Perashat Toledot 5776

Perashat Toledot 5776

It is said that different people see different things. Two people may be looking at a painting from the same vantage point, and yet each one may see something else. A message from a story has to do more with the reader than with the writer. As Henry David Thoreau said, “It is not what you look at that matters, its what you see.”

When reading Perashat Toledot, most people will see the apparent deceptive practices of members of a family and will focus on their interaction. Eventually, there will be many opinions as to who was right and who was wrong, or attempts at finding justifications for each one’s actions. 

I read the message of Perashat Toledot and I see the world the way it is today. The minutiae of the interactions, the details of the events may not be as important to the development of the Perasha and the total message to humanity. 

Ribka, after two decades of marriage to Yisshak, is finally blessed by G-d with children. The pregnancy was difficult; the “kicking” pains were unusual and more pronounced. 

“The children agitated within her… And she went to inquire of Hashem. And Hashem said to her: ‘Two peoples are in your womb and two nations from your insides shall be separated; the might shall pass from one nation to the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.”

It is to be understood that her unborn sons represented not only two nations, but also two contradictory ideologies – Yaakob, the forefather of the People of Israel and Esav, the forefather of Edom – and that the struggle in the womb was the irreconcilable conflict already raging between them.

Our Sages understand from the Pasuk, and explain, that Israel and Edom cannot simultaneously prevail on the world stage. When one nation rises the other must fall. This is not only in the area of politics, diplomacy or battle, but also in the area of culture and values.  Israel and Edom have forever been in conflict. And ultimately one will succeed in fully overshadowing the other.

Rome and the Roman Empire, was seen by our Sages as Esav’s descendants; if not biological, certainly ideological. Rome exerted political influence over Israel, invaded the country, destroyed our Temple, exiled us from our native soil and even sought to abolish the Jewish character of our country. Rome also eradicated the name of Judea from the Land of Israel and replaced it, as an act of revenge against the Jews, with the name of Palestina, in reference to the Philistines, a people that had disappeared from the Earth over 1000 years earlier. This act has caused, and continues to bring, such aggravation and tragedies to the Jews and Israel until today. 

Since that time, Rome has succeeded in dominating much of the world with its culture, value system and pagan notions of morality.

To really understand the eternal conflict between Ribka’s sons, Yaakob and Esav, it is necessary to examine the essence of Esav – Edom; how it developed through time and how it clashes with Israel’s Divine Torah, values and culture.

The essence of Esav is to appear righteous on the outside while being internally loathsome.  The Roman Empire, its culture and modern culture all stem from the source of Esav. The Roman Empire imposed its ideology and values throughout the world, eventually becoming the foundation for what is now Western civilization.

Rome was mildly influenced, first by Jewish values, and later on by Christianity. Combining Greek mythology and perverted moral values, and attempting to superficially mimic the Torah’s universal values, Rome, actually led the world away from the true Divine values. 

Eventually, modern man came to reject Divine values and religion became viewed as a prison from which humanity must escape. In seeking freedom from the chains of religion, society jumped to the opposite extreme. Man’s every passion was declared legitimate and every desire suddenly became permissible, and the culture of Esav was given new expression. 

Enlightened civilization was still harboring murderous impulses that had hallmarked ancient Rome. No enduring moral progress had ever been achieved. Wars, oppression, persecutions, expulsions, Inquisition, Pogroms, and the Holocaust, including two catastrophic world wars that scorched the entire globe with the slaughter of over 100 million people.

The worldview of Edom grew powerful and expanded its influence on the civilized world.

The ideology of Esav – in all of its various forms – has indisputably been the greatest cultural influence of the past two thousand years, laying the basic framework for present-day morality. While professing to be an enlightened civilization, modern society is still rampant with the profane culture of Edom. Rather than refining and uplifting man’s traits, Edom civilization leaves him in a primitive state. The greed, corruption, falsehood, oppression, relative morality, double standard, injustice, following the law of the jungle, and exploitation that mark the world civilization of today, highlight Edom’s failure.

After a long and bitter exile from our country, the Jewish People, the offspring of Yaakob, the Nation of Israel, has returned to its land. Returning to take possession of our homeland, turning swamp land into beautiful cities and desert into vineyards and orchards, winning miraculous victories in war and reviving our ancient language to everyday use, the Jewish people are experiencing a full national renaissance. The Jewish people are slowly reestablishing the Divine Torah values, morality and ethics in the world, and returning to our authentic Jewish culture.

Israel’s national rebirth is disturbing for Esav’s spiritual descendants. World leaders instinctively feel the threat of Israel’s renaissance. The subliminal realization that Israel is rising to become the dominant moral light in the world, forces the international community to try and limit the size and strength of the Jewish state. The disproportionate focus of world media attention on Israel, along with the validity given to the claims of our enemies and the falsehoods that they print and spread, are simply tools employed by Edom to prevent the Jewish people’s full national revival and the morality that Judaism represents. 

Ribka was told that, “The might shall pass from one regime to the other, and the elder shall serve the younger.” The time is approaching in which Yaakob’s values and ideology shall prevail, and the “might“ shall pass to him and his progeny.