From the Rabbi
DEVAR TORAH - Toldot 5786
Great Women's Rosh Chodesh learning makes its return this Shabbat. The month of Kislev begins on Friday, so on Shabbat morning after Kiddush Hinda will lead a session for women. Meanwhile, Rabbi Feldman and I invite the men to join us in the library for whiskey and (my homemade) cholent, and some learning and singing of our own, followed by Mincha.
Looking forward, next Shabbat we celebrate the aufruf of Lawrence Rom, prior to his marriage to Emma Barripp. The Barripp family are long-standing much-valued members of our community and it will be a great pleasure to welcome Lawrence and celebrate with them. Next Shabbat afternoon we are invited once again to the home of Jacqui and Gilad Serafim for a summer schmooze. It will be the anniversary of the United Nations vote to create a Jewish State in the Land of Israel, and we will hear about the crucial role played by Australia in that vote. Meet in the lobby of 343 Pitt Street at 7:15pm.
The two brothers that emerge from the union of Isaac and Rebecca are a study in contrasts. Esau is a man of the field, a hunter, hairy and ruddy. He is like the land he traverses, unkept and untamed. Jacob is an 'ish tam', cool, calm and collected, thoroughly domesticated, and thoroughly at home in the tents of the family encampment, where everything is settled and orderly.
When Esau came in famished from a day out in the fields, he reacted in his typically emotional, knee-jerk way. He could see nothing beyond his hunger and his desire to satiate it. It was Jacob who had the composure and self-possession to see that an opportunity to buy the birthright had arisen, and if he approached the task carefully then it could be achieved. The same could be said of the suggestion his mother made later to dress him in goat skins so he can impersonate Esau and take the blessing from Isaac. Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't, but it was worth a shot and so Jacob participated. It was Esau who let out a wail on discovering what had transpired. The deliberate Jacob is contrasted again with the instinctive, flawed but human Esau.
Whose side should we take in these narratives? Our ancestor is Jacob not Esau and that in itself tells us most of what we need to know. It is impossible to survive while pursuing the Jewish mission if we are driven by emotion, the needs of the moment and every passing impulse. That can produce great highs -- the might of Rome, the glories of medieval Europe, the British or American empires -- but they are also unstable. Each one fell, or ended in disaster, or will end in disaster someday.
The task of the Jewish people, to survive, to keep going, to maintain a constant presence testifying to the importance of ethical monotheism, needs more care than Esau and his descendants can muster. Their cry might be 'death or glory' but the Jewish people cannot risk death, and we have no interest in being remembered as a remarkable but long-gone people. Sometimes being careful rather than impulsive can seem less attractive, and we should always be moral in our behaviour whatever the consequences but given the choice between a hot and a cool head, the choice is obvious, and it is to follow Jacob not Esau.
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