Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) and Haftarah (Malachi 1:1-2:7): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
24
Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) and Haftarah (Malachi 1:1-2:7): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary
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Overview
Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) and Haftarah (Malachi 1:1-2:7): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary shows teens in their own language how Torah addresses the issues in their world. The conversational tone is inviting and dignified, concise and substantial, direct and informative. Each pamphlet includes a general introduction, two model divrei Torah on the weekly Torah portion, and one model davar Torah on the weekly Haftarah portion. Jewish learning--for young people and adults--will never be the same.
The complete set of weekly portions is available in Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin's book The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary (JPS, 2017).
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780827613645 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The Jewish Publication Society |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2018 |
| Series: | JPS Study Bible |
| Pages: | 24 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d) |
About the Author
Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin serves as the senior rabbi of Temple Solel in Hollywood, Florida. He is the author of Putting God on the Guest List: How to Reclaim the Spiritual Meaning of Your Child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah, winner of the Benjamin Franklin Award for the best religion book published in the United States, and The Gods Are Broken: The Hidden Legacy of Abraham (JPS, 2013).
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
The Torah
Toledot: Genesis 25:19–28:9
Welcome to the first major sibling rivalry in the Torah (excluding Cain and Abel, which was short, violent, and one sided). It is not pretty. Jacob forces Esau to sell him his birthright as the firstborn (apparently, you actually could do that back in ancient times).
By doing this, Jacob steals the blessing that was due Esau as the firstborn and, in the process, deceives his elderly, blind father, Isaac — all with the help of his mother, Rebekah. Esau is so angry at Jacob that it looks like he might kill him. How could this possibly end well? It doesn't, and Jacob has to flee.
Summary
• Isaac and Rebekah struggle with infertility; ultimately, Rebekah conceives and gives birth to twins, Esau and Jacob. They could not be more different from each other. (25:19–26)
• Esau makes a quick decision that will change Jewish history — he sells Jacob his birthright as the oldest son. (25:27–34)
• Isaac re-digs the wells that his father, Abraham, had dug, and that the Philistines had maliciously filled in. (26:12–22)
• Esau marries two Hittite women. His mother, Rebekah, was not happy. (26:34–35)
• Rebekah shows parental favoritism to Jacob, and gets him to deceive his blind father, Isaac, to obtain the blessing that was intended for Esau. Sibling rivalry gets out of hand. (27:1–46)
• Jacob fears that Esau will seek revenge against him, so he flees for his life and goes to his extended family in Paddan-aram. (28:1–5)
The Big Ideas
• Diversity is important within families. Jacob and Esau represent two types of opposing characters. Jacob is quiet and studious; Esau is physically strong, active, and sometimes violent. Jews identify with Jacob, and Jewish lore likes to imagine that the enemies of the Jews are actually the descendants of Esau.
• There are no perfect people in the Torah. Jacob is sneaky and deceptive — a trait that he learned from his mother, Rebekah. But even the imperfect people of the Bible have a role in the continuation of the covenant and the Jewish people.
• Being original and inventive is not always important. Isaac really doesn't have much going on in his life. His only real achievement seems to have been digging wells — and these were wells that his father, Abraham, had already dug. Sometimes you don't have to be an innovator; continuing a tradition (symbolized by Isaac re-digging the wells of Abraham) can often be enough.
• Honoring parents is a universal human value. Esau is a tough hunter who doesn't have much to say. But, let us be fair to him. His hunting was for the sole purpose of bringing food to his father, Isaac. Esau is an expert at honoring his father. He is a far better human being than we often give him credit for.
• Age order doesn't always matter. In the Torah and the Hebrew Bible, the younger child often becomes more important than older siblings. That is how it worked with Jacob, and Joseph, and Moses, and David — they were all younger children. The preference for the younger child over the older is contrary to most ancient (and many modern) cultures. This helps us remember that birth order is not destiny — that a younger child can do just as well, if not better, than older children.
Divrei Torah
Why Did God Choose Jacob?
If you have siblings — even if you have a twin — chances are that you are very different. And why wouldn't you be? Just because you have the same genes as someone doesn't mean that you have to be his or her clone.
The story of Jacob and Esau is a classic story of sibling rivalry — a tale of twins who were pretty un-twinlike. There is Jacob — a quiet man who was most comfortable staying in the tent and close to home. And there is Esau, his older brother — an outdoorsman, a hunter, a tough guy.
When Esau comes home from the hunt, famished and thirsty, Jacob gets him to sell him his birthright, the special status that comes as the older son, in exchange for bread and lentil stew. Without even hesitating, Esau sells it. For the sages, that meant that Esau was reckless and would continue to be so. A midrash claims that Jacob and Esau were thirteen at the time: "For thirteen years Jacob and Esau went to school and came home from school. After this age, Jacob went on to continue studying and Esau went on to worship idols."
And this, by the way, is one reason why bar and bat mitzvah occurs at the age of thirteen. It is the age of choices. Your whole life is ahead of you, but now you are old enough to make intelligent (let's hope!) choices.
Isn't it disturbing that Jacob — a cheat and a thief — was chosen to carry on the covenant of his grandfather Abraham? Rabbi Samuel Karff notes that both Jacob and Esau are flawed human beings: "God must choose between someone who cared so little about the birthright that he was willing to simply throw it away for a quick meal, and someone who cared about it so much that he was willing to cheat in order to get it." Apparently God decided that it was better to care too much than too little.
While the Torah condemns the qualities we see in Jacob, we have to admit that those qualities can actually "work" in our everyday lives. If you have ever been on a sports team or in a play, you will probably agree that it is better to work with people who care a lot, or even a little too much, and sometimes cross the line. You can always calm those people down, and hopefully teach them the importance of honesty and fair play. It is much harder to rev up someone who is apathetic and simply doesn't care. Passion should be channeled, but we can't do without it.
That's the way it is with many people, and that's the way it has been through much of Jewish history. In every generation, there are Jews who care deeply, and there are Jews who care little about Judaism or the Jewish people. Jewish history has gotten this far because of those Jews who are passionate and care about Judaism and the Jewish people — not because of those who are willing to throw it away.
Let's Be Fair to Esau
If anyone in the Torah gets a bum rap, it's Esau. He sold Jacob his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, with a little bread on the side. Then Jacob deceived their father, Isaac, and stole the blessing that was intended for Esau as the oldest son.
Esau is big, hairy, and a hunter. This might have been enough to put Esau into the perpetual time-out corner. Hunting (for pleasure) is against Jewish law, because it is considered cruelty to animals. Furthermore, Esau has no self-control; on the spur of the moment, he throws away his future for a bowl of soup. The ancient sages associated Esau with violence, and they imagined that every enemy of the Jews was another version of Esau. (In fact, Haman, the arch-villain of Purim, is descended from Esau).
But, surely, this can't be all there is to Esau. No person is all bad. Doesn't he have any good points?
As it turns out, yes. Esau went out hunting in order to feed his father. Read the entire story and you will see that Esau cares about his father. In fact, the early sages thought that no one in the Torah was better at honoring his father than Esau. "Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel said: I usually waited on my father dressed in soiled clothes, but when I went out into the street I put on handsome clothes. It was different with Esau; he wore his best clothes when tending to his father. That is how we learn that Esau was most diligent in honoring his parents."
Esau cared about his parents and their feelings. The Torah tells us that Esau married Hittite women. When he saw that this troubled his parents deeply, he went back to the extended family, and married one of the daughters of his uncle, Ishmael. He really wanted to be a good son.
And when Jacob and Esau finally reunite, Esau readily forgives him and wants to continue their relationship. After what Jacob did to him, that's a big deal. How many of us would be willing to forgive?
So, it's not as if Esau was a total loser. Not at all! Rabbi Mordecai Finley imagines an essay that "Esau Isaacson" would have written as a school assignment: "I come from a very disturbed family. Something very bad happened to my father when he was a kid. I know this will sound like I am crazy or something, but I think my grandfather Abraham tried to kill him in some weird religious thing." Esau is still trying to understand his family dynamics.
It could not have been easy growing up in the Isaac and Rebekah household. It was not easy having Jacob as a twin brother. Esau did as well as he knew how. Let's cut him some slack.
Connections
• If you have a sibling, chances are you're nothing like him or her. Maybe you look alike, but that might be all that you have in common, with the exception of your parents. How do your differences affect your relationship? Have you experienced sibling rivalry in your own life? What has it been like? How have you worked things out?
• Do you agree with the Jewish position on hunting? Do you believe that it is cruel to animals?
• Do you agree that the biblical tradition is unfair to Esau? In what ways was he better than Jacob? In what ways was Jacob better than Esau?
• Who are some other characters in the Torah who are less than perfect? What are their flaws? What about American heroes? What are their flaws? What can we learn from those flaws?
• Have you ever done something totally impulsive, like Esau did when he sold his birthright (though probably nothing as serious as that)? What were the results?
• Do you agree that it is better to care too much about something than to care too little? What examples can you think of — teams, patriotism, religion, etc.?
CHAPTER 2The Haftarah
Toledot: Malachi 1:1–2:7
No one ever said that a prophet had to be a nice person. In fact, in this haftarah the prophet Malachi might have gotten the nomination for the "king of snark." Malachi was the last of the prophets. He lived in the middle of fifth century BCE, at the time when Persia permitted the Judeans to return to Judah, to re-create their own independent state, and to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. You would have thought that the rebuilding of the Temple would have created some kind of increased religious enthusiasm.
No. Very few Judeans were taking their religious obligations seriously, and Malachi spoke out against this neglect. By contrast, however, the prophet imagines that the other nations of the world would bring pure sacrifices to God, that they would actually treat God better than the Judeans do!
So how is this haftarah connected to the Torah portion? The Torah portion, Toledot, contains the story of the brothers Jacob and Esau. They appear in this haftarah — with a twist. The prophet knows that Esau was the ancestor of the kingdom of Edom, which was a longtime enemy of Judea. Just as Esau loses his birthright in the Torah portion, his descendants (the kingdom of Edom) ultimately lose their power as well.
But there is a second connection, and it is very easy to miss it. It hangs on just one word. Malachi refers to the priests "who scorn My name" (1:6). The use of the term "scorn" echoes what Esau did to the birthright when he sold it to Jacob; he spurned it.
Bringing Your Best
Have you ever attended a synagogue worship service where few people are actually praying, or singing? Many people are just sitting around, catching peeks at their cell phones, whispering to their neighbor, or just gazing around. It's as if they aren't engaged at all. It's like being at a baseball game and hardly anyone is cheering, or at a rock concert and nobody is listening.
That's what the prophet Malachi is describing. Back in his day, the religious life of the Jewish people revolved around bringing sacrifices. When people brought the best of their offerings, it symbolized that they had great respect for God. But if they brought a blemished offering, it was considered disrespectful. It was as if the people were saying: we have to go through the motions but we don't care that much about God or what we are doing.
The prophets were concerned with such religious hypocrisy. They were angry when people brought second-rate offerings to God and could care less about the poor. Malachi is angry that people aren't taking God seriously. They are bringing God less-than-great offerings.
And why should Malachi have cared so much about this? The Judeans were returning from exile. The Persians were allowing them to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. This was an amazing moment in Jewish history. It should have been filled with power and majesty. The Jews should have realized that they were living in the midst of a great happening. But they certainly didn't show it.
There is a Hasidic tale that also talks about passionless worship. "Once, the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, visited a synagogue but refused to enter the sanctuary. And why? Because, he said, it was too full. Too many people? No, he said. Too many prayers — dead prayers that had been said without feeling, and had not ascended to the heavens, and were just piling up on the floor without going anywhere!"
Back to our modern synagogue where people just seem to be going through the motions. The problem that Malachi first observed still goes on today. It is about people who don't take Judaism seriously, and kind of sleepwalk through the service. They lack kavanah — the ability to spiritually connect with what is going on.
The Czech Jewish writer Franz Kafka resented how his father observed Judaism. When he went to synagogue, he was more interested in pointing out the wealthy people who were there, paying more attention to them than to God. This is what Kafka provocatively said to his father: "You went to temple four days a year. You got through the prayers patiently, as a formality; sometimes I was astonished that you were able to find the passage in the prayer book that was just being recited. Getting rid of this kind of Judaism seemed to me itself to be the most reverent act of all."
Kafka rebelled. Some of us rebel. While some just walk away, others take a different path. These young people have decided to take Judaism more seriously than their parents, and maybe even their grandparents, and not be like the Jews in Malachi's time. They have decided to bring their best offerings to God.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Toledot (Genesis 25:19-28:9) and Haftarah (Malachi 1:1-2:7): The JPS B'nai Mitzvah Torah Commentary"
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Copyright © 2018 Rabbi Jeffrey K. Salkin.
Excerpted by permission of UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS.
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Table of Contents
General Introduction Toledot: Torah Commentary Toledot: Haftarah Commentary