A Tale of Two Brothers Parashat Toledot

On this anniversary of Kristallnacht we read a story of two Brothers.
 
Isaac loved Esau and Rebecca loved Jacob
A house divided- love in short supply- a zero-sum game
Two brothers- so different
One, a hairy man of the field, a hunter
One, a smooth skinned man of the tents
One impulsive
One conniving
 
Jacob shrewdly manipulates his brother Esau, takes advantage of his weaknesses- of his impulsive hunger and acquires Esau’s birthright.
 
At the end of this Torah portion, Jacob approaches his blind father, Isaac. Disguised as Esau, he steals the blessing of the firstborn meant for his brother.
 
And it came to pass, as soon as Isaac had finished blessing Jacob, and Jacob had scarcely gone out from the presence of Isaac his father, that Esau his brother came in from his hunting. And he also had made savory food, and brought it to his father, and said to his father, Let my father arise, and eat of his son’s venison, that your soul may bless me. And Isaac his father said to him, Who are you? And he said, I am your son, your firstborn Esau. And Isaac trembled very much, and said, Who then is he who hunted venison, and brought it to me, and I have eaten of all before you came, and have blessed him? Moreover, he shall be blessed. And when Esau heard the words of his father, he cried with a great and very bitter cry, and said to his father, Bless me, me also, O my father.  And Isaac said, Your brother came with cunning, and has taken away your blessing. And he said,… Have you not reserved a blessing for me? … …Have you but one blessing, my father? bless me, me also,  my father. And Esau lifted up his voice, and wept. .. And Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father blessed him; and Esau said in his heart, When the days of mourning for my father are over; then will I slay my brother Jacob. (Gen. 27: 30-41)
 
I cannot read this portion without hearing the tza’akah gedolah, the great cry of Esau.
 
When love is denied, love withheld
When one is disenfranchised, robbed of power, resources and respect
Anger erupts- homicidal anger
 
Esau cries out like a trapped and wounded animal- a great cry of pain, a deep emotional pain. He has been violated, robbed of his father’s blessing and of his future. He is bereft.
Is it no wonder that his anger explodes into homicidal rage?
 
We are living in a time of explosive anger.
In just these past two weeks we have seen these horrors:  
 
This past Wednesday night thirteen human beings were murdered in Thousand Oaks, CA by an ex-Marine, who had served in Afghanistan.
One week ago in a Florida yoga studio, two women were shot and killed and 5 others were injured by a man who claimed to hate women.
In Pittsburgh, two weeks ago, eleven worshippers were murdered in their synagogue by an anti-semite incensed over refugees entering the country.
Earlier that same week, two African Americans were murdered in a supermarket in Kentucky by a racist who had previously tried to enter a Black Church aiming to annihilate even more people.
 
We must ask: what has become of our society?
We have become a land that foments hatred, that sees only ‘us and them’. Where is the ‘we’ that lives together as ‘one Nation, under G-d , indivisible, with liberty and justice for all?’
 
One thing that surely has changed is the way we communicate with one another. The Internet and social media have become a feeding ground for the best and worst within us, exponentially magnifying our highest and lowest urges; a lethal echo chamber wherein every hateful idea is magnified and supported by a community of anonymous members. Freedom of information has morphed into freedom to hate and freedom to create a gun on a 3D printer, and freedom to walk into a public gathering and murder more anonymous people.
 
Torah has something to say about violence, about murderous rage.
Love denied, love withheld produces such fury.
 
Two brothers - Cain and Abel
Cain’s gift is rejected by G-d. His brother’s offering is accepted.
Love withheld, love denied.
Cain rises up and murders his brother Abel.
 
When love is denied, love withheld
When one is disenfranchised, robbed of power, resources and respect
Anger arises- homicidal anger
 
Joseph and his Brothers
A house divided- love in short supply
Joseph is chosen, loved and privileged by his father.
His brothers, angered and outraged, conspire to kill.
 
Unheard, Unseen, Unloved- Homicidal Rage Flares
 
A gun is power restored
anger expressed
a voice professed
for the world to hear.
For a brief moment, the awesome power of life and death is held in the hands of one who is enraged and disempowered. The voice screams: I am here and I will be heard.
 
There is a voice screaming from our land.
It cries out, “No one cares about me. No one cares about my future”  and it echoes in all the social sickness of our times. Esau’s cry is the unheard scream of our time, a tza’akah gedola, a great and mighty scream that says, “but what about me? Is there only one blessing? Is there not some blessing left for me too?”
 
What would happen if we stopped long enough to hear this voice?
 
Our tradition teaches that the whole world exists by virtue of the Divine quality of hesed- loving-kindness. To live without the experience of loving-kindness, is to feel dead.
Torah charges us to love, to extend loving-kindness into the world because it is only through this quality that the world can continue to exist.
 
It is our task to open our ears to the cries of those who feel disenfranchised, to those among us who are suffering, isolated and alone. It is up to us to restore connections by building strong communities of caring where all are seen and heard. It begins by creating opportunities to gather together in warmth and friendship. It begins with simple acts, like offering a smile to someone you might otherwise have ignored. The smile conveys, “I see you and I value you.”
 
The Netivot Shalom (the Slonimer Rebbe, R.  Shalom  Noach  Berezovsky 1911- 2000) says
“Any day that we do not perform some act of hesed/ loving-kindness,  we fail to prepare a vessel into which God’s hesed can flow into us. Any day in which we do not perform some act of hesed is a day in which we have not really lived”
And I would add, that any day we have not performed an act of hesed/ loving-kindness is a day we have not brought life into the world. Our task is to be a vessel for the flow of hesed into the world. This is what it means to ‘Love G-d’ and to ‘Love your neighbor.’
 
So let us become aware of whom we see, whose cries we hear, whom we value and whom we discard. It is time to hear the scream of Esau and all those who do not have a voice. Jacob and Esau need not be locked in an eternal rivalry. The field of blessings is as large as we build it.  It is time to enlarge the picture, enlarge the field of blessings, to create the world we wish to inhabit. It is time to move from ‘us and them’ to ‘we’.
 
Let us look to each day as an opportunity to perform at least one act of hesed.  The time is now. We are all responsible. We are all connected. We are all bound up in one another. 

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