Esav

and his big decision

“NOT an accurate representation of Esav,” co-created with Dalle.

One of the surprising features of the text of the Torah is that it follows the rule of “show, don’t tell.”

The actions, speech and occasional thoughts of the people the Torah chronicles are presented almost always without editorial comment, leaving it up to readers to decide for themselves which behaviors should be emulated and which should be avoided. The rarity of the Torah’s explicit value judgements is interesting since the Torah is a book of life guidance. The word “Torah” itself means guidance, a variant of the word הוראה. It’s intriguing to consider that, when it comes to people as people, the actual text of the Torah guides its readers in such an unassertive way, inviting them to come to conclusions for themselves.¹

One of the best figures in the Torah to illustrate this phenomenon is Esav, the eldest twin son of our forefather Yitzhak (Isaac) and foremother Rikva (Rebecca).

I was once giving a lecture about individuality in the Torah, and the need for different educational approaches for different kinds of children.² The talk was built on the important but controversial analysis of Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) regarding what he understood to be the miseducation of Esav.

Well before I was able to arrive at the point I was driving towards, an intelligent, well-read woman in the audience stopped me to point out definitively that I did not know how to properly study the Torah. This was evident to her from my characterization of Esav as essentially a “villain” — a tragic figure whom I had presented as willfully missing his chance at achieving the greatness he had been born into. She was emphatic that I was parroting a smear of Esav by the rabbis, whose “rabbinic kool-aid” I had evidently imbibed.

I got a feeling that this lady would be an active participant of my Torah class moments after she walked through the door, as she peppered me with questions regarding my yeshiva pedigree and ideological affiliations. Despite my attempts to evade being placed in one of her mental boxes, it was clear to me that she had neatly categorized me as an “unsophisticated yeshiva guy” prior to taking her seat.

In a nutshell, her main point was that if we read the text of the Torah without imposing upon it traditional rabbinic interpretation, we would not conclude that Esav was a bad guy at all. Esav, according to her, was a good guy, and a successful guy in his own right, who had been terribly misunderstood and villainized “by the rabbis.”

After nursing my ego, I was ready to admit that she had a point.

To make Esav into a caricature is a mistake.

She was, however, also missing a point:

To make a caricature of the Sages of the Talmud, who teach us how to read carefully the meaning between the lines of the Torah — is an even graver mistake.

Esav was a complex person — as we all are.

All of us, at least occasionally, do and say things we don’t mean. Very often, we also mean things we — for some reason or another — don’t end up saying or doing.

The astute observer, however, can notice subtleties in what we say or don’t say — and in what we do and don’t do — and to these thoughtful people, these subtleties of ours speak volumes.

As we said, the word Torah means “guidance.” The Torah is a guide to life. Since life is layered and multifaceted, if the Torah were to flatten life into overly simplified, pithy bumper sticker slogans like “Be Nice” and “Don’t Be Mean,” it would undoubtedly confuse us more than it provides guidance. Do I have to be nice when people are mean? Do I need to stop being mean when my kids accuse me of being mean for sending them to bed? The reason we need guidance in the first place is because life is so complex.

Words, like people, are also complex and multifaceted, and can be read in multiple ways. It’s precisely for this reason that we have to hire lawyers, and pay them for every hour of their work, to ensure that our contracts are carefully and intentionally written in order to be read in only one way, leaving no room for loopholes that result from ambiguity.

In contrast, the Torah is intentionally and carefully written to carry multiple, specific, layered tracks of meaning. The most basic reason for this is that the Torah needs to be studied by 5-year-olds and 95-year-olds — ancient people, modern people, and post-modern people like us. Most books on the planet are not written for such a wide audience, but the Torah must be for everyone, and therefore was composed in a way that would grow with its readers.

Returning to our subject Esav, a surface reading of the words of the Torah projects an image of Esav as certainly more active, outdoorsy, hot-headed and impetuous than his brother Yaakov, but as this lady in my class pointed out, it’s hard to see what the rabbinic polemic is about. What did the Sages of the Talmud see in him that made them so critical of his behaviors and outlooks? Why did they attribute all that was wrong with the Roman Empire to him?³

The more innocuous, superficial image of just a burly, hyperactive teenager must be read with the closer, deeper reading of the Sages to produce a more multidimensional portrait of this man who represents the Western thinking that we are so subject to. This is what I’d like us to look at together in order to reveal a more nuanced view of one of the most consequential figures in the Torah, and as we’ll see, in human history.

Big Decision

Esav was born only seconds before his younger brother Yaakov. In fact, Yaakov-יעקב was so named because he was born with his “hand grabbing Esav’s heel (ekev-עקב).” These moments of difference between them were enough to make Esav, to no credit of his own, the firstborn and natural heir to his father Yitzhak.

Being the primary heir to Yitzhak meant more than simply inheriting wells, sheep and fields on the coast of Canaan. It meant being the successor to the man who was the successor of Avraham.

The question is: did Esav want Avraham’s torch to be handed to him?

Did he aspire to be the forefather of the nation "through which all the families of the earth would be blessed” for “heeding [God’s] voice [like] Avraham, keeping [His] charge, [His] mitzvot, [His] laws, and [His] teachings and [His] decrees?”

The Torah does not explicitly tell us that Esav’s answer to this question was an emphatic “no,” but a careful reading shows us that it was.

He was not interested at all.

As Esav entered into his teenage years, he spent more time outdoors than indoors, becoming known as "man of the field.” Spending most of his time hunting, his mind became honed on the sort of thinking required to bait and trap prey. He quickly became a “knower of the hunt” in all areas of his life, whether he was luring animals or people.⁴

Contrast this to his brother Yaakov, who spent his youth “dwelling in tents,” in the pursuit of truth. He was described as a “wholesome person,” without agenda. All things equal, a person immersed in the ruthless, dog-eat-dog jungle of the business world will become a ruthless, dog-eat-dog person; whereas, a person immersed in a world of study of objective truth (think: math),⁵ will become humbled by that truth, preferring to discover it authentically than push his own ideas.

Esav’s own tendency to do whatever he wanted hit a breaking point when he was 15 years old — the day his grandfather Avraham died. After a hundred and seventy five years of selfless public service day and night, Avraham breathed his last breath. His loss was devastating for Esav, but not in the way you might think.

That’s it? Esav asked himself.

I’m expected to dedicate my life to continue my grandfather’s legacy and fulfill God’s supposed promise to him, only to one day just kick the bucket?!?

What a complete waste of a life.

While others were mourning, Esav went out hunting — an odd thing to do on the day of one’s grandfather’s funeral, but understandable if he was having an existential crisis, which he was.

Meanwhile, his brother Yaakov was preparing the customary lentil stew for mourners. Esav returned from the field, and asked his brother, “pour for me some of that red red stuff as quickly as you can as I’m exhausted.”

The reason Esav gave for his desperation was not that he was “hungry,” but rather “exhausted.” How does food solve the problem of exhaustion?

While physical exhaustion is not necessarily helped by eating, emotional exhaustion is. This is the notion of eating “comfort foods” after a long, draining day. The Talmud derives from the Torah’s wording that Esav had committed heinous crimes that day in his distraught, existentially empty state, leaving him naturally more drained than when he started. Whether the Sages meant to say that he literally performed these acts, or whether they were simply saying he might as well have done these things given his nihilistic attitude towards life might be a matter of debate, but regardless, the point is that Esav had given up on his father and grandfather’s legacy.

There are moments in life in which a person’s mere presence or absence are defining of their identity. This was such a moment for Esav.

Yaakov, appalled by his brother’s behavior on that day, wanted to publicize so that there should be no doubt about Esav’s very consequential choice, “sell me as clear as day your birthright.”

Esav responds nihilistically, “Look, I’m going to just die, what good for me is the birthright anyway?” and proceeds to down the soup.

This episode is not about an actual legal sale. “Firstbornhood” is not a commodity that can be legally bought or sold. It’s about Esav’s state of mind. He was done with it all. He was drained and tired. In the moment, he just wanted some soup to feel better, and he couldn’t care less about anything else — certainly not some abstract spiritual designation as firstborn and heir to his grandfather. Yaakov, on the other hand, needed Esav to make his position explicit because the consequences of his decision would be profound whether Esav cared to think about those consequences or not.

In an unusual spate of verbs, the Torah describes an inexorable progression of Esav’s actions, “he ate, and drank, and got up, and went away, and Esav disparaged the birthright.”

Having made his decision, Esav brushed off any value that being handed Avraham’s torch could possibly have for him. He refused to have buyer’s remorse. Ex post facto, he ratified his choice. He did not care.

Big Consequences

Years later, when the time came for Yitzhak to give his blessings to his eldest son, and Rivka put her foot down, orchestrating that Yaakov should receive the blessings instead (against Yaakov’s will), Esav took zero responsibility for having made that decision in his youth. He showed no remorse for his actions. Instead, he howled in horror at the injustice done to him.

Was he suffering from amnesia? What was going through Esav’s head?

Esav’s choice was the choice of meaning vs. meaninglessness that every single person must make. At certain points in life, we come to crossroads in which the choice is more concrete, but at many points in any given day of our lives, we have to choose whether our choices matter or not.

Certainly, as a young man who didn’t fit into the mold of the house he was raised in, Esav had a serious challenge. Perhaps, as Rav Hirsch writes, part of the onus was on his parents to help him find his way. Regardless, our tradition teaches that these challenges each of us have in our own way do not excuse us. Instead of finding meaning in his unique tendencies and abilities, Esav decided from a young age that nothing mattered — “he was going to die anyway.”

Years later, when fate had it that his brother had received the blessings “intended for him,” Esav raged against the universe, his brother, maybe his mother, maybe his father. But not himself. He could not reflect on his own actions because he had decided long before that his choices didn’t matter. He had committed to doing whatever he wanted to do.

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Some three decades later, Yaakov returned to Canaan with his large family from where he had sought refuge from his brother Esav. Esav had spent that time building his own growing empire, after marrying into the powerful dynasties of Ishmael and Seir. Yaakov approached, afraid and anxious about facing his brother, who had blamed him for stealing his blessings, and had sworn to kill him. He sent messages of appeasement, emphasizing that he was still landless and therefore he shouldn’t be jealous. He prayed to God for protection, and prepared his family for the worst.

As he got close to his brother, Yaakov bowed to him seven times, showing Esav respect, honor, significance as a person.

How did Esav react?

Esav ran to greet him, hugged him, and feel on his neck, kissed him and they cried.

A shocking response.

This moment in the Torah relieved decades of fear, anger, pain, guilt, anxiety, and hatred for both of men.

And yet, from another perspective, it is sad.

Esav got what he was looking for. He was wealthy, powerful, and respected — now, even by his brother Yaakov. But what was the meaning of his life? The Torah scrolls through generations of Esav’s dynasty without pausing for anything worth noting as guidance for our lives. What was noteworthy was already recorded — Esav had decided his decisions were not intrinsically meaningful. The rest was history.

The Sages of the Talmud lived and taught under Roman rule. Throughout the Talmud, Esav, who was named Edom (literally “red”) for his choice of “red, red stuff (lentil soup)” instead of preserving his birthright, is identified as the progenitor of the Roman ethos.

We, as Americans, or non-Americans living in an Americanized world, should be aware and wary of the worldview of Esav. It can be very subtle in what we say or don’t say, in what we do or don’t do. Are we giving up on life? Resigning ourselves since “we’re going to die anyway”? Do our decisions matter?

Esav taught us that it’s our choice whether they do.

1. The word “Torah” can be used generally to refer to all teachings of the Torah, including the Written Torah and all Oral traditions that comprise its teachings. The word “Torah” can also be used specifically to refer to the text of the Written Torah, known as “Tanakh.” The point being made here is about the way the Written Torah communicates independently from its Oral Interpretation. The Written Torah leaves most of what it means to say unsaid. The question is why, when it comes to the figures whose lives it records, does it so often leave unsaid its moral judgments on those people.

2. If you’re interested in learning more about this topic, check out the book I co-authored with my dear friend Rabbi Dr Yosef Lynn titled Nurture their Nature.

3. Here’s just one example of many in which Titus who destroyed and pillaged the Temple in Jerusalem, and massacred its inhabitants is called “wicked the grandson of the wicked Esav.”

4. Being a hunter through and through means getting what you want. Esav had his own agenda for life, and did not want his destiny dictated for him. Millennia later, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche would write about the "will to power.” Nietzsche sought to liberate thinking people from the constraints of other people’s whims and society’s arbitrary morals frameworks. The Sages of the Talmud might have drawn a line between the thinking of these two men.

Are Nietzche’s ideas inherently evil? Although they were interpreted and adopted by Nazism, I would argue that they are not necessarily evil in the same way that Esav was not necessarily evil. Skepticism and objective, independent thinking are critical for Judaism to succeed in a world of forces that oppose it. This is precisely the role that Esav was meant to play — paving the way for the ideas that Yaakov, his brother would teach.

5. I say “math” and not Torah because most people recognize the humbling nature of learning math, but do not yet have the appreciation for Torah study as the pursuit of objective truth.