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Ernest Goes Unto Himself: Commentary on Parashat Toledot 5784
By Rabbi Jonah Rank, Rosh Yeshivah of Hebrew Seminary
Between 1927 and 1990, nearly any Hollywood casting director seeking an actor who could play a noble Native American leader knew exactly to whom to turn. Iron Eyes Cody took on the role of one tribal chief or another when on camera, thus featuring in films that ranged from the intelligent (White Feather) to the asinine (Ernest Goes to Camp). Offscreen, Cody advocated for the positive portrayal of indigenous people in the film industry. With appearances on the television programs Gunsmoke, Bonanza, and Rawhide—Cody, who was cast in over 100 productions, became most ubiquitous in 1971, when a single teardrop gently cascading from his eye stole the scene of oft-played commercials from Keep America Beautiful. “The crying Indian,” as he came to be called, donning garb akin to that of Plains Indians, quietly lamented human carelessness for the environment in these advertisements as a voiceover declared, “People start pollution; people can stop it.” In his private life, always wearing his braided wig and beaded moccasins, Cody was married to an indigenous woman with whom he adopted two sons of Dakota-Maricopa descent. The actor took great pride in 1995 when a collective of Native Americans in the film industry honored Cody’s lifework.
In 1996, Cody’s legacy became more complicated when The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that the famed actor was born Espera Oscar de Corti to Italian parents in Louisiana in 1904. Was he an impostor?
When Parashat Toledot introduces us to Ya’akov (יעקב, “Jacob”) and Esav (עשו, “Esau”) at the end of Genesis chapter 25, tension immediately arises; Yitzchak (יצחק, “Isaac”) their father prefers Esav’s hunting skills while the twins’ mother Rivkah (רבקה, “Rebecca”) has a preference for Ya’akov (Genesis 25:28). Though Esav was born first (Genesis 25:25), Ya’akov gave to Esav some stew Ya’akov had cooked up on the condition that all the rights entitled to the firstborn be transferred to Ya’akov (Genesis 25:29–34).
The trade might not have been so proportional. Soup only lasts until consumed, but one’s birthright remains upheld for as long as a culture will respect such a status. Still, Rivkah appears to have delighted in the elevated status of her favorite son. Rivkah grew determined to honor this bum deal. When Yitzchak called in his preferred son for the task of returning with freshly acquired meat to eat while the ailing father could bless the eldest with a special blessing exclusive to the firstborn (Genesis 27:1–4), Rivkah had been listening in (Genesis 27:5) and summoned Ya’akov (Genesis 27:6) to prep him for an elaborate deception. After Rivkah had finished getting Ya’akov dressed up like his brother and assembling the sort of meal that Esav had been assigned to present to the twins’ father (Genesis 27:7–18), Ya’akov, heeding his mother’s command (emphasized in Genesis 27:8 and 27:13), approached his father (Genesis 27:18).
The circumstances justified Yitzchak’s skepticism. Yitzchak’s questions reveal his doubt: Which son was this? (Genesis 27:18.) How could Esav have completed his mission so quickly? (Genesis 27:20.) Why did Esav’s voice sound so much like Ya’akov’s? (Genesis 27:22.) Is this really Esav? (Genesis 27:24.) On the other hand, adorned in this animal-product disguise, Ya’akov felt and smelled just like Esav (Genesis 27:22–23 and 27:27). Ya’akov, obeying his mother, passed the test and convinced his father that this extra-hairy individual in front of Yitzchak was worthy of the blessing of primogeniture (Genesis 27:23 and 27:28–29).
Upon Ya’akov’s departure from his father, Esav returned to his father, ready for the now-out-of-stock blessing for the eldest son (Genesis 27:30–40). Yitzchak, shocked by having been so severely deceived, cried out, “מִֽי־אֵפ֡וֹא ה֣וּא” (mi efo hu, “Who then was that!?”) (Genesis 27:33). According to the 20th century commentary Chibbah Yeteyrah from the Israeli Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin, Yitzchak became confused as to the true nature of Ya’akov, as Yitzchak asked in his mind:
מי הוא יעקב באמת, האם הוא איש אהלים כמו שדימיתי או הצד ציד?
Who is Ya’akov really? Is he ‘a man of the tents’ [as per Genesis 25:27] as I had imagined, or some hunter of game?
The Spanish commentator Rabbi Avraham ibn Ezra (1089–1164) claimed that Yitzchak’s word “אפוא” (efo) here held two simultaneous meanings:
מי זה? ואנה הוא? שתי מלות.
[Efo means] “Who is this?” and “Where is he?” This [interrogative pronoun] is [like] two words [in one]!
In the ancient collection of midrash (מדרש, rabbinic “seeking” of new meaning for biblical texts) Bereshit Rabbah 67:2, Rabbi Acha noted that the word efo shared enough letters with the verb אפה (afah, “baked”) and enough sounds with the infinitive ליאפות (ley’afot, “to be baked”) that Yitzchak had asked a much more heated question, namely:
מִי הוּא זֶה שֶׁהוּא עָתִיד לֵיאָפוֹת כָּאן אֲנִי אוֹ בְנִי יַעֲקֹב?
Who is the one here who is destined to be baked [by the fires of the underworld]? I or my son Ya’akov?
According to this midrash, God answered Yitzchak’s question with a more enigmatic answer, drawn from the words Yitzchak uttered next in Genesis 27:33: “הַצָּֽד־צַ֩יִד֩” (hatzad tzayid, “the one who hunts game”). Neither Ya’akov nor Yitzchak was a hunter, but Ya’akov had disguised himself as a hunter. Was Ya’akov—along with his descendants, the Jewish people—now fated to a history of being engulfed in the flames of undue enmity? Esav was in fact a hunter, but he was not one of the options in Yitzchak’s multiple-choice question.
Like so much of the Hebrew Bible, Parashat Toledot does not leave us here with a fully satisfying model that we should emulate were we to find ourselves in the exact situation as our spiritual forebears. Yitzchak, spiritually stymied, did not believe that words spoken sincerely were retractable. The French Rabbi Yosef Bekhor Shor (c. 1145–c. 1195), reading between the lines of Genesis 27:33, found Yitzchak confessing, “שאיני יכול לחזור בי” (“that I cannot reverse [anything of] myself”). Rather, in the enduring legacy of Parashat Toledot, the dupery of our ancestors urges us to consider more than the merit of honesty alone. (Had Ya’akov been brave enough to have told the truth to Yitzchak and to hold Esav accountable to the terms of their barter, could Ya’akov have prevented Esav from fomenting, as announced in Genesis 27:41, murderous intentions against his brother?) The modern reader can also find some admirable redemption in Yitzchak for, in a moment of uncertainty, nonetheless offering the greatest promotion he could to the person who was good enough for the job—even if Yitzchak had not had Ya’akov in mind. Ya’akov presented himself as sufficiently worthy of the blessing. In turn, Yitzchak, rather than demanding of himself full confidence in offering God’s favor to a relative, took a leap of faith; Yitzchak blessed the people Israel into existence, even before Ya’akov was renamed Yisra’el (ישראל, “Israel”) (Genesis 32:29), even before there were children of Israel.
When it comes to fakers, we have reason to pause. We do not know whether Ya’akov, if demanded to defend himself in the wilderness for real, would have been able to walk the walk, so to speak. (Yitzchak, of course, had figured that Ya’akov could not talk the talk; see Genesis 27:22.) Ya’akov, we might argue, may have deserved more rigorous testing; identity theft is no light matter. Nonetheless, Ya’akov—through the intervention of his mother—demonstrated that we are capable of transformation. How successfully we can sustain the ways in which we modify ourselves depends partially on our ability to believe that we are something or someone other than who we have been so far. In Ya’akov’s case, we do not find reason to suspect that he wanted to be a hunter. We do, however, sense that Ya’akov aspired to some sort of life of responsibility, a life worthy of Divine blessing. Whether Ya’akov would go on to exemplify such a lifestyle is an entirely separate question.
In reading this week’s portion, the Chasidic master Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl (1730–1797) read that we should be motivated to see ourselves capable of personal evolution. Rabbi Dr. Arthur Green, summarizing the words of this 18th century teacher, writes:
The greatest enemy, our preacher claims, is resignation, the sense that an evil or undesirable quality is a person’s lot and that it cannot be changed. The belief in the possibility of change, growth, and ultimate transformation is essential. (The Light of the Eyes: Homilies on the Torah, p. 255.)
It may be easy for us to become worthy of sharing stew with our siblings. We also must know that, if we do not yet believe it, we can each become worthy of an unfettered blessing.
With gratitude to Rabbi Dr. Raysh Weiss for the spark linking in this week’s commentary Cody’s biography with Yitzchak’s hearing Ya’akov’s voice.
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