Hi everyone!
So, picking up where I left off with the introduction to today’s torah portion. Jacob and Esau have come back together twenty years after the “birthright incident”. Jacob arrives with his large family and with his gifts of goats, sheep, camels, and cows.
I’m going to share my version of the exchange that ensues:
Esau: Is all of this yours?
Jacob: Yes! It is to find favor in your eyes. (Or, I don’t want you to kill me!)
Esau: I have enough, brother. Let what is yours be yours. (Or, I don’t need your stuff!)
Jacob: No, please. If I have truly found your favor, accept these gifts. For seeing your face is like seeing the face of G-d. G-d has been gracious to me and I have everything.
(Or, I really really don’t want you to kill me!)
Esau accepts the gifts.
Both of the brothers declare here that they have enough, and my theme today is enoughness. First, I will offer a couple of interpretations from the rabbinic commentary and then I will share some of my own reflections.
First, what does enough mean to Jacob and Esau in this exchange?
Rashi, who was alive about 1000 years ago, differentiated the ways that the two brothers spoke of their enoughness. Jacob said, I have everything, meaning all that I need. While Esau said, I have an abundance, suggesting a greed for more than he needs. But, in the same breath, Esau says, “let what is yours be yours.” Rashi says of this that Esau conceded the blessings to Jacob. To me this suggests the opposite of greed. But Esau can both lean towards greed, and desire reconciliation with his brother. Aren’t we humans all a bit complex.
Another medieval rabbi known as Radak had a slightly different take. When Esau said, “let what is yours be yours”, Esau is trying to convey that he had not suffered as a result of Jacob receiving their father’s blessing.
Another source I used was a gift I got myself during my preparations, The Torah: A Women’s Commentary. Here, one of Jacob’s insistences is translated as, please accept my gift of blessing. This is interpreted as, please take my blessing, by which Jacob may be trying to compensate for having stolen the blessing from Esau twenty years ago. However, to me, this seems very much like a sorry-not-sorry move. Jacob doesn’t regret what happened. He never outright apologizes. But he does seem to want to reconcile, or at least to not be killed.
And the last rabbinic commentary I will share today is from Rabbi David Teutsch, a reconstructionist rabbi who is still alive today. In A Guide to Jewish Practice – Everyday Living, he writes on the topic of consumption, or to me, material enoughness. Here he acknowledges that there is a place for consumption to add pleasure to daily living. As long as we don’t compromise our financial security or the greater public good, nor undermine our ability to give tzedaka, which is defined as charitable giving with an eye towards justice. I found this commentary on the idea of enough, more relevant to our lives today.
Now on to my reflections.
I started out on this intellectual project thinking that I would be able to come up with a definition of what is enough, and how to live my life in that place of enoughness. By which I mean, what size house should I live in, how much of my income or savings should I donate, how should I make decisions about purchases for things I need versus things I want. And what about my carbon footprint. I have so many questions about how to live in a way that doesn’t hurt others. I know in my heart that my too-much, is someone else’s not-enough. But of course there’s no right answer to these questions. This is the stuff of being an adult and striving to be a good planetary citizen.
But still, I can’t get this question out of my head. What does it mean to have enough? For Jacob and Esau it meant many wives, handmaids and children (insert feminist commentary here), as well as livestock, and servants (insert human rights commentary here). Perhaps it also meant reconciliation. But what does it mean for me, or for us, today, in this time and place? Side note and full disclosure, I just bought tickets to Cancun for spring break. But back to my existential musings on enoughness.
For those of you that don’t know, I’m a nurse practitioner, and one of my jobs is at the sole women’s prison in Michigan, which is about a 15 minute drive south of us, in Ypsilanti. I think my work in a prison setting leaves my mind especially unsettled in the enoughness department. I’m going to share a few moments from my day this past Monday.
I was working in one of the clinics that is located within a housing unit. In the background, officers are yelling “one at a time in the bathroom”, and “get out of your doorway”. At that moment I thought enoughness would be unencumbered access to a bathroom for all those people who are incarcerated. I also thought enoughness for me would be working in an environment without yelling and humans being hostile to other humans.
That same day I overheard an officer asking a new arrival if she meant to put herself as her emergency contact. She replied, I don’t have anyone. What would enough look like for her?
Also on Monday, I was performing a routine exam, and the patient said, “that’s really nice that you do these exams in here”. I replied, of course! There’s a lot of care I can’t get for you, but this I can do. She was essentially thanking me for doing my job. In that moment, was I her enough?
This is how most days are at the prison. This level of in-your-face need.
Life in the prison is often about survival. I can’t count the number of times one of the people who are incarcerated has said to me, “I don’t want to die in here”.
All of this leads me to more questions:
Why do I get to thrive when so many that I come into contact with are merely surviving?
For those of us that are comfortable and our survival is taken for granted, how do we define our enough?
What does it mean to have too much and acknowledge that we are not special or deserving but to still have it?
We are prone to comparing ourselves to others, which further muddles the search for answers to these questions. Just as Jacob and Esau were comparing and competing in the exchange about the gifts. There is a sense that each was trying to say, no, I have more than you.
Reflecting on the prison environment lays bare all the different parts of enough: the array of needs we humans have, from the physiologic to the psychologic.
Let us contemplate on this for a moment:
Food, water, warmth, shelter.
Safety, health.
Social needs, friends, family, partners, community.
Financial security.
The need to be respected, valued by others, and feel that we are contributing meaningfully.
The need to learn and expand our knowledge.
Connecting with nature.
Spiritual needs.
Creative expression, music, art.
For the people I come into contact with at the prison, to have a chance to survive and thrive would mean enough access to housing, education, access to child care, addiction treatment, lives free from violence, a society free from racial biases, their freedom, and much more.
Now, as is customary in our congregation, I will pause to hear from some of you. Here is my question, but feel free to comment on anything I’ve said.
In a world where so many people can barely survive, under what conditions is it okay to thrive?
Thank you for your contributions. I would love to continue this conversation with each of you in the months and years ahead of us.
I’m going to end with a quote that resonated with me. I found this from Ellen Dannin in a Reconstructing Judaism blog post. (And side note, it says in her bio that she is a former member of the Ann Arbor Hav!) She writes:
“What we ought to be concerned with is not material possessions – though we should be grateful for them. Rather, our real focus ought to be relieving suffering, being diligent about the obligation to live in a Godly way, being grateful for the good things that come our way while not assuming we deserve them, and instilling these understandings in the next generation.”
In other words, giving thanks and giving back.
And I think for today, this is enough.
