A Portrait of Yitzchak and Rivkah Like the other "Imahot,"
Mothers, of the Jewish People, Rivkah had a lot of trouble, initially,
conceiving. Yitzchak prayed to HaShem for the benefit of his wife and the
Torah says that his prayer was answered, "And Rivkah, his wife,
conceived." As her
pregnancy wore on, Rivkah felt a gigantic struggle going on inside her, and
the pain was unnaturally intense. And she went to ask Hashem the meaning.
The Parshah records that Hashem told her, "Two nations are within you,
and two kingdoms will separate from your womb, and one of the kingdoms will
prevail over the other, and the older will serve the younger" (Bereshit
25:23). That fateful and prophetic
final phrase, "And the older will serve the younger" became the
"raison d'etre," the reason for being, for Rivkah.
Let us try to understand the emotional bonds that each of the parents
formed with their twins, those bonds being diametrically opposed, as
testified by Bereshit 25:28, "And Yitzchak loved Esav, because hunted
game was in his mouth; and Rivkah loved Yaakov." When Rivkah first encounters
Yitzchak, he has gone out "to meditate in the field at twilight" (Bereshit
24:63). She asks Eliezer,
"Who is this man, who is walking in the field towards us?" (Bereshit
24:65) When Eliezer answers
"He is my master," Rivkah modestly covers her face with a veil.
But she has noticed the reason for Yitzchak's being in the field;
namely, meditation and prayer. Yitzchak's personality could probably be described by the expression "la-suach ba-sadeh," to meditate in the field. It has an inward component, prayerful and meditative, captured by the word "la-suach," to meditate. But it is also rooted in the real world, the "sadeh," the field. When HaShem answers the prayers of Yitzchak by granting twins to Rivkah, the twins in essence divide his personality between them. Esav takes the "sadeh"
component, and becomes an "ish sadeh,"
a man of the field, and Yaakov takes the "la-suach" component, the
inward, prayerful and meditative
aspect of his father's personality, and becomes an "ish tam," an
outwardly quiet, reserved man; a "yoshev ohalim," who resides in
the tents of study (Bereshit 25:27). Yitzchak's experience as the
"Olah Temimah," the would-be perfect offering of Avraham, did not
fail to leave a mark upon him. His
personal near-brush with death had pushed him towards his other-worldly
self. In order to regain
equilibrium, he now favors his this-worldly component, the field, the hunt,
the "Esav"-aspect of his personality.
Perhaps this is what is meant by "because hunted game was in his
mouth." Rivkah, on the other hand, had grown up the daughter and the sister of wicked persons, and from a place where wickedness was universal, but had not learned from their ways (Bereshit Rabbah 63:4, cited by RASHI). She had rebelled against the materialism, the denial of the spiritual, of her family and her birthplace! She had been especially attracted to the "la-suach," the meditative aspect of Yitzchak. And it was this inward component she perceived and wished to protect and secure blessing for in her beloved son, Yaakov, who was the "silent one." When
Rivkah learned of Yitzchak's intention to give his blessing to Esav, she
encouraged Yaakov, at least on the surface, to deceive his father, and
receive the blessing meant for his older brother. When Yaakov protested that
he feared that he would be cursed by his father rather than being blessed if
he were found out, Rivkah accepted upon herself any such curses.
What gave her the courage to accept upon herself any
"curses," or negative consequences which would follow upon the
struggle between her two sons throughout history, was the Prophecy given her
by G-d that ultimately, "the older would serve the younger," that
in the "Acharit HaYamim," the End of Days, the victor in the
battle for closeness to Hashem would be Yaakov, under the name changed by
G-d to Yisrael. Rabbi Pinchas Frankel |
