5786/2025
For a couple who seemed deeply in love from the very start of their relationship, praying together sympathetically during their period of infertility, the stark divergence of their preferences for one son over the other seems perplexing and bound for deception, frustration and misery.
What underlies the unspoken debate between Yitzchak and Rivkah, under the assumption that they both understood each of their son’s strengths and challenges in competing for the leadership of this blessed and divinely chosen family that sought its destiny in the genesis of the Jewish nation?
Tha Torah describes the qualities of the two youths while linking these traits to their parents’ preferences: Eisav as איש יודע ציד איש שדה “a hunter and man of the field” - an outdoorsman or man of action; Yaakov as איש תם יושב אהלים - more cerebral or a man of knowledge, a man of intellect. With these contrasting temperaments, we can appreciate their parents’ leanings.
Rivkah favored Yaakov possibly due to her experience growing up in the household of Lavan, a man of cunning and deceit, a man of action whose lack of moral compass enabled his wickedness. Rivkah disqualified Eisav from the mantle of leadership of the next generation of the family for this same reason. Yaakov, on the other hand, as the man of contemplation and intellect, did possess moral knowledge and was thus suited to inherit the tradition and solidify the legacy of the new nation.
By contrast, Yitzchak chose Eisav possibly because of his own battles with the shepherds of Gerar over the wells of water he established. In order to settle the land promised by Hashem, a strong, aggressive and energetic man of action was essential as leader - Eisav appeared to Yaakov to satisfy this requirement.
It is likely that the parental preferences were not quite as reductive and naive as it seems. A close scrutiny of the distinct blessings Yitzchak intended to confer upon his sons indicates that his true desire was to bestow the material blessings (מטל השמים ומשמני הארץ ורב דגן ותירש) upon Eisav and the spiritual blessings (וא-ל ש-די יברך אתך ..ויתן לך את ברכת אברהם) upon Yaakov. Perhaps Yitzchak wisely proposed that a partnership between the man of intellect and the man of action would ensue.
Knowledge without action lacks purpose, but action without knowledge lacks direction. As any parent would wish, Yitzchak hoped that the two talented sons would forge this partnership of the intellectual and moralist guiding the activist, and the activist translating the ideas of the intellectual into action.
Many later revolutionary movements adhered to this pattern. For democracy, John Locke was the philosopher, the man of ideas, but it took a politician like Thomas Jefferson to translate those ideas into action and practice. On the other side of history, Marx was the intellectual revolutionary but Lenin was the practical revolutionary leader.
Why then did Rivkah depart from this reasonable arrangement and scheme to thwart her husband’s thoughtful plans?
Rivkah understood, as perhaps only a mother could, that the personalities of Eisav and Yaakov clashed far too acutely for a partnership to succeed. Knowledge and action had to be merged in the single identity of one son. Although Yaakov appeared to be more cerebral and less worldly and savvy, Rivkah coaxed a reluctant son to deceive his father and capture both the material and spiritual blessings.
It is further no wonder that despite her misgivings about the morality of her own father’s behavior that she confidently sent her ethically-grounded son to acquire the skills missing from his resume - to learn how to match wits with and prevail over the unprincipled rivals he and his descendants would encounter in conquering the promised land without losing sight of the moral values inherited from his forebears.
In our own lives, we, too, cannot be satisfied with prioritizing one of these qualities above the other. Our action, our interaction with others and our practice of Mitzvot, must not be robotically routinized and droningly directionless, but must be informed and energized by our mastery of Torah learning. And our study of Torah can never be relegated to the ivory tower as an intellectual exercise to stir our self-aggrandizing pride without delivering its breadth and depth to our everyday practice as Jews and as human beings. Our learning must be externalized and pervade our everyday existence while our daily reality must be guided by the eternal values of the Torah we learn each and every day.