Differences and Wholeness

Rabbi Melanie Aron

November 28, 2003

On Tuesday our Rosh Hodesh group discussed a story, Only a Phase, by Leslea Newman. The story has two main characters, a mother and a daughter, who think of themselves as very different. And in many ways they are different. The daughter is employed outside the home, and has chosen to live in San Francisco where, following the assassination of Harvey Milk, she comes out as a lesbian. She does not belong to a synagogue, dresses in a non-conformist way, and would tell you that family is not very important to her. Her mother lives in a Long Island suburb, where she is a homemaker and affiliated Jew. To her it is important to dress a certain way which she feels is appropriate and respectful. Family ties are central to her life as are the gender roles for husband and wife.

What’s interesting about the story, is that without commenting at all on this fact, the author manages to portray the mother and daughter in ways that make you acutely aware of how similar they actually are. They have the same mannerism, the same cup of coffee always half drunk at their side. They share the same ways of relaxing, and the same way of dealing with unwelcome news. They have very similar pets, who curl up on their feet in similar ways, and to whom they speak in almost identical phrases. We see that even the structures of their days are similar, as we watch them rousing themselves to freshen up at the end of the day, and prepare for dinner.

In our discussion on Tuesday we talked about whether the conflict between this mother and daughter related only to their differences, or perhaps also to their similarities. We commented on the discomfort we feel in seeing our own worst traits in those we love. Participants in the group also reflected that sometimes people say about members of their family, oh, of course they don’t get along, they are exactly alike. And sometimes people say the opposite, we get along because we are similar, and those two have trouble because they are so different.

The Torah portion this week introduces Jacob and Esau, twins whose differences are highlighted both by the Bible and even more so by later rabbinic tradition. The Bible tells us that one is hairy and the other smooth skinned, one a hunter and the other a homebody, one favored by their father and the other by their mother. Later rabbinic tradition stresses and embellishes these differences painting Esau as totally unrestrained and bloodthirsty, with every undesirable trait imaginable.

Yet despite the negative characterization of Esau, here and there in the tradition there are reminders that the brothers were perhaps not so different. First of all, they were twins and the midrash insists that their faces were so similar, that were it not for the fact that one was hairy and the other smooth skinned, they could not be told apart. Secondly, Esau in the Bible at least has some good qualities. He is clearly devoted to his father He wants his parent’s approval as illustrated by his marriage to Ishmael’s daughter. Though he was treated badly, he seems ready to forgive his brother, as we find much later when they are reunited.

Some might say that the issues between Jacob and Esau relate less to their differences and more to their parents’ issues. One article I read recently probes whether Rebekah’s own ambivalence about Isaac’s monotheistic spirituality, having come from a home of idolaters, gets expressed through her sons, while for Isaac, it is his ambivalence about the experience of the Akedah that gets played out. While one may or may not accept such a psychological reading, it is still interesting to wonder whether the boys are not in some ways encouraged by their parents to divide all the available traits between them. One has to become the athlete and the other the scholar, one the goody-goody and the other, the wild one. Rather than being able to develop more along the lines of where their personalities would naturally take them, they are forced to opposite poles.

One midrash even posits that Jacob and Esau were originally destined to be one whole person, but then like the original ADAM who became male and female, they were divided out to become opposite images of each other.

Interestingly the early Zionists who returned to Israel in the late 19th and early 20th century wanted to reclaim for the new Israeli Jew some of the character traits apportioned to Esau in the splitting that took place. To their mind, while it was good that Jacob was able to exercise self- control and good judgment, he and his Jewish descendents had lost out on passion. The early Zionists wanted to create a new Jew who could also partake in some way in Esau’s robust and wild spirit. They also valued some of the other traits associated with Esau, like physical courage and the ability to perform demanding, outdoor work, rather than the purely cerebral study that had been apportioned to Jacob in the great divide. In a sense they lean towards that radical midrash, where in the perfect Messianic future, Jacob/Esau will be made whole again and those seemingly disparate traits will be united in one person again.

Our High Holiday prayerbook, in the confession Al Chet, on Yom Kippur morning, reminds us of the sin of condemning in our parents and in our children, the faults we tolerate in ourselves. Perhaps that advice might help with Leslea Newman’s mother daughter pair. We may similarly want to examine the midrash’s teaching that wholeness includes potentially opposite characteristics, and that the Messianic redempetion cannot come so long as we push off onto others our less desirable characteristic. This certainly adds a more personal dimensions to our prayers that someday Yihiyeh Adonai Echad Ushemo Echad, that someday God’s unity will be complete, as strength and compassion, body and spirit, will be united in balance.