Delivered by Student Rabbi Ben Russell on Erev Shabbat Tol'dot 5787
There is an age-old family story I suspect most of us have witnessed. Two children grow up in the same house, with the same parents, surrounded by the same family values and traditions.
And somewhere along the way, one child discovers that the other is the favorite. Now, sometimes that's an exaggeration. Sometimes it's a misunderstanding. And sometimes it's true.
What happens when we begin to believe that love is something we have to compete for?
Whatever the circumstances, there is a central question worth asking.
What happens when we begin to believe that love is something we have to compete for?
Our Torah portion this week, Toldot, introduces us to two brothers whose relationship will eventually be torn apart. Jacob and Esau.
And before either brother deceives the other, before anyone steals a blessing, before Esau threatens Jacob's life, the Torah tells us something about their parents.
Genesis 25:28:
Vaye'ehav Yitzchak et Esav ki tzayid b'fiv, v'Rivkah ohevet et Ya'akov.
“Isaac loved Esau because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah loved Jacob.”
That's an extraordinary sentence.
Isaac loves Esau. Rebekah loves Jacob.
Now, the Torah doesn't tell us that Isaac didn't love Jacob, or that Rebekah didn't love Esau. But it does tell us where their preferences lay.
And I wonder what it was like to grow up in that household.
Did Jacob notice the way his father's face lit up when Esau returned from hunting? Did Esau notice the attention his mother gave Jacob? Did either brother wonder what he might have to do to become the favorite of the other parent?
The Torah doesn't tell us.
But those of us who have grown up in families—or raised families of our own—know that children notice things.
They notice who gets praised. They notice whose accomplishments are celebrated. They notice whose mistakes are forgiven quickly, and whose mistakes become family stories that get told for years.
And sometimes, without ever intending to, parents teach their children that affection and approval are things to be earned by becoming the right kind of person.
Which leads us to the second part of our original question. What happens when being loved starts to feel like being chosen over someone else?
But love and wisdom are not the same thing.
Now, I don't believe Isaac and Rebekah set out to divide their family. I suspect they loved both of their children deeply.
But love and wisdom are not the same thing. And sometimes the ways we express love have consequences we never intended.
A parent praises one child for being responsible. And the other child begins to wonder whether anyone notices how hard they're trying.
A parent celebrates one child's talents. And the other begins to believe that whatever they do will never be quite enough.
A parent identifies so strongly with one child that the other begins to feel like a stranger in their own home.
None of those parents necessarily intends to hurt anyone. But the hurt can still be real.
And if we're not paying attention, those small differences can grow into something much larger. In Toldot, they do.
Years pass. Jacob obtains Esau's birthright in exchange for a meal. And later, when Isaac is old and his eyesight has failed, Rebekah helps Jacob disguise himself as Esau so that he can receive the blessing Isaac intended for his older son.
Jacob goes to his father. He pretends to be his brother. And Isaac blesses him.
Then Esau returns. He prepares the food his father requested. He brings it to him. He asks for his blessing. And suddenly, both father and son realize what has happened.
The Torah tells us Isaac trembles violently. And Esau cries out with a great and bitter cry.
Then Esau asks his father a question that is absolutely heartbreaking.
Havrachah achat hi l'cha, avi?
“Have you but one blessing, Father?” (Genesis 27:38)
And then he pleads:
Bar'cheni gam ani, avi.
“Bless me too, Father!” (Genesis 27:34)
Bless me too. Even after my brother has received what was meant for me. Surely, Father, there must be something left for me!
Have you but one blessing, Father?
Now, Esau is not an innocent bystander in this family's history. He has made choices of his own, and the Torah doesn't ask us to ignore them.
But listen to the anguish in that question. Have you but one blessing, Father?
I wonder how many people have spent their lives asking some version of that question.
Do you have anything left for me? Can you be proud of me, too? Can you see something good in me without comparing me to someone else? Can you love me for who I am, rather than for how closely I resemble the person you hoped I was?
And here's what makes this story so painful. The blessing isn't simply a compliment or a kind word. In this family, it carries authority, inheritance, and a vision of the future. Isaac cannot simply repeat the same blessing as though nothing has happened.
How often do we confuse being chosen with being loved?
But I wonder whether, long before that moment, Jacob and Esau had already learned to experience not only blessing, but love and approval, as something scarce. Something one brother could possess only if the other went without.
And that brings us to a question about our own relationships. How often do we confuse being chosen with being loved? How often do we make the people closest to us feel that they must compete for our attention, our approval, or our affection? And how often do we do it without even realizing it?
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, one of the great Jewish spiritual thinkers of the modern era and a pioneer of Jewish Renewal, drew on the ancient mystical teaching of the Four Worlds to help us understand that we experience life on more than one level.
There's what happens. There's what we feel about what happens. There's the meaning we make of it. And there's the deeper spiritual reality we might discover if we're willing to look beyond ourselves.
Think about Isaac and Esau through these four dimensions.
There is what happens: Isaac favors Esau, while Rebekah favors Jacob.
There is what each person feels: perhaps pride, perhaps jealousy, perhaps the fear of not being enough.
There is the meaning each person makes of those experiences: perhaps the belief that being loved means being chosen, and that someone else's blessing must come at our expense.
But there is also a deeper spiritual question: Can we recognize the sacred worth of another person without measuring it against our own? Can we recognize that another person's blessing need not diminish ours?
And here's why that matters in our relationships: we can share the same moment with someone, yet experience it in profoundly different ways. What seems like a simple act of love to one person may carry an entirely different meaning for another. And unless we're willing to look beyond our own intentions, we may never recognize the difference.
A parent may intend encouragement. A child may experience comparison.
A parent may intend to celebrate one child's gifts. Another child may hear that their own gifts aren't worth celebrating.
And both the parent's intention and the child's experience matter.
We cannot understand what happens in a relationship simply by examining what we meant to do. We also have to care about what the other person experienced.
And that requires something of us. It requires curiosity. It requires humility. And sometimes it requires the willingness to hear something about ourselves that we would rather not hear.
Because it's easy to say, “But that's not what I meant.” It's much harder to say, “I didn't realize that's how you experienced it. Tell me more.”
And I think that distinction matters enormously.
Especially for those of us who have children, grandchildren, students, or other people who look to us for encouragement and approval.
But this doesn't stop at the doors of our homes or classrooms. Think about how often these same dynamics play out in the workplace, particularly between managers and employees.
But it does mean making sure that our differences in judgment don't become differences in dignity.
People notice who gets praised and who gets overlooked. They notice whose mistakes are forgiven and whose are remembered. They notice who gets opportunities to grow and who gets passed over.
Of course, treating people fairly doesn't always mean treating everyone identically. But it does mean making sure that our differences in judgment don't become differences in dignity.
And just as in a family, these differences don't merely shape how people feel about the person in charge. They shape how people feel about one another.
Sometimes, without ever intending to, we create competition where there could have been cooperation, resentment where there could have been trust, and division where there could have been community.
We may not be able to control every way our words are received. We may not always recognize when someone feels overlooked. And we certainly cannot guarantee that the people who look to us for encouragement or approval will never experience jealousy or disappointment.
But we can pay attention. We can ask questions. We can notice when we're constantly celebrating one person's strengths while overlooking another's. And we can remind the people we love that their worth is not measured by how well they compare to someone else.
The son she favored is now the son she must lose.
Because look at what happens in Isaac's family. By the end of this portion, Esau is so furious that he intends to kill Jacob after their father's death. And Rebekah sends Jacob away.
The son she favored is now the son she must lose. And the brothers who began life struggling together are separated by anger, fear, and betrayal.
This is where favoritism, deception, and competition have brought them.
Not to a happier family. Not to a more secure future. But to a broken relationship.
We will never know whether Isaac and Rebekah looked back and wished they had done things differently. Nor can we say that Isaac and Rebekah created every problem in their sons' relationship. But their favoritism helped shape the world in which those problems grew.
Last week, we stood in our imaginations beside Isaac and Ishmael as they buried Abraham together. We wondered what journey had brought those two brothers to a place where they could stand beside one another despite their very different histories.
This week, we meet another pair of brothers. And this time, we watch the distance between them grow.
But their story isn't over. In a few weeks, Jacob and Esau will encounter each other again. And we’ll have to ask what those years apart have changed in both of them.
For now, though, we are left with Esau's question. Have you but one blessing, Father?
Imagine how different a family might become if no child ever had to wonder whether there was enough love left for them.
If we could celebrate someone else's blessing without feeling diminished.
And perhaps the responsibility doesn't belong only to those who give the blessing. It belongs to those of us who watch someone else receive one.
Imagine how different our friendships, our marriages, and even our congregation might become if we stopped treating another person's gifts as a threat to our own. If we could celebrate someone else's blessing without feeling diminished. If we could recognize that the people we love do not have to be alike in order to be equally worthy of our affection.
And perhaps, instead of spending so much of our lives wondering whether someone else has received more than we have, we might begin asking what we have to give.
How can I make sure the people in my life know that there is a blessing for them, too?
,שבת שלום
Student Rabbi Ben