[Avodah] eisav

[T613K at aol.com]

From: _harveybenton at yahoo.com_ (mailto:harveybenton at yahoo.com) 


>> 2. yaakov was called an "ish tam..." ; does an ish tam steal a  
brother's brachos and/or deceive his father (if not outright lie to him??]  ...
4: was it directly yaakov's fault that b/cause of his deception and the  
resultant tears that eisav (acc 2 the medrash) shed (2 out of 3 actually  
dropped) led to our lengthened (and perhaps more arduous exile). 
4a. if so,  what should yaakov's punishment be? if any??? <<

 
 
>>>>>
This issue has been discussed before on Avodah.  See the archives,  Avodah 
V12 numbers 64 and 65, in December 2003.
 
In no 12:64 I wrote: 
 
 
_http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n064.shtml#13_ 
(http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n064.shtml#13) 
 

Hirsch says that Rivka, the daughter and

sister of duplicitous men, was able to see through Esav all along, whereas

Yitzchak, the son of tzaddikim and an ish tam, was not. The pasuk itself

says about Esav, "Tzayid befiv," which means, according to Rashi, that

Esav deceived Yitzchak--not once, but all his life. Rivka was forever

telling her husband, "I'm TELLING you, the boy's no good," but he just

didn't believe her.



She came up with a scheme that was transparently simple--that would

be seen through right away, as soon as Esav showed up--and her purpose

was two-fold. She wanted Yakov to get the brachos that went along with

the bechora. [And don't forget, she had received a nevua before the

boys were even born, "Rav ya'avod tza'ir" AND the pasuk testifies that

Esav had despised the bechora.] And her second purpose, she wanted to

show Yitzchak how easily he COULD be fooled.



When he realized what had happened, he trembled exceedingly because in one

flash, the scales fell from his eyes. He suddenly realized that Rivka

had been right all along--that he WAS easily deceived, and that Esav

WAS no good. Therefore, in the very SAME pasuk, without hesitation,

right after he told Esav that he had given the bracha to Yakov, he

immediately added, "Gam baruch yi'heyeh." THE BRACHA STANDS.



....The motive behind Rivka's ruse, which Yakov of course shared, was to

reveal the TRUTH. Her whole plan was to lay bare the truth--about

Yitzchak's vulnerability, about Esav's real nature.





....There is a coda to this incident of the bracha, which perhaps deserves 
an

essay of its own, and that is the very poignance and pathos of Esav's cry,

"Abba, don't you have one bracha left for me?"



....What does it mean that a rasha is given a line of such unmistakeable

poignance? I take it to mean that there is one grain of genuine

grievance, that Esav does have one nekuda of justice on his side.



And that one nekuda is played out cosmically the way Rashi understands

the bracha Yakov ended up giving Esav by default: your brother Yakov

is deserving of the bracha only when he is clearly your moral superior.

But when his behavior descends to the level of Esav, then his right to

the bracha is tenuous, and Esav then acquires the power to throw off

the yoke of Yakov.



Throughout the long course of Jewish history, this is the principle: Esav

gets to state his case, and take power back, when we do not behave on the

high moral plane that gave us the right to the bracha in the first place.
 
---
In the next issue, no 65, I discussed the question of why Yitzchak couldn't 
just give Esav the bracha he had meant to give to Yakov -- why not just 
swap them around?
  
 
_http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n065.shtml#05_ 
(http://www.aishdas.org/avodah/vol12/v12n065.shtml#05) 

 


 -Toby Katz







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