Mom Liked You Best: Family Trauma, Tricksters & Destiny

Sermon on Toldot 5782

by Rabbi Sam Cohon

Do any of you remember the old Smothers Brothers comedy team from the late 1960s?  They had a variety show which was very popular then, only to be cancelled by CBS’s CEO William Paley because they got too political—that is, they let their opposition to the Vietnam War become evident and booked lots of emerging rock & roll acts and activist comedians and musicians on their show.  Times surely have changed; today, you can’t have a successful variety show without being overtly political. 

I actually met Tommy Smothers, back when I was in the sixth grade.  It was after their show was cancelled and they fell from popularity.  I liked to explore things back then—some things don’t change—and on the street, La Jolla Avenue, that I walked on going home from school there was this motor home parked.  It was exactly like the one my family was renting for an upcoming trip through the western United States.  It had a ladder on the back of it, so naturally I ascended it to see what the top looked like—and as soon as I climbed on top, Tommy Smothers stuck his head out the window of an apartment next to the motor home and asked me if I’d like to see the inside, too.  I was totally busted, as we said then.  But Tommy Smothers turned out to be a very nice man indeed, and instead of turning me over to the juvenile authorities he politely showed me around his motor home and then sent me off home.     

In any case, the Smothers Brothers most famous routine was that the older, wiser brother, Dickie Smothers, would straighten out Tommy Smothers, who was prone to rant on subjects he clearly misunderstood or had exaggerated or simply lied about.  After being hilariously corrected and put down by his brother, Tommy would stop with a look of total puzzlement on his face, and then angrily say, “Well, Mom always liked you best!”

Mom always liked you best.  A standing routine for a comedy duo from my youth.  Or, perhaps, the most accurate description of nearly everything that goes wrong in the entire Book of Genesis.  I’ve often wondered what lessons we are being taught about parenting and familial relations in this primary book of the Torah, the Bible, indeed all western religion.  I mean, if you want to teach people how to be good parents, Genesis provides object lessons in how not to do it. 

Sibling rivalry starts with the first brothers, Cain and Abel, and it goes, if not downhill—how do you do worse than that?—certainly sideways.  In every generation of note thereafter familial tzoris abounds: Noah and his sons, Sarah and Hagar, Ishmael and Isaac, and of course this week’s protagonists, Jacob and Esau.  And just wait until you hear about Rachel & Leah, and Joseph and his brothers and sisters in the coming attractions…

But for all the general family dysfunction evident in Book of Briesheet, perhaps the greatest challenge is the one posed by the sibling rivalry of Jacob and Esau, heroes—or at least central figures—of Toldot.  And you know, the Torah foreshadows the whole problem from the very beginning.  Fraternal twins in Rebecca’s womb struggle prenatally, and are quite different from birth.  And of course, in true Smothers Brothers fashion, we are told that Isaac, their father, favored Esau, the outdoorsman, the hunter, the thoughtless, active, physical, anti-intellectual son.  And Rebecca favored the oh-so-slightly younger Jacob, the studious, homemaking, mama’s boy.  For Esau, mom indeed liked Jacob best—but dad liked him best! 

What a parenting mess.

You know, Jacob, Ya’akov, is the most interesting and confounding of all our patriarchs and matriarchs.  He is, in a literal sense, the true father of our people, since it is his 12 sons who are the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel.  But what a complicated father of our people this man is!

On the one hand, he has many characteristics we all should admire: Jacob is intelligent, industrious, courageous, romantic, creative, clever and prolifically productive.  He repeatedly triumphs over better-equipped adversaries and eventually creates a huge family that will evolve from a clan into a nation, our nation.  Jacob lives an extraordinary, and extraordinarily important, life, and without him monotheism would not have survived at all.   

On the other hand, Jacob is also tricky, manipulative, whiny, and as duplicitous as a modern-day politician.  Throughout his life he is far more concerned with results than morals.  Jacob is an awful sibling, a lousy son to his father, a mediocre husband, and a spectacularly bad parent, and he repeatedly ends up in weirdly terrible situations that he has, either directly or indirectly, caused.  And while he benefits from others' forgiveness, he himself will hold onto grudges until his last breath.

Esau is a different matter altogether.  As presented in Toldot, and later on in Vayishlach, Esau is tough, energetic, active, thoughtless, emotional, extraverted and reactive.  He moves almost obsessively, a constantly hyperactive guy.  In one short passage that changes his life forever, we are given five consecutive verbs about Esau:

Esau is all id to Jacob’s superego.  

The story of these twins, Jacob and Esau, begins in utero.  Rivals from before birth, wrestling in their mother Rebecca’s womb, the red-haired outdoorsman Esau and his grasping, domestically inclined younger brother Jacob spend Toldot vying for their father’s and mother’s love and attention.  Each is partly successful, and each partly fails.  That sibling rivalry shaped the course of our people’s early history, but it also can teach us something about ourselves.

First, a word about words: Toldot is rich in real-life details told in spectacularly perfect writing.  Rebecca, pregnant with the two boys wrestling inside her, tells God, “If it’s like this, why am I alive?” prefiguring the words every pregnant mom thinks (or says!) at some point. Esau is hairy and rough at birth, Jacob is smooth, born holding fast to Esau’s heel.  Esau, famished from a long hunt, trades his birthright for a bowl of stew and then vayochal, vayeisht, vayakom vayelech vayivez eisav et habchoro—Esau ate, drank, got up, left and despised his birthright, his own inheritance.  All at once, the series of active verbs delineating his turbulent, thoughtless character.  Jacob, smooth-faced and smooth-talking lawyer that he is, audibly calculates the coming consequences of each action.

Now, on to that little rivalry.  The familial tension in Toldot is palpable throughout.  In fact, there is tzoris enough to go around for everyone in this small family: Isaac, the father and link between more important patriarchs, finds trouble everywhere but avoids it by simply moving on.  Each time he finds more success, and then more trouble, and moves again.  Rebecca sees the wayward ways of her eldest boy, Esau, and chooses to manipulate the situation to give the family inheritance to Jacob, remaking the birth order retroactively.  You know, “mom liked you best” for real.

Mom certainly liked Jacob best, while dad just as surely liked Esau best.  That kind of favoritism cannot end well, and in the short term it doesn’t.  At the end of our portion Esau has been doubly defrauded, while Jacob is forced to flee the consequences of his own duplicity, running from the only home he has known without so much as a blanket, the homebody forced into the wilderness his brother has always loved.

In a sense, the explosion of this conflicted nuclear family damages all its members.  Each member is wounded, none left whole.  It is a drama like so many of our own lives.

And yet, in a couple of more Torah portions, we will see that each member of this now shattered nuclear family has played, or will play, a central role in furthering God’s design for our world.  Despite their mistakes and injuries, each helps, ultimately, to carry out pivotal elements that further God’s mission, and that will create the great people of Israel.

So, what is there to learn from this saga beyond how not to treat our own children? 

In challenging times, and in conflicted families, it is often hard to see that ultimately there is a divine plan, or a place for each participant within that plan.  But Toldot—which means generations—teaches that in spite of what we might perceive in our own, small field of vision, God is at work in this world, and we may very well be furthering a greater plan.

Why is it that Jacob is the one who will become the true father of our people?  He is clever and verbal, cerebral, but he clearly lacks basic moral qualities that we should find critical.  But Esau, too, is no bargain, all physical exertion and emotional outburst, instinctive but unreflective.  In fact, it is through both of them that the great story of God’s oneness is carried forward.   

Through both of them, for all their flaws, God finds a way to work for the future and for destiny.  

The message is complex, but useful.  The truth is that we are all both Jacob and Esau, partly thoughtful, partly instinctive.  We, each of us, are also twins in this sense: we can act with deliberation and care, or forcefully and without judgment.  And we all have the capacity to be either ethical or unethical.

In that dichotomy lies our innate humanity.  And in the persons of Esau and Jacob, we can see ourselves and learn that it is only through God’s providence that we may truly find our own Promised Land.