[Avodah] Lessons From Jacob and Esau

[Prof. Levine]

RSRH's brilliant essay about educating children with this title can be read at

http://www.stevens.edu/golem/llevine/rsrh/lessons_jacob_esau_col_vii.pdf

In part he writes

If anything should draw our attention to the importance of the
right education, it surely must be the history of the families whom
Divine Providence chose to help determine the development of man-
kind in general and of the Jewish people in particular. Cain and Abel,
Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau-these three pairs of brothers were
each products of the same home and raised under the same influences.
Jacob and Esau were, in fact, twins, carried together in the same womb
and born at the same time. Each of these three pairs of brothers was
nurtured with the same care and attention. And yet, in each case the
two brothers grew up to be completely different from one another. In
each instance we see that only one of the brothers followed the godly
pursuits to which their home had been dedicated, while the other was
utterly lost to them. Should these family histories not give us pause
and spur us on to do everything within our power to raise our own
children that not only the one or the other, but all of them should grow
to follow their God-ordained spiritual and moral calling? Should we
not make a careful study of these family histories so that, if possible,
we may discover why the educational methods applied by fathers of
the stature of Abraham and Isaac failed, so that we may learn the pitfalls
that must pose an even greater threat to the educational efforts of
ordinary people like ourselves? For surely, in every other respect, the
influence of education cannot have been more successful anywhere else
than it was at the home of Abraham and Sarah. Truly, in order to
understand the power with which the Father of all mankind endowed
parental education, and the results He expects from the influence of
the proper upbringing, we need only, as the Prophet Isaiah puts it,
"look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the pickhammer
with which you were chiseled; look to Abraham, your father, and to
Sarah, who should give birth to us all" {Isaiah 51, 1-2).
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