TOLDOT | Rabbi Berel Wein | Beit Midrash

Torah Portion and Tanach

קטגוריה משנית

197

Perfect parents do not always produce perfect children. This week’s parsha is a perfect illustration of this truism of life and family. There apparently was very little that Yirzchak and Rivka could do to reclaim Eisav to their way of life and morality. He was already perhaps incapable of moral improvement the moment he was born. There existed and perhaps still exists a great debate about whether genetic makeup or social and family environment determine a child’s personality and behavior patterns. But no matter how we judge this question it still is perplexing if not even unthinkable that Yitzchak and Rivka parented Eisav and raised him in their holy home. It is one of the prime examples in the Torah of the power of freedom of choice that children and all human beings possess. Parents naturally berate themselves over bad behavior of their children. Yet, in my admittedly limited experience, these parents are hardly ever to be blamed for the free will wickedness of their offspring. We ascribe too much power to parents in raising children. Of course family and environment are important in raising children. But a child’s free will choices will trump all other factors and circumstances. And thus we have an Eisav emerging from the house and family of Yitzchak and Rivka. The Torah’s message to us in this matter is direct and blunt - there are no guarantees or perfect successes present in raising children. One could say that though Avraham fathered Yishmael, perhaps it was Hagar’s influence that raised and formed him. But what can we say about the house of Yitzchak and Rivka that could produce an Eisav?

The Torah poses for us the unanswerable questions of life that we encounter daily. And it never truly provides us with satisfying answers. Such is the nature of life itself – its mystery, uncertainty and unpredictably. The great question as to why the righteous suffer and the evil person apparently prospers lies at the root of the struggle for belief and faith. And as we read in the book of Iyov, the Lord chooses, so to speak, not to answer that question. The Torah therefore does not explain to us how an Eisav can arise from the house of Yitzchak and Rivka. It is satisfied apparently just to notify us that it occurred and by inference teach us that other otherwise inexplicable things will occur throughout Jewish and human history. Eisav, whether genetically or environmentally influenced, was a free agent – as we all are – to choose between good and evil, peace and violence, compassion and cruelty. These choices were his and his alone to make. Somehow, Heaven also must have taken into account the heartbreak of Yitzchak and Rivka over the behavior of Eisav. But that is certainly secondary to the judgment regarding Eisav himself. There is a tendency in our modern world to try and understand and sympathize with the evil one at the expense of the good and decent victims of that evil. The Torah is not a fan of such misplaced compassion. Rivka makes the painful decision to abandon Eisav and save Yaakov. By so doing she saves the possibility of the civilization of the human race.

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