but his concentration on his immediate needs and his willingness to give up his future probably make him the WRONG guy to carry on the Abrahamic legacy.

I remember seeing a bit of a TNT special about Jacob where he expresses doubt about what he believes to Rebecca, but still says hamotzi. Esau, comes in, panting, sweating, grinning his head off. He plonks himself down, starts eating, and DOESN'T say hamotzi. Rebecca looks away in disgust. 2/ #toldot #Mazeldon #Jewdiverse

#Mazeldon #Jewdiverse Some slightly late #Toldot thoughts.

It's tragic that humans play these stupid zero-sum games BECAUSE G-D DOESN'T.

What made the lentil stew into "red stuff"? Red lentils cook up yellow. Sumac, maybe? They didn't have tomatoes in Biblical times!

Esau may not be the "bad guy" the rabbis made him out to be (because of association with Edom/Rome/Christianity and guilt over the way Jacob treated him)...1/

I like to call this Parsha “Mother Knows Best” #torah #judaism #jewish #toldot #toledot

Well, Honeymoon's over. Turns out fediverse is just as (if not more) #antisemitic than the Bird site...

It's almost like jew-hate is endemic to Western civilization or something #parsha #toldot

Hello everyone! Tonight I want to talk about Esau. Esau was Isaac's eldest son, and he was a hunter. One day, the Torah tells us, he goes out to hunt, and fails. He returns home with nothing to eat, and finds his brother making lentil stew. We all know what happens next: Esau asks to share his brother's stew, and Jacob insists that he give up his birthright in exchange. "I am at the point of death," Esau replies, "What good is my birthright to me?" He makes the deal

It's easy to look down on Esau here. This trade seems preposterously uneven, and hunger seems a scant excuse to accept it. The temptation to look for deeper explanations is overwhelming. Did Esau not understand what he was doing? Was something weighing on his conscience such that he felt unworthy of his position as the grandson of Abraham? What kind of man sells his birthright for part of a pot of lentil stew? (And, for that matter, we might also ask of Jacob: What kind of man makes his own brother give up part of his inheritance for basic sustenance?)

Various sages have offered _many_ answers to all these questions and more, but for this speech, I want to set them to one side. For this speech, I want to imagine that there was no deeper, secret motivation. Esau was just really hungry, and didn't see the point of holding on to his birthright at the expense of his life. We'll come back to this.

Years later, after all the business with the wells, Rebecca and Jacob conspire to trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing he had prepared for Esau. Esau's motivations aren't really an issue here, because he's out hunting while this all goes down. When he returns and discovers what has happened, he begs Isaac for a blessing regardless:

"Have you but one blessing, Father? Father, bless me too!" He weeps aloud.

And so, Isaac summons a blessing for Esau after all: "Your abode shall enjoy the fat of the earth and the dew of Heaven above."

This really doesn't sound like a bad life. Esau is furious about this turn of events, and we can understand that fury — the blessing he gets is a far cry from "the promised land and descendants as numerous as the stars" — but is this really all that bad? Sure, Esau is never going to be top banana, but so what? Isn't a life of plenty enough?

We live in a cultural moment that places a tremendous emphasis on growth, on being bigger, faster, _more_ than ever before. The best life, we are told, is a life of power and influence, a life that will go down in the history books as an inspiration to subsequent generations. Such lives aren't necessarily _bad_, of course — we need people who dream big, people who set out to solve the seemingly intractable problems of the world, but such ambitions can quickly decay from their laudable origins, turning into greed, zero-sum games, environmental degradation for the sake of perpetual capitalist expansion, and other similar ills. These things are not good.

In light of this, consider Esau, who was hungry. Consider Esau, who said: "If I must choose between a birthright that would grant me power, land, and generational influence on the one hand and a belly full of food on the other, let me have the food." Consider Esau, who was blessed with the fat of the earth, for all that that blessing enraged him. Is there something to be said for this? Is there something to be said for releasing intangible concerns into the wind until a body's material needs are met? Is there something to be said for Esau?

In the second act finale of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's _Threepenny Opera_, a voice from offstage asks "Den wovon lebt der Mensch?" — "How does a person live?". The characters heap scorn on those who would condescendingly preach morality to a hungry populace without seeing to their basic physical needs: "You gentlemen who want to lead us to lives free of sin, get this: Our stomachs, like your platitudes are empty. Give us food, and then you can begin." "Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral" — "First comes feeding [people], _then_ moralizing". It is futile to expect people to set aside their physical needs, because people are, ultimately, physical beings.

I see a version of this position in the story of Jacob and Esau. Esau was on the point of death from hunger — of what use was his birthright then? See to eating first. Esau was furious when he learned that Jacob had tricked his way into Esau's blessing, but he needn't have been: He still had a life of plenty before him.

When we reflect on this week's parsha, then, let us consider the wisdom that Esau missed. Let us take earnest pleasure in the simple joys of good food, good drink, and a body that can enjoy them. Let us cultivate attention to the here and now, without constantly casting an anxious eye towards a future that may or may not be ours. Let us live, and let that be enough.

Shabbat Shalom.

#gratitude #humility #anticapitalism #Judaism #DvarTorah #Toldot #BrinWritesWords