This week’s Torah commentary, written by Hebrew Seminary Rosh Yeshivah Rabbi Jonah Rank, has been adapted from an earlier commentary published in 5784. All commentaries on the Book of Genesis in this Jewish year have been dedicated by Barbara and Art Hoffman to the memory of Carolyn J. Hoffman.
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Between 1927 and 1990, nearly any Hollywood casting director seeking an actor who could play a noble Native American leader knew exactly where to turn. Iron Eyes Cody took on the role of one tribal chief after another on camera, 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 on the screen. 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 warned the viewer: “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 Native Americans in the film industry celebrated 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?
Genesis chapter 25:27 introduces us to the tent-dwelling Jacob and Esau the hunter. Their father Isaac preferred Esau’s hunting skills while the twins’ mother Rebecca had a preference for Jacob. (Genesis 25:28). Though Esau was born first (Genesis 25:25), Jacob gave Esau some stew Jacob had cooked up on the condition that all the rights entitled to the firstborn be transferred to Jacob (Genesis 25:29–34).
The trade might not have been so proportional. Soup only lasts until consumed, but the birthright lasts as long as the family will honor it. Still, Rebecca, delighted by the elevated status of her favorite son, grew determined to honor this bum deal. When Isaac called in his preferred son to fetch him fresh meat to accompany the moment Esau might receive a blessing from his father (Genesis 27:1–4), Rebecca had been listening in (Genesis 27:5) and summoned Jacob (Genesis 27:6) to prep him for an elaborate deception. After Rebecca had finished getting Jacob dressed as his brother and assembling the sort of meal that Esau had been ordered to present to their father (Genesis 27:7–18)—Jacob, heeding his mother’s command (emphasized in Genesis 27:8 and 27:13), approached his father (Genesis 27:18).
Isaac, of weak vision, had reason to second-guess which son was in front of him (Genesis 27:18). How could Esau have completed his mission so quickly? (Genesis 27:20.) Why did Esau’s voice sound so much like Jacob’s? (Genesis 27:22.) Was this really Esau? (Genesis 27:24.) On the other hand, Jacob, adorned in this animal-product disguise, felt and smelled just like Esau (Genesis 27:22–23 and 27:27). Jacob, obeying his mother, passed the test and convinced his father that this extra-hairy individual in front of Isaac was worthy of the blessing of primogeniture (Genesis 27:23 and 27:28–29).
Upon Jacob’s departure from his father, Esau returned to his father, who had given away the blessing intended for the firstborn (Genesis 27:30–40). Isaac, shocked by having been so severely deceived, cried out, “מִֽי־אֵפ֡וֹא ה֣וּא” (mi efo hu, “Who then was that!?”) (Genesis 27:33). The Israeli Rabbi Yehuda Herzl Henkin (1945–2020), in his commentary Chibbah Yeteyrah citing this verse, Isaac questioned Jacob’s true nature:
מי הוא יעקב באמת, האם הוא איש אהלים כמו שדימיתי או הצד ציד?
Who is Jacob really? Is he ‘a man of the tents’ [as per Genesis 25:27] as I had imagined, or some hunter of game?
In the ancient rabbinic collection Bereshit Rabbah 67:2, Rabbi Acha noted that the word efo (אֵפ֡וֹא, “then”), uttered by Isaac, shared enough letters with the verb אָפָה (afah, “baked”) and enough sounds with the infinitive לֵיאָפוֹת (ley’afot, “to be baked”) that Isaac had asked a more heated question:
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 Jacob?
According to this midrash, God responded enigmatically to Isaac’s question, through the very words Isaac spoke next in Genesis 27:33: “the one who hunts game.” Neither Jacob nor Isaac was a hunter, but Jacob had disguised himself as a hunter. Was Jacob—along with his descendants, the Jewish people—now fated to a history of being engulfed in the flames of undue enmity?
Like so much of the Hebrew Bible, Parashat Toledot does not leave us here with any idealized role models. Isaac, 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 Isaac regretting, “שאיני יכול לחזור בי” (“that I cannot reverse [anything of] myself”). Could Jacob have undone himself and become a hunter like his brother?
Through the intervention of his mother, Jacob demonstrated that we are capable of transformation, even if temporarily. Though Jacob had no clear reason to want to become a hunter, Jacob nonetheless aspired to a life of responsibility, a life worthy of Divine blessing. (Whether Jacob would pursue this lifestyle admirably is an entirely separate question.)
In reading this week’s portion, the Chasidic master Menachem Nachum of Chernobyl (1730–1797) taught 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.)
To play dress-up is one thing, but to share our stew with siblings and to develop an ethical code demands that we evolve as moral beings. Even on days when we do not believe it, we each can become worthy of an unblemished blessing.
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