Shades of Grey

From Rabbi Larry Bach...
Parents know the difference between divvying up the last piece of cake and apportioning their love. The former requires children to compromise their desires in the face of scarce resources; the latter requires no such compromise, since there is plenty of love to go around.

In Parashat Toldot, the twins Jacob and Esau struggle to obtain material wealth through the birthright and spiritual wellbeing through the parental blessing. Through guile and deception, Jacob gains both, though the conventions of the time entitle him to neither. He purchases the birthright for a bowl of lentil soup, and acquires the blessing of the firstborn by taking advantage of his father's blindness.

A straightforward reading of the biblical text leads the reader to see Jacob as trickster and Esau as innocent victim. Esau's anguished cry, "Have you but one blessing, father?" (Gen 27:38) might well arouse pity in our hearts, but for the fact that we have been taught that Esau deserved to be supplanted by his younger brother.

Jewish tradition goes to great lengths to paint Jacob as the hero and Esau as the villain, stretching the plain meaning of the story through inventive midrashim. This "spin-doctoring" is already evident in the haftarah the Rabbis paired with Toldot, from the Book of Malachi. As an example of God's love for Israel, Malachi prophesizes that God loved Jacob and rejected Esau (Mal 1:2-3), portrayed here as the ancestor of the warlike Edomites, who are "damned forever of the Lord" (v. 4).
The Rabbis took the exegesis a step further by identifying Edom with Rome. With Rome's adoption of Christianity as the religion of the Empire, the transformation of Esau into a symbol of Christianity was complete. A persecuted minority within Christendom, the Jews were able to see their persecutors through the lens of the midrash and take comfort in the promise of ultimate victory (An excellent catalogue of this transformation is found in James Kugel's Bible as it Was, pp. 199-214).

Many Jews are aware of the anti-Jewish passages in the Christian Bible, and we expect well-meaning Christian teachers to place them in a historical context and expound upon them in ways that foster appreciation for Judaism rather than contempt. The last 40 years have seen a great deal of progress in this arena. Increasingly, the teaching of supersessionism (the doctrine that Christianity renders Judaism obsolete) is being replaced by an appreciation of the ongoing Jewish relationship with the Eternal One. We are rightly concerned by those who would undo those efforts.

The history of Jewish interpretation of Jacob and Esau shows that polemical portraits of the Other are found not only in the Christian Bible. What we expect of well-meaning Christians we must demand of ourselves as well. We don't need to erase the midrashim that transform Esau into villain and Jacob into saint, but we do need to understand where they come from and why they first appeared. That understanding can form the basis of a new appreciation for our Christian brothers and sisters – one that does not compromise our beliefs and practices, yet honors their path to God.

More and more, Jews and Christians recognize that God's favor has little to do with the last piece of cake, and much to do with love and blessing. There is plenty for all, and we need not take from our brother to lift ourselves up in God's eyes.