not get his blessing. But can this absence be filled? Or not? Can we imagine that it can?
The Bible itself gives us a hint… Later on in Genesis, when Jacob meets Esau, he fully expects to be murdered in a revenge killing. Esau runs to him and hugs him fiercely.
We leave you with this thought of reconciliation! You can check out our previous posts on the weekly portion in the meanwhile.