Paraha Toldot – Part 1

There are two stories in this week’s paraha that are potentially troubling. I think I’ll address these two issues at Shabbat dinner.

The first is the story of Jacob buying Esau’s first-born-ship for a bowl of red lentil pottage. The second being the story of Jacob tricking Yitzchak and getting the blessing meant for Esau.

First, the story of the pottage. The text tells us that Jacob was making pottage and Esau comes in from the hunt and tells Jacob he is starving and asks for some pottage. Jacob says he’ll give the pottage if Esau in exchange for Esau’s first-born-ship. Esau says “I’m going to die, what use do I have for the first-born-ship.” The deal is made. Jacob gets the first-born-ship and Esau gets his pottage.

The problem here is that it seems like Jacob took advantage of Esau’s hunger and made him enter into a contact he may not have really liked. If Esau was really dieing of hunger, he’d make just about any deal to get some food. Halacha tells us that a contact entered into under these conditions is not valid. So how do we resolve this problem.

First, some context. The Midrash tells us that the reason that Jacob was making lentil pottage is that it was the day of Abraham’s funeral. Lentils are a traditional food eaten by mourners. So on the day of his grandfather’s funeral, Esau is out hunting. So let’s look at a simple reading of the text and see what it tells us. After the deal was made the text says “And Jacob gave Esau bread and a pottage of lentils, and he ate and drank and arose and left, and Esau despised the birthright.” [Gen:25:34].

The deal seemed to be to sell the birthright for pottage – so where did the bread come from. The commentators tell us that the bread was to make the deal valid. If Esau was really starving, then the deal would be void. So Jacob gave Esau some bread to satisfy Esau’s hunger. Only then did the ask Esau to make the deal. Jacob did not take advantage of his starving brother; he did everything possible to make sure Esau really wanted to make this deal.

Now let’s look at a deeper understanding of the text. When Esau said “"Behold, I am going to die; so why do I need this birthright?"”, [Gen 25:33] what did he mean by that? The simple reading is that Esau was starving to death, but the deeper meaning tells us that the dieing he was refereeing to was not an immediate death – he was talking generally. Esau’s live philosophy was “Eat, drink, for tomorrow we die” - a denial of the afterlife. The birthright is a spiritual blessing, what use does Esau have for that – he was interested in material goods. Going even deeper, Esau knew that the role of the first born was to be the families emissary in the Temple. The temple service required complete concentration – if your thoughts wavered for even a second, you would die on the spot. That’s why there were so many High Priests in the Second Temple – they were never of good character and kept dieing on us. Esau knew that if he was the family’s representative in the temple, he would not be able to do the job and would die. What does he need that tzuris for? What Esau was saying is that he has no use of the birthright; in fact he despises it and would happily sell it for even the smallest material gain (i.e. some pottage). Jacob knew that such a person should not get the blessing of the firstborn.

Next time I’ll talk about the story of Jacob tricking Yitzchak into giving him Esau’s blessing.