"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

Straight Talk about the Family
The balmy Fall is yielding to the cold bite that finds its way into our bones, and the mounds of brown leaves piling up. We are several pages into the Biblical Family Album...We've already buried Abraham and Sarah, and we've cringed in extreme discomfort as we witnessed Sarah's abuse of Hagar, the young Egyptian maidservant. An angel of God told Hagar to return to her mistress and just put up with it [with the wonderful consoling words: hey, you'll have a healthy boy, and he'll be a Wild Ass of a Man! Very comforting, don't you think?!]. Yes, Sarah kicked Hagar and her son out of the house; better yet, she made Abraham do it. An angel of God [I hope it's not the same genius who sent Hagar back to her miseries], opened her terrified eyes, and a miraculous well appeared - so all's well that ends well, right?

Maybe, maybe not. In this parasha, we struggle along with the twins [Jacob and Esau] and their stumbling parents. Parents openly play favorites; Rebecca manipulates [a semi-willing?!] Jacob into deceiving the blind old man. Jacob is a liar. He's shrewd but he's creepy in his smooth-talking routine with the lentil pottage. Rebecca - the same sweet girl who poured out extra kindness for Eliezer - duped her frail husband; and how did Isaac respond when he finally connected the dots? He trembled from head to foot. He wanted to vomit from feeling morally sea-sick. From being bound upon the altar of his father's zeal to being played like a marionette by his cunning wife and his heel of a son. Whatever Isaac (Yitzchak, laughter) believed in, whatever he thought was solid, has turned out to be a charade. Isaac's ears ring with the laughter...and the laughter is ugly; he understands that the joke is all on him.

OK. My real problem is with our commentators who feel the need to cover for the sins of our Fathers and Mothers.
The Torah doesn't air-brush out the failings. But we - or, at least, our traditional sages (Christian and Jewish) flinch in the face of our role-models engaging in deception and pettiness. This business of halo-polishing, the manufacture of saintliness is destructive. Centuries of learned discourse, of the lawyerly parsing of words. Underneath all that cleverness: the Ends justify the Means.

The Ends
It's our covenant; says so in the book, right here - see?. Our cave, the man paid retail for it. Why Isaac - the youngster - YES and Ishmael - the oldest - NO, you ask? Because God said so; don't you read the Bible? Why Jacob, the heel-grabbing social climber YES, and ESAU, the hairy impulsive hunter NO? Because Rebecca went with her gut, and God voted with her, that's why. Get over it. God set up Ishmael and Esau with a nice inheritance, and a place to live. They're fine. No harm, no foul. And stop it with all the talk about reparations and grievances! Who wants to hear it?

The Means
Oh, so the kid and his mom were chased out of the house? Come on! They'll find someplace to live; doesn't she have a family, for God's sake! Oh, so the kid was tricked into selling the birthright? So, he's stupid! You know who inherited the yiddishe kop in that family, hah! Okay, so Jacob is a Liar. Why is honesty so important? Save the cherry tree/I cannot tell a lie routine for GW. Our tribe lives in a rough neighborhood, where truth-telling is a rare luxury. It's a dog eat dog world out there...and a few well-placed lies here and there: part of the standard survival kit. So quit that liberal whining.

Can we change the script, please?
It's time to come clean: Esau, Ishmael and Hagar were pushed out. Their being booted off the stage after their pathetic cameo appearances in our narrative - is not among our finer moments. Jacob is a Big Time Liar. Sometimes he rises above it, but all the way through his life, he breaks into "I did it my way" while the rest of the family bites their tongues and gazes out into space. We have to live with it. Covering for all this is worse than useless. We know that we are tempted (and sometimes succumb) to lie and deceive. But we (and Jacob, sometimes) can climb beyond those ugly flaws and take a shot at reshaping the story we tell about ourselves. A change of course is overdue, but well-worth it. Imagine the blessings that will be born when we cast off the excuses that have burdened us for so long...

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron