Thoughts & Teachings
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
Esau does something which our tradition sees as reprehensible. Parshat Toldot tells the story of Esau selling his birthright (his status as the first born) to Jacob for a bowl of lentil stew. Our Rabbis find it outrageous that Esau would willingly abandon something so valuable for something so transitory. We see it as evidence of Esau’s bad character. But we each have our own bowl of lentil stew, that thing which seemed at the time to be so attractive to us that we were willing to give up everything.
On Thursday afternoon we will sit around the table at Thanksgiving and look at our families. Some of us will see all that we have left behind, the birthrights we had ignored or rejected in favor of something else that captured our attention. Others of us will look around at our families and see ourselves as the inheritors of all that we have been born into.
It can be a burden having a birthright. That’s how Esau felt, and that is how we all feel at times. Weighed down by expectation or hope, family tradition, religious expectation, or continuity. But we can no more escape it than we can escape our brown hair or blue eyes or place in our families.
There is another image from this week’s parsha. As Isaac reaches the land of Gerar, the Torah tells us that he dug anew the wells which had been dug in the time of his father Abraham. This, in many ways, is the flip side of Esau’s rejection of his birthright. Our Rabbis explain that Isaac’s uncovering the wells of his father is both a literal and symbolic rededication to the work of his father. It is an embrace of his birthright and serves as a counterpoint to his son’s spurning of the same. It is in many ways an accurate portrayal of what happens in our lives. As young people we are like Esau, often turning away from the legacies of our parents, fiercely holding on to our independence and rejecting any expected paths. But as we age and have children of our own, work in our own professions, and gain some distance, we become more like Isaac rediscovering the value in the work and commitments of our parents.
We don’t choose our birthrights, they choose us. Then it is our choice whether or not we embrace them.
