[Avodah] eisav

[rabbirichwolpoe at gmail.com]

RTK:
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
> 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...

> I love this passage from Hirsch and have given it as a dvar torah
> several times...


My salient point though is simpler, less sophisticated, and so obvious -
so it's easy to overlook.

If you set aside every Rashi and Midrash the story makes perfect sense
on its own. Perhaps the only factoid needed is the concept of listening
to a Navi as a hora'as sho'oh But even here if you set aside that avos
kept torah even that is unnecessary.

Was Yaakov a "faker"?

Clearly NOT according to the sotry. Actually he resists his own favorite
Mom's plot!

Was Rivka being duplicitous?

Of course not! Either going with Hirsch's more elaborate charade or more
simply put: she felt obliged to help fulfill the prophecy given to her.

So why was Esav Angry at Yaakov's deception?

Well Esav was not privy to either Rivka's prediction nor to the fact that
Yaakov had actually resisted playing along with this charade at first.

What about Yitzchak?

Besides his well-meaning naivete WRT Esav, the narrative reveals the sale
of the Bechora to Yitzchak at the climax. So Yitzchak - while ostensibly
"duped" realizes that "yad Hashem" got the bracha to the bechor after all
- Either via Hirsch's model or via the simple stripped down textual model.

The Midrashim aisi clutter up the simple read; and NOT in order to
override peshat but to provide moral-ethical teachings that may not all
fit together with the story line.

Think of the Midrashim here as a collection of Drashos given by different
rabbis over the course of generations and later anthologized. Who would
expect them to fit in a single neat package together?

Of course on a very high level away from the text they may indeed be
highly consistent in the values that they honor, but not necessarily
because a single consistent story line teaches those values!

Rather they are culled as a set of "tangents" off of the central story
line.

And at the very worst Yaakov comes off as an obsequious "mama's boy"
rather than as a deceiver

And Yitzchak as an overly indulgent doting father failing to see his
son Esav's faults. And possessed a serious blind-spot WRT Esav's behavior

And at worst Rivka comes across as failing to convince Yitzchak re:
Esav's flaws until this moment. IOW flawed communication.


None of these 3 "alleged" flaws are fatal - and again are only "flaws"
when cast in a negative light to begin with.

Perhaps a great literary Gadol can reconcile all the Midrashim on Toldos
into a single unified theory. In the meantime the "raw" peshat actually
conveys Yitzchak Rivka and Yaakov in a moderately positive light.

KT
RRW
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