bat mitzvah

Shabbat Shalom and thank you for attending my Bat Mitzvah. I have a few special thanks to tender. First of all, I would like to thank Marcy Epstein for her leadership in my early Jewish learning. I would also like to thank Elisabeth and Neil Epstein for helping me learn the torah and haftorah blessings, Rabbi Eliott for welcoming me into the Jewish community with the Brit Shalom and for working with me and my family to craft a wonderful Bat Mitzvah service, and most of all, I want to thank Molly Kraus-Steinmetz – who will always be Big Molly to me – for tutoring me, her first student, in Torah, and for baby-sitting me when I was young.

This weeks’ parsha starts at the very beginning of Exodus. Joseph’s generation of Hebrews in Egypt has died out, and a new Pharaoh has ascended to the throne- a Pharaoh who never knew Joseph and his significance to the past Pharaoh.

Pharaoh says “Let us deal shrewdly with him, so that he may not increase; otherwise in the event of war he may join our enemies in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” That is a translation of one of the lines in my portion. First, notice that Pharaoh uses the term “he” to refer to the Hebrews, rather than the plural; “them.” In a healthy societal culture, humans must be recognized as such, not as being one indiscernible mass. If we recognize people as individuals, only then can we respect them enough to treat them as fellow humans, worthy of respect and love. There might have even been intermarriage and a merging of peoples between the Egyptians and the Hebrews, much as took place between the French and Anishinaabeg in Michigan. You can’t intermarry with “him,” but you can intermarry with “them.”

            Earlier, in line seven, it says, “but Israel’s sons bore fruit and swarmed and multiplied and proliferated greatly, greatly so the land was filled with them.” You might notice the choice of the word swarm. Swarm like animals, like mice, like mosquitoes, like- dare I say- frogs, lice, flies, and locusts? This again comes back to what sort of becomes a theme of treating the Hebrews as less than human.

One question I’d like to ask you is, at what point do poor conditions become less than human? At what point does treatment become inhuman? For those of you that attended Brenna’s Bat Mitzvah, she talked about the meaning of enoughness; but when does less than enoughness become less than human?

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.

 

Shabbat Shalom. The Torah portion for this week is  Toldot | תולדות | “[These are the] Generations” Bereshit, 25:19−28:9. This is the story of Jacob and Esau and how conflict changed their lives and relationship. This Torah portion also contains a story about Jacob and Esau’s father, Isaac, and his early life before his sons were born.

The theme that I noticed throughout this portion was conflict over resources. In Isaac’s early life, the conflict is about wells. This is a conflict over water, the most basic of resources. In the Jacob and Esau story, the two brothers fight for their father’s blessing, which promises an abundance of food and land. In a way, we can view the blessing itself as a resource that the brothers are fighting over.

The first conflict, over water, starts with Isaac in a wadi near Gerar. Isaac has just been kicked out of Gerar by Abimelech, the king of Gerar, because Isaac has too many people in his family. So he leaves Gerar, finds a wadi, and decides to settle there, and begins to dig wells. When Isaac’s shepherds dig the first well, the shepherds of Gerar wrangle with Isaac’s shepherds over who the water belongs to. Isaac names the well Wrangle, לְהִסְתַכסֵך (L’heestachsech). The second well they dig is argued over, too, so Isaac names it Animosity, אֵיבָה (Avah). The third well, however, they don’t argue over so Issac names it Rechovot meaning: “Now the Eternal has granted us ample room and will make us fruitful in the land.”

From my perspective, this story is about conflict – how random and unpredictable it is, but also how it can show up in multiple generations. In my Torah portion, Isaac happens to be digging for wells because of conflict with the people of Gerar. One generation earlier, Isaac’s father Abraham also experienced conflict over the resource of water when his wells got stopped up by the Philistines. It’s an endless cycle of digging new wells, then conflict over the wells, then a need to dig new wells. The conflict also seems so random. I think it’s curious how Isaac and the shepherds of Gerar quarrel over two wells, but not over the third one. Why is there conflict over some wells but not others?

So the first story of conflict in my Torah portion is about water. The second story of conflict is over blessings.

A few years after the episode with the wells, Isaac has two children, Jacob and Esau. Jacob and Esau, who are twins, start fighting before they’re even born. Their mother Rebekah feels them fighting in her womb and wonders, why this is happening so she asks God. God answers: “Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people shall be mightier than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.”

After the twins are born, they continue to be in conflict. And as they get older it becomes apparent that they have very different personalities. Esau is a hunter and is very hairy, while Jacob stays home and cooks and is much quieter. Isaac favors Esau, and Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, favors Jacob.

These conflicts become much more serious one day when Esau is coming home from a hunt and is very hungry. He sees that Jacob is making a red soup and demands he give him some of it. Jacob agrees, only if Esau will sell him his birthright. Esau sells Jacob his birthright and eats the soup.

Later, when Isaac is very old and has bad eyesight, he decides it is time to give his blessings to his oldest son. Isaac tells Esau to hunt and bring him something to eat before he gives him his blessing. Rebekah overhears this and tells Jacob to go to his flock to get an animal to cook for Isaac. Rebekah cooks tasty dishes for Isaac and tells Jacob to dress up in the skin of the animal to seem that he is as hairy as Esau. Isaac then confuses Jacob for Esau and gives Jacob his blessing. After Jacob steals Esau’s blessing, Esau is enraged and wants to kill Jacob, so Rebekah tells Jacob to flee to her brother Laban in Haran.

This story is challenging from a moral perspective. Rebekah liked Jacob more than his brother and didn’t want Esau to get the blessing of the firstborn, so she planned that Jacob should steal his brother’s blessing. Not only was it wrong to steal the blessing from Esau, but Rebekah and Jacob also tricked Isaac and took advantage of him being almost blind.

Although Rebekah and Jacob clearly behave badly in this story, Jewish thinkers throughout our history have tried to portray Jacob as the good twin in order to encourage people to have sympathy toward Jacob, and maybe decide that it was ok for him to steal Esau’s blessing.

Rashi took this approach. Rashi was a Jewish commentator from Troyes (twah), in the Champagne region of France. He was born in 1040 and was best known for his commentaries on the Torah and the Babylonian Talmud. Rashi portrays Jacob as being meant to lead the Jewish people because Esau was always drawn towards idol worship, even before he was born. Rashi writes that “whenever Rebekah passed by a synagogue, Jacob moved convulsively in his efforts to be born, but whenever she passed by the gate of a pagan temple Esau moved convulsively in his efforts to be born.”

Chizkuni, another commentator who wrote about Jacob and Esau’s conflict, lived in France in the thirteenth century. His commentaries contained insights from other commentators, including Rashi. On the topic of Jacob and Esau, Chizkuni challenges Rashi’s interpretation. He says that God predicted that one child would be good and one evil, but that when they struggled in the womb it was not yet clear which one would prevail. It only became clear that Esau wished wickedness to prevail on earth and Jacob wished righteousness to prevail on earth once they were older, when Esau became a hunter and Jacob a philosopher. Clearly Chizkuni thought that being a hunter was a morally inferior occupation to being a philosopher.

Based on what’s written in the Torah, as well as the perspectives of these commentaries, Jacob and Esau were destined to always be at war. Their conflict started from when they were in the womb, and continued throughout their lives, even after they separated.

Although the Jacob and Esau story is old, it has relevance to a conflict we see today. The story of Jacob and Esau shows how a conflict over resources can start an endless war. A current endless war that also seems to be about resources is the Israel-Palestine conflict. The Israel-Palestine conflict is an argument over land and resources between the state of Israel and the non-Jewish Palestinians who lived there before the state of Israel was created. Many Palestinians believe that they were kicked off the land when the nation was created. Many Jews believe that they have a right to the land because they were there first, thousands of years ago.

It seems to me that we can think of the conflict between Jacob and Esau as a one-on-one version of the Israel-Palestine conflict. And if we apply the lens of my Torah portion to the Israel-Palestine conflict, then one message we could take from it is that shouldn’t be fighting our brothers, just as Jacob and Esau shouldn’t be fighting. But that’s a simple message to take away from this. A more complex take-away would be to think about how the Israel-Palestine conflict has been portrayed.

I did some research on the Israel-Palestine conflict and I found that many Jewish Israelis claim that they have a right to the land because it was promised to them by God. They feel that Israel is their homeland and it has always belonged to them, and some are afraid that their historic homeland could be taken away from them because of the Palestinians who claim that it is theirs. However, there are some Jewish Israelis who are sympathetic with the Palestinians and think that how the Israeli government treats Palestinians is wrong.

On the other hand, many Palestinians feel that they are being deprived of basic human rights, that the Israeli government’s laws are discriminatory towards Palestinians, and that the US government should not be funding Israel and its military. Many Palestinians think they were turned into refugees because the Jews claimed that their ancestors lived there thousands of years ago.

As Jews, it would seem that we’d have a natural sympathy towards the Jewish Israeli version of the conflict, in the same way we might feel a natural sympathy towards or connection to Jacob, in the story of Jacob and Esau. And, as I mentioned earlier, with the commentators Rashi and Chizkuni, it is possible to interpret a story of conflict in such a way as to justify any position.

Like in any conflict, the Israel-Palestine conflict is definitely being interpreted by the different sides in such a way that their actions seem justified and justifiable.

The questions that I want you to reflect on are: Do you think that you have a bias when you look at the two sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict? Do you think the Jacob and Esau conflict relates to other current events today? Feel free to raise your hands and give your opinion.

I would like to thank the people that have made this possible. Thank you Rabbi Ora for leading this service, and for helping me write this D’var Torah. I want to thank Deb, my Hebrew tutor for making learning my Torah portion and Haftorah so fun. Also, thanks for all the hot chocolate you gave me! I would like to thank everyone who came today from out of town and my friends and family. Lastly, I want to thank my parents for supporting me in having a bar mitzvah, helping me practice, and arranging my party. I can’t thank you enough! Shabbat Shalom!