When David is king, God is King

Thoughts on ‘Toledot’

 

by Daniel Nakonechny

29 Ram Cheshvan 5766

  בס"ד

 

I had occasion recently to briefly meet a woman, a Jewish American resident of Yerushalayim, and for sundry reasons our short conversation was a little different that normal – such as her admission that “she no longer visits such and such places [specific Arab villages] which she used to frequent.”  This piqued my curiosity, and when the moment was opportune I asked her, “how did it happen that you came to be frequenting these villages?”  She replied, “My husband was an Arab.” (She’s a widow.)

 

Many Jews would be aghast even in abhorrence at what she admitted and I, myself, winced inwardly, but I was not without comprehension and our conversation only picked up.  I, too, have met and/or seen enough Arabs who are genuine, loving, compassionate, intelligent, and caring individuals (although today it is much more difficult to meet them).

 

[So that hopefully I won’t be stepping on any feelings, I will quote her.  “Even though they beg me to, I do not go to the villages to visit my husband’s family, because it endangers their lives.”  And “my husband’s sons would only go to university in Moscow and not in the West Bank, because as they say, ‘what happens in the universities here is that they make you a terrorist.’”]

 

As I said, “I winced inwardly”, because it hurts when a Jew does not fulfill everything that is meant for him or her to be as a Jew.  This woman grew up on the West Side of Manhattan and received all the fine NYC education that is available to the secular and to those who identify culturally.  Judaism, i.e. being a Jew in terms of religious identification, observance, and commitment, didn’t and does not exist for her nor in her education.  Because it doesn’t, it’s understandable why her life has traveled the path that it’s traveled.

 

Also, it’s not that difficult to understand or emphasize with her, because all of us during the course of our lives discover compatibility in and with so many different kinds of people, and we can comprehend that.  What hurt me is not that she had married an Arab, but that she had married a non-Jew (which Shlomo, himself, opposed with all his being).  This reaches to the depths of what being a Jew is, and because it does it sits so consciously in my thoughts.

 

If you’ve ever met the kind of Arabs that I’m talking about, then you’ve experienced the attraction perhaps charisma and maybe even magnetism of love that just draws you to them.  I’m not talking merely about individuals but about families and extended families, too.  Especially, there is something about them that so talks to a Jewish neshamah.  Why is this so?

 

Parsha ‘Toledot’ opens with “V’eileh toledot Yitzhak ben Avraham, Avraham holede et Yitzhak.” - “And these are the generations of Yitzhak the son of Avraham, Avraham gave birth to [fathered] Yitzhak.”

 

We all know that Yitzhak is Avraham’s son?  Why, then, does the Torah, which also knows it and which also has just described Yitzhak as “the son of Avraham”, add the words, “Avraham fathered Yitzhak”?

 

Rashi catches the Torah’s intentions and answers, “[it was] after his name became ‘Avraham’ that he fathered Yitzhak.”  But what’s Rashi teaching us?  We also know this - don’t we?

 

We do and we don’t.  We do know is as fact.  How many of us, however, understand that in emphasizing that “Avraham fathered Yitzhak” that the Torah is also emphasizing that there is someone who Avraham didn’t father.  Who?  Yishmael!  It was Avram – not Avraham - who fathered Yishmael.  This ‘known fact’ is something that we really don’t notice.

 

The significance of this differentiation is that while the same body physically fathered two sons, nevertheless each son was born to a different entity.  Respectively, Yishmael was born to Avram – the Hebrew letters: ‘aleph’, ‘beit’, ‘resh’, ‘mem’, and Yitzhak was born to Avraham – the Hebrew letters: ‘aleph’, ‘beit’, ‘resh’, ‘heh’, ‘mem’.  The essence of one single letter, the ‘heh’, differentiates between the father of Yishmael and between the father of Yitzhak.

 

For those who have greater Torah depth and knowledge, there is incredibly deep understanding of what the significance and substance of adding an additional letter to a name means, especially Avraham’s name.  Even for those who have only a modicum of Torah knowledge, we recognize that there is substantial import to such a thing.  For those who have neither, it becomes extremely difficult to explain what is involved and what is going on.(*)  In order to do so, it is perhaps easier and necessary to step away for a moment from strict biblical exegesis and analysis.

 

Chazal teach us that there are three partners in the creation of every human being: his father, his mother, and the Holy One, Blessed be He.  There are many understandings to this, one being that as much as we might ever want or attempt to be so, it’s impossible for a parent to be with a child completely every minute of the child’s life.  Because this is reality, it is necessary for God to be the one who is constantly with each of us, to be there for those things that we parents are incapable of being there for.  God, in this sense, is the continuation of parents.

 

Another meaning, a meaning that is unique to God, is that each of us is brought into this world to do something specific, something that we do for God.  That unique something is and can only be known to us, individually, and to God, and for those things that we do uniquely for God it is necessary that God guide us.  (This truth Mordecai taught us when he said to Esther, “mi yodea im l’k’eit k’zot hi’gat……” - “Who knows if it wasn’t for this moment [purpose] that you became [queen]……”)

 

Despite the brevity, this is what we see in the difference between ‘Avram’, the father of Yishmael, and between ‘Avraham’, the father of Yitzhak.  Each father was actually a different father or person belonging to the same man.  One was the human reflection and one the Divine.

 

But lest and before we make a mistake, we must both realize and acknowledge that ‘Avram’, the human reflection, was an exceptionally accomplished human being.  There is absolutely no question about this.  Avram was a man of substance, respect, honor, and achievement and a profound, welcome, and blessed component of society.  He was the kind of person whom many and probably most of us dream and fantasize about as being the ‘ideal’ among human beings.  Had his life merely concluded as ‘Avram’ his would still have been a life of enduring productive and positive contribution to mankind.  But it didn’t.

 

Avraham’s life as ‘Avram’ ended with Yishmael.  Whatever ‘Avram’ could, would, and did bring into this world, it was transmitted and given over to Yishmael, because Yishmael was born into the world of ‘Avram’.  That world, however, the world of ‘Avram’, was in transition to the world of ‘Avraham’, i.e. the time when ‘Avram’, the man, was becoming ‘Avraham’, God’s Divine servant.

 

Whatever the meaning is of “‘Avram’, the man, becoming ‘Avraham’, God’s Divine servant”, it’s overwhelming importance for us is that ‘Avram becoming Avraham’ changed forever the nature of existence.  From that point onwards the world began to be built upon the interaction between man and God, to be a partnership.  We may or may not understand this and we may or may not accept it, but it’s true.  ‘Avram becoming Avraham’ established the defining moment in history when God and man became inseparable and indivisible.

 

So how does all this relate to my encounter?

 

She’s right.  This woman is one hundred per cent correct that on the human level Yishmael is everything that a person could seek and ask for in a human being.  How could he not be?  After all, whatever he is it all it came from ‘Avram’, who was the most exemplary of human beings.  Of course, she’s also very, very wrong.

 

Avraham didn’t come into this world merely to make us better human beings, which is certainly no mean achievement in and of itself.  He came into this world to teach us that in each of us there exists another dimension - our identity and our essence - which connects us to the Source of all Existence.  What Avraham proved is that this dimension is not ephemeral and illusive, but that it is actual and real.  ‘Avram becoming Avraham’ taught us that we are designed to achieve higher and deeper levels of existence in order to fulfill Divine promise.  He taught us that commitment and adherence to the Divine is intended to and does bring concrete results, and it brings them into this world.

 

Returning to our parsha, ‘Toledot”, the purpose of the opening pasuk is to focus our attention that we live in an ‘Avraham world’, a world that is Divine oriented and Divine compliant.  Given this, how do we perceive Esav and Ya’akov, who we know conflict?

 

This question actually asks itself, because unlike Yishmael and Yitzhak, who were born to different parts of the same person, Esav and Ya’akov came into this world together.  They came as twin brothers - as fraternal twins specifically, because after all what could be learned from identical twins where neither is entirely unique to himself from the womb?

 

And the womb is where it started, because it’s as wombmates that Ya’akov and Esav already began the continuation of the striving and contending to unite the Divine and the human in this world.  How do we know it was in the womb?

 

Because when Rivkah was pregnant with Ya’akov and Esav, her insides were constantly exploding, as the Torah describes.  “VaYitratzatzu habanim b’kirbah” - there is no exact translation but usually it comes out “the children were struggling or contending inside her [womb]”.  Rashi, in explaining, quotes Chazal who say “that when she passed an institution of Torah learning that Ya’akov struggled to break out, and when she passed an institution of idol worship that Esav struggled to break out.”  And then Rashi adds his own thoughts, “they contested both worlds”, i.e. everything.

 

To interpret Chazal we would say, left to his own desires, Ya’akov wants the ideals of sanctity and commitment, of introspection, perfection, and fulfillment.  He seeks the discipline of serving, and he possesses the consciousness of attention to another, higher authority.  Esav, left to his own desires, wants education and success, accomplishment, progress, and culture.  He pursues award and achievement, respect and honor, wisdom, esteem, and significance.

 

Is it any wonder, then, that when Esav is born he is seen as ‘Esav’ (in Hebrew: done or finished).  He comes into this world as already completed, i.e. totally prepared for what is needed in life.  He may have shortcomings, but he’s not shortchanged on what is needed to make it in life.  That his brother, Ya’akov, emerges hanging on to his heel (in Hebrew: ‘ekev’ and hence the source of his name) is not a refutation of Esav’s potential.  Instead, it depicts the frustration of defining what this world is all about, and therefore it reflects the continuation of what they intensely contested in the womb.  (And that is why Rashi added, “they contested both worlds”, i.e. everything – either ‘all Esav’ or ‘all Ya’akov’.)

 

Rivkah, their mother, can’t and didn’t really know all this, but the kind and quality of turmoil that was inside her caused her to realize that more than pure birth pangs were plaguing her.  As Rashi relates, “her pregnancy was so unlike any other that was described to her that she turned to God for answers.”  Just as her pregnancy was so non-worldly, so, too, did the answers to her questions have to be non-worldly.  The consequence was that God told her, “two [distinct] peoples are inside you and two nations will be separated from within you.”

 

The results, of course, are the births of Esav and Ya’akov and their respective naming, which we’ve explained.  What follows and seemingly is related to what they are meant to be is a depiction of the boys growing up, Esav as a hunter or pursuer of the hunt, an ‘outdoorsman’, and Ya’akov as a pure soul, a dweller of tents, an ‘indoorsman’.  And in summation the Torah announces that, “Yitzhak loves Esav, because ‘tza’id’ b’phiv’, either the hunt [the game] is in his mouth or he hunts with his mouth, and that Rivkah loves Ya’akov (without explanation).

 

Anyone who has any kind of exposure to religious Judaism at all knows that any and all belovedness for Yishmael and Esav is of the kind that is reserved for sworn enemies and bitter opponents.  Rarely does either get depicted in any kind of positive light.  While there is perhaps valid and ultimately true reason for this, by itself this serves us poorly.  We never get the opportunity to see Yishmael or Esav as people.  They’re always portrayed as some caricature or some gross magnification of the negative.  Few, if any, are those who relate to them as ‘mispachah’, i.e. family.  (Shhh……)

 

With a few deft words, it’s entirely possible to bring them to life and flesh them out as human beings.  In describing Esav as ‘an outdoorsman’ and as one who ‘tza’id b’phiv’, a hunter, it is altogether possible, plausible, and reasonable to say instead that, “Esav is a man of the world and an extraordinarily persuasive individual.”

 

Continuing this, if we would say that Esav was a Rhodes scholar, an Olympic champion, a business tycoon, a supporter of the arts and collector of them, a philanthropist, and an esteemed statesman, we wouldn’t have deviated from the words of the Torah.  Esav owned and dominated this world, as we know it.  Nothing was denied him, and nothing was beyond his grasp.  What is conquerable he conquered, what is purchasable he purchased, and what is attainable he attained.  He had the tools, the talent, the drive, and the background.  It’s in his world that he lives in, and it’s his own life that he lives.

 

Who wouldn’t move worlds to be any of those things we’ve described, let alone to be all of them?  And who would be faulted if he did?  Where’s the evil?  Why in our history is Esav such a despicable person?

 

The answer’s found in defining the dilemma: what does it mean to be a Jew?

 

In Esav’s being outwardly and externally oriented, his desires are for achievements and accomplishments that can be seen and measured, evaluated and valued.  It’s almost as if it’s inconceivable that he’d do them if they weren’t or couldn’t be.  Esav measures his life as it is seen and valued by man, and he accepts and perhaps even expects that what man values is what God values, too.  To convince him otherwise is daunting.

 

And Ya’akov?  Ya’akov is a pure soul, and his is an inside focused world.  Ya’akov looks inside to find not only what he wants or what he can do but more to find what God wants and what God wants him to do.  The glory of achievement that Ya’akov is going to bring to this world is God’s glory, just as is the honor and respect and any and every other worthwhile achievement.  For Ya’akov, the world he lives his life in is God’s world, and the life that he lives is God’s life.

 

As I’ve described the dilemma, it seems to demand an ‘either this one or that one’ solution – either ‘all Ya’akov’ or ‘all Esav’ but not both, as Rashi’s comments on their intra-womb rivalry.  Perhaps if we could somehow see them together, we could understand more clearly what’s involved.

 

Every morning we are blessed to recite in Pirkei d’Zimra some of the sweetest words of David HaMelech.  The ones we want here begin with his blessing, “Va’y’varech David et HaShem l’einei kol hakahal…….” – “And David blessed HaShem in front of the entire congregation…….”, and as they continue (lengthily) there flows a litany of blessing and praise for and of God.  This litany of blessing and praise is not private prayer, nor is it done before a limited audience.  David sings his blessings and praise in front of the eyes of the entire congregation of Israel!

 

David is the greatest man - the sum total of existence and to whom nothing is denied.  Our expectations are that wearing the mantle of majesty and royalty that David, as King, would relate all magnificence and reward to himself.  But he doesn’t.

 

Because of what David says and where he says it, it’s there that we find and see the moment when man - both the truly greatest man and the true greatness of man - blessing God for everything - literally everything.

 

David HaMelech achieved dominion over two worlds, the external and the internal, and in doing so David united them.  David could do this because he was so totally aware of the essence of both who he was and what he was – a descendent of Avraham, a Jew - and, equally, so totally aware of where it’s all coming from.  “It’s not me or mine, and it never was.  It’s all coming from God, and it all belongs to Him - every single bit of it.”

 

It is for this reason that David HaMelech is the appointed King of Israel: when David is king, God is King.

 

This is why our deepest longings, our longings for the Moschiach – Moshiach ben David, are for what we are rebuilding - the Kingdom of David HaMelech, to restore the true greatness of man.  Our prayers to the Holy One, Blessed be He, are that it should be rebuilt and restored – “bimhayra b’yamainu, amen selah” – speedily in our days, amen selah.

 

 

 

(*) To help us grasp the concept of change in a name, if we consider that the transfer of electrons changes the nature of an element or if we think about a genetic switch kicking in, then we have something to work with.  Of course, because a name involves spiritual substance not physical, the change is not measurable quantitatively.