{"id":1725,"date":"2020-11-22T19:47:26","date_gmt":"2020-11-23T03:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/11\/22\/the-5-books-meander-week-6-toledot\/"},"modified":"2020-11-22T19:47:26","modified_gmt":"2020-11-23T03:47:26","slug":"the-5-books-meander-week-6-toledot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/2020\/11\/22\/the-5-books-meander-week-6-toledot\/","title":{"rendered":"The 5 Books Meander, Week 6 (Toledot)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>In brief:<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Toledot<\/em> kicks off the story of Isaac and his family of tricksters. I mean no disrespect here. But it&#8217;s hard to avoid the conclusion that everyone in this family is, well, one who tricks. Almost everyone that is. More on that in a moment.<\/p>\n<p>We learn that Esau &#8212; Isaac and Rebekah&#8217;s eldest child &#8212; has traded his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of stew. Which I think is so specific it has to be true. Or invented by someone who really loves stew. <\/p>\n<p>There are inherited wells, stopped and unstopped, which is a metaphor and a half. Isaac shows that he&#8217;s picked up the trick of (deep breath here): pretending your wife is your sister in a way that makes people feel uncomfortable and\/or angry and\/or in debt to you. <\/p>\n<p>And then we get to a moment as complex in its own way as Abraham and the binding of Isaac before it. <\/p>\n<p>Rebekah tells Jacob to trick Isaac into thinking Jacob is Esau, so that Jacob might receive his father&#8217;s blessings and all that goes with them. <\/p>\n<p>Did I mention that this is a family of tricksters? They are such tricksters that when Jacob shows up in disguise, Isaac suspects right away that something is up. &#8216;Are you<em> really<\/em> Esau? Seriously? You&#8217;re not pretend-Esau?&#8217; You get the feeling this family is tricking each other all the time. Everyone that is except innocent Esau.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A couple of thoughts:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>In my hazy memory of this section from childhood, I carried a bias against Esau. Esau, who is so hairy, his name means &#8220;hairy.&#8221; Esau the violent, one assumes. The simple, perhaps. But reading the text this week, I met Esau the hunter, who&#8217;s really the hunted. Esau, unloved or at least underloved by his mother. Esau who&#8217;s so much an innocent sheep that if you want to convince your dad that you&#8217;re Esau, you put on sheep&#8217;s clothing. The story of Jacob and Esau has just begun in this week&#8217;s portion. But already it&#8217;s hard to know who to root for, and easy to see why their story has had power for so many years.<\/li>\n<li>The Torah experiences the past, present, and future as part of the same gust of wind. There are promises made to our descendants (&#8230;like stars in the sky and grains of sand on the beach). Land left by ancestors. Wells left with life-giving water. Birthrights to be bargained over. Blessings. Covenants. Curses to be endured. Our moment is a bead in a chain. And the awareness of that truth is what it means to live a human life. To remember and to receive &#8212; the good and the ill. To make our stand and then to pass things along &#8212; the good and the ill. I know we&#8217;re still only in the first half of the first book, but if we learn one thing from the Torah, I suspect that might be it. It&#8217;s a big &#8216;un. It&#8217;s mortality. And it brings with it appreciation, obligation, and the potential for peace, as we learned last week. The peace of Abraham.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><b>If you&#8217;d like to join in&#8230;<\/b> this is the place for comments and commentary on <em>Toledot<\/em> (Gen 25.9 &#8211; 28.9)<br \/>\n<strong>Next up:<\/strong> <em>Va-Yetse&#8217;<\/em> (Gen 28.10 &#8211; 32.3)<br \/>\n-Cecil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In brief: Toledot kicks off the story of Isaac and his family of tricksters. I mean no disrespect here. But it&#8217;s hard to avoid the conclusion that everyone in this family is, well, one who tricks. Almost everyone that is. More on that in a moment. We learn that Esau &#8212; Isaac and Rebekah&#8217;s eldest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/capellman.com\/cecil1215b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}