Toledot
Genesis 25:19-28:9
Malachi 1:1-2:7
I remember a great love story. A true one, too. I knew the couple.
This story has nothing to do with their courtship and marriage, both of which happened long before I met the couple. It has nothing to do with the children they raised together, or how they made a living together in difficult times.
The children had grown up and raised families of their own long before I met this couple.
This great love story started in the last decade of the husband’s life, when he was disabled by a major stroke; then he suffered one stroke after another, every year or two. Each stroke left him further diminished, a little less able to care for himself, a little less aware of his surroundings, a little less able to talk. And yet his wife stayed by his side, feeding him, talking with him, keeping him company. She kept this routine even after the family hired a nurse for him.
In the last few years, his disabilities were so great that the family needed to move him to a nursing home. His wife visited every day, sat beside him, talked with him, held his hand, even when he no longer seemed to recognize her.
And then he died. After a period of mourning, the widow resumed her long-interrupted vigorous life. She visited grandchildren and great-grandchildren, teaching them the old recipes; she climbed trees to pick cherries for jam and wine; she planted a spectacular vegetable garden and tended it.
A great love story, but I think also an irrational one. I can imagine a rational voice saying to her, as she sat by his side, “Why do you do this? Do you want to throw your life away? How long do you expect to keep your own health? He has no prospect of getting any better; he might not even miss you.” And so on.
I think we all hear that rational voice, from time to time, telling us under what conditions we should offer love. “When she married him he had such good prospects, but I don’t know why she stays with him now,” the voice says, or “He could find a much more suitable woman now,” and “Her parents put up with a lot from her; but then, they should, considering her extraordinary talent.”
The voice tells us to offer conditional love, while we want to receive unconditional love. It tells us to calculate our relationships, to see what we get from them. Yet sometimes we long to love unconditionally, irrationally. We want to value our own loyalty.
If we have more than one child, we certainly do not want to have favorites. We do not want to give more love to the child whose achievements make us most proud, as if children were a sort of nachas machine.
The Bible presents these two ways to love children in one compressed sentence: “Isaac loved Esau for the venison he ate, but Rebecca loves Jacob” (Gen. 25:28). Isaac and Rebecca each have a favorite among their two sons. Rebecca’s love for Jacob has no reason; Isaac loved Esau for a reason, literally, “for the game in his mouth.” In whose mouth? The text leaves ambiguous whether Esau brought meat back from the hunt for his father, or whether his father just enjoyed having a hunter for a son.
I find it interesting to note the grammatical tenses of the verbs: Isaac “loved” Esau; Rebecca “loves” — continues to love — Jacob. Perhaps this odd choice of tenses provides the source for the observation found in the Mishnah: “Any love which depends on something, when the thing ends, the love ends. Any love which does not depend on a thing never ends” (Avot 5:18).
How do we love those whom we love? Can they count on us to continue to love them even when doing so seems not to our advantage? Should they? A rational counselor wisely advises us to spend our love carefully, prudently, when we have something to gain, or not too much to lose. Yet great love goes beyond limits.