Parashat Toldot

“You’re the Dread Pirate Roberts; admit it.” “With pride. What can I do for you?” “You can die slowly cut into a thousand pieces.”  Two minutes and 20 seconds later, after talking about her lost love — the farm boy — Buttercup pushes the man in black down a steep ravine after declaring, “You can die too!” Eight seconds later, she too is tumbling down the ravine in pursuit of her true love, whom she had just pushed over the edge. While recovering, the conversation continues: “I told you, I would always come for you. Why didn’t you wait for me?” “Well . . . you were dead.” “Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while.”

Regrettably, Parashat Toldot has a sad counterpoint to The Princess Bride. While the word for love appears five times in Toldot, and the word for hatred appears only once, this seems to be a narrative focused more on hatred than on love.  While many people would point to the friction between Esau and Jacob as a demonstration of this point, I believe that there’s an even stronger narrative that is often overlooked. In the midst of a drought, Isaac and his clan escape to the land of the Philistines. After an unpleasant situation that leads to him being driven out of town, we discover something bizarre. Genesis 26:15 tells us that the Philistines had sealed and filled with sand all of the wells that Abraham had dug. Abraham is dead at this point, so this could not have been an attempt to spite him. And the Middle East is no place to give up a water supply. The Philistines were declaring: “Death cannot stop true hatred. All it can do is delay it for a while.” The Philistines continue to harass Isaac for a while until he flees. While they are told that they may not hurt him, there seems to be no attempt to stop them from making his life difficult. While an agreement is eventually forged between the sides, it seems to remain a tense situation.  

We are all influenced by the world around us, and it seems that Jacob and Esau were as well. Growing up fleeing from place to place due to hatred seems to have created the paradigm that would be their relationship. Two kids who saw power-grabs caused by hatred ended up as grown-ups performing identical skits. While the narrative goes on to tell us three times that Isaac loved his food, it tells us only once that he loved one of his sons — and the reason given relates back to Esau’s power. The seeds of hatred were planted and were cultivated long after death. Edom — the descendants of Esau — continued harassing our ancestors in the land of Israel, and our Sages projected verses about Edom on to Rome to describe our enmity with them.  

Parashat Toldot is a cautionary tale. As we raise our children and model for them, what seeds are we planting? Will our legacy be a new generation where “death cannot stop true love?” Or, will it be a new generation where “death cannot stop true hatred?” The answer is in our hands. . . .As you wish.  


Shabbat Shalom!