"Two peoples/proud ones in your womb; two nations will part in/ depart from your womb; nation from/than nation shall gain strength, and great(ly) shall serve young".
This is the prophecy, ambiguous on several counts, which was shared with Rivka when she went to inquire of Hashem regarding the implications of her intolerable pain induced by the thrashing from within her womb. And, as it is practically impossible to shed the midrashic associations which accompany Yaakov and Esav from their first appearance, identifying the former with the people Israel and the latter with Rome, our great adversary, I won't try to do so. It would make no sense.
And sense, or sensation, is precisely what is lacking in the key passage of our parashah. Recall that, upon hearing her husband, Yitzchak's misguided intend to bestow his blessing on Esav, his favorite, Rivka is keen on insuring that Yaakov, her favorite and the one designated for greatness (as she understands the prophecy) receive his father's blessing, Yaakov seems not unwilling, but is consumed with trepidation lest his deception be discovered and cursed, but Rivka sees to it that all the bases are covered. Sight has already been denied Yitzchak (both eyesight and insight), as the verse says, "his eyes dimmed from seeing" (which the Midrash interprets as due to gazing a heavenly truth too powerful for human eyes when laying upon the alter at Moriah). Rivka takes care of the other senses which might lead to detection in summary order: she cook's up an savory, gamy "Esav" dish - that covers "taste". She garbs Yaakov with Esav's special garments - there goes "smell". She even carefully covers his smooth arms and neck with animal skins, mimicking Esav's preternatural hairiness - strike "touch" from the list. All that's left is "hearing". That must left to Yaakov, but Rivka even reassures him regarding "sound", when she says, "your curse be upon me, my son". Thus reassured, and while Esav is out fulfilling his father's will, Yaakov comes before Yitzchak.
"Father" is all he says, for every additional word is more data for the one remaining sense that might assist Yitzchak in accurately identifying the man standing before him. Immediately, Yitzchak hears that something is not right, for he asks, "who are you, my son?" What a strange utterance - asking and identifying in the same breath! Unless we should parse it "who are you? My son?!" Unless we understand that, on a certain level, for purposes of blessing, Yitzchak has only one son. In any case, Yaakov summons his words and speaks at length, saying all the right things, but evidently, the tone, the timbre, the habits of speech of Esav cannot be successfully imitated by Yaakov, for Yitzchak insists that Ya'acov approach that he might feel him and determine if indeed this is Esav. The touch (and smell and taste) seem to allay his doubts, for he utters the famous words, "The voice - a voice of Yaakov, and the hands - hands of Esav", and he blesses him.
The physical contact between Yitzchak and Yaakov is all the more striking for when Yaakov exits and Esav returns shortly thereafter, there is NO physical contact between them. If the HANDS of "Ya'acov" occasioned his blessing, the VOICE of Esav, the great, bitter, unexpectedly cry of Esav extracted his conditional blessing which would hound Israel throughout history.
Something is profoundly out of placer here. Yitzchak prophetically declares that the auditory realm is the realm of Yaakov's mastery, while the tactile realm is given over to Esav, but in this passage, each employs the tool, or is it the weapon, of the other. The disguise deceives Yitzchak, but, might it not also be the case that Yaakov (and perhaps Esav as well) is deceived by the successful adoption of what must ultimately characterize his brother?
Last night at the yeshiva's weekly shmooze, we spoke of music and its role in the yeshiva, and we compared the relative prominence at various stages of the yeshiva's history, of guitars and drums. As we spoke, it struck me that while both (and in fact, all) instruments are played by hands to make a sound, drums are more closely associated with hands - striking, loud, played by striking, associated with violence, sometimes ominous - while guitars, and, to take a step toward a more classically "Jewish" instrument, violins (yes, I know I am being Ashke-centric, but bear with me) are almost all melody, practically never used to maintain rhythm.
Melody and rhythm, the indispensable two elements of music, can be compared to vowels and consonants, their concomitants in the realm of that other music, language. There must be the violence of stoppage, of freeze-framing, and their must be the gentleness of movement toward, of flowing on, of connection.
Yaakov ("Follower") grasps Esav's heel NOT because he seeks to supplant him, but, ultimately, because he seeks to connect the stand-on-his-own self-made man (Esav means "made", "done"), to the root, the source, the ever-loving womb which, in a certain sense, he never leaves.
In the finite world which we inhabit, there is no problem finding percussionists for our cosmic band. Everyone marches to the beat of his own drummer. The real challenge is to find the player who will pick up the lilting melody that wends it way BETWEEN the beats in a legato stream of fluid sound, connecting all the dots.
Last night, when asked to begin a nigun, the drummers said, "just start singing and I'll come in afterward". We need to rectify the hands, we must remember that they do best when they answer the call of the voice, the inner voice, the one which once upon a time followed the lead of the hands when it responded to Yitzchak's inquiry, "are you really my son Esav"? Then, that voice responded with the single word, accented on the penultimate syllable because it appears, curiously at the drumbeat-end of a verse: Ani. Now, that same word, must be spoken, accented as it almost always needs to be, leading toward verbal motion, toward the music of relationship, toward the anticipatory, grammatical, ultimately-accented ani...., flowing toward being to come.
This is the prophecy, ambiguous on several counts, which was shared with Rivka when she went to inquire of Hashem regarding the implications of her intolerable pain induced by the thrashing from within her womb. And, as it is practically impossible to shed the midrashic associations which accompany Yaakov and Esav from their first appearance, identifying the former with the people Israel and the latter with Rome, our great adversary, I won't try to do so. It would make no sense.
And sense, or sensation, is precisely what is lacking in the key passage of our parashah. Recall that, upon hearing her husband, Yitzchak's misguided intend to bestow his blessing on Esav, his favorite, Rivka is keen on insuring that Yaakov, her favorite and the one designated for greatness (as she understands the prophecy) receive his father's blessing, Yaakov seems not unwilling, but is consumed with trepidation lest his deception be discovered and cursed, but Rivka sees to it that all the bases are covered. Sight has already been denied Yitzchak (both eyesight and insight), as the verse says, "his eyes dimmed from seeing" (which the Midrash interprets as due to gazing a heavenly truth too powerful for human eyes when laying upon the alter at Moriah). Rivka takes care of the other senses which might lead to detection in summary order: she cook's up an savory, gamy "Esav" dish - that covers "taste". She garbs Yaakov with Esav's special garments - there goes "smell". She even carefully covers his smooth arms and neck with animal skins, mimicking Esav's preternatural hairiness - strike "touch" from the list. All that's left is "hearing". That must left to Yaakov, but Rivka even reassures him regarding "sound", when she says, "your curse be upon me, my son". Thus reassured, and while Esav is out fulfilling his father's will, Yaakov comes before Yitzchak.
"Father" is all he says, for every additional word is more data for the one remaining sense that might assist Yitzchak in accurately identifying the man standing before him. Immediately, Yitzchak hears that something is not right, for he asks, "who are you, my son?" What a strange utterance - asking and identifying in the same breath! Unless we should parse it "who are you? My son?!" Unless we understand that, on a certain level, for purposes of blessing, Yitzchak has only one son. In any case, Yaakov summons his words and speaks at length, saying all the right things, but evidently, the tone, the timbre, the habits of speech of Esav cannot be successfully imitated by Yaakov, for Yitzchak insists that Ya'acov approach that he might feel him and determine if indeed this is Esav. The touch (and smell and taste) seem to allay his doubts, for he utters the famous words, "The voice - a voice of Yaakov, and the hands - hands of Esav", and he blesses him.
The physical contact between Yitzchak and Yaakov is all the more striking for when Yaakov exits and Esav returns shortly thereafter, there is NO physical contact between them. If the HANDS of "Ya'acov" occasioned his blessing, the VOICE of Esav, the great, bitter, unexpectedly cry of Esav extracted his conditional blessing which would hound Israel throughout history.
Something is profoundly out of placer here. Yitzchak prophetically declares that the auditory realm is the realm of Yaakov's mastery, while the tactile realm is given over to Esav, but in this passage, each employs the tool, or is it the weapon, of the other. The disguise deceives Yitzchak, but, might it not also be the case that Yaakov (and perhaps Esav as well) is deceived by the successful adoption of what must ultimately characterize his brother?
Last night at the yeshiva's weekly shmooze, we spoke of music and its role in the yeshiva, and we compared the relative prominence at various stages of the yeshiva's history, of guitars and drums. As we spoke, it struck me that while both (and in fact, all) instruments are played by hands to make a sound, drums are more closely associated with hands - striking, loud, played by striking, associated with violence, sometimes ominous - while guitars, and, to take a step toward a more classically "Jewish" instrument, violins (yes, I know I am being Ashke-centric, but bear with me) are almost all melody, practically never used to maintain rhythm.
Melody and rhythm, the indispensable two elements of music, can be compared to vowels and consonants, their concomitants in the realm of that other music, language. There must be the violence of stoppage, of freeze-framing, and their must be the gentleness of movement toward, of flowing on, of connection.
Yaakov ("Follower") grasps Esav's heel NOT because he seeks to supplant him, but, ultimately, because he seeks to connect the stand-on-his-own self-made man (Esav means "made", "done"), to the root, the source, the ever-loving womb which, in a certain sense, he never leaves.
In the finite world which we inhabit, there is no problem finding percussionists for our cosmic band. Everyone marches to the beat of his own drummer. The real challenge is to find the player who will pick up the lilting melody that wends it way BETWEEN the beats in a legato stream of fluid sound, connecting all the dots.
Last night, when asked to begin a nigun, the drummers said, "just start singing and I'll come in afterward". We need to rectify the hands, we must remember that they do best when they answer the call of the voice, the inner voice, the one which once upon a time followed the lead of the hands when it responded to Yitzchak's inquiry, "are you really my son Esav"? Then, that voice responded with the single word, accented on the penultimate syllable because it appears, curiously at the drumbeat-end of a verse: Ani. Now, that same word, must be spoken, accented as it almost always needs to be, leading toward verbal motion, toward the music of relationship, toward the anticipatory, grammatical, ultimately-accented ani...., flowing toward being to come.
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