Unconditional Love

This week’s Torah portion is Toldot, which means generations. It tells of the birth of the twins, Esau and Jacob to their parents, Rebecca and Isaac. Jacob pursuaded Esau to sell him his birthright, the right of inheritance of the firstborn. There is also a section about Isaac’s servants re-digging the wells of his father, Abraham, and of making peace with the local chieftain; and then there is the well-known story of how Rebecca and Jacob trick Isaac into giving Jacob the blessing of the firstborn, after which Jacob has to leave home to escape his brother’s anger.

Rebecca and Isaac initially had no children. Isaac had been an older groom, she a younger bride. They yearned for children and waited so long, until their prayers were answered with the great blessing of fraternal twins. Esau was born first, a redhead with lots of hair. Jacob, with little hair, was born second. Right from the start, Jacob was a very different person from Esau. The Torah says, “The lads grew up and Esau became a man who knows trapping, a man of the field. But Jacob was a homespun man, abiding in tents. Isaac loved Esau, for game was in his mouth, but Rebecca loved Jacob.” Esau was an active person, a lover of the outdoors, hunting, and physical pursuits. Jacob was quieter: more of a mama’s boy, content to be at home, inside, someone who would rather talk than do; a feelings person who formed a strong bond with his mother. We know how destructive it is when each parent has a favorite, and I’ve spoken on this topic before. We can also look at what the Torah says about the quality of the two relationships, of parent to child and what we can learn from them.

Isaac, we are told, loved Esau because he brought him delicious food. Rashi quotes the translation of Onkelos who said, “Because he would eat of his trapping.” Perhaps Isaac also admired Esau, as the commentators have said, because he possessed the qualities that Isaac lacked: physicality, decisiveness, and energy. Or perhaps he admired Esau, the man of action, in contrast to his inaction at the akedah, when he thought he would be sacrificed. We are not told why Rebecca loved Jacob, but perhaps we can author a midrash to fill in the gaps; to explain how Jacob became Rebecca’s confidante, best friend, and constant companion. Isaac, so many years her senior, may have become remote. Perhaps she forgot her loneliness during the long afternoons of conversation with her younger son. In Pirkei Avot it says, {Mishnah V:16 [V:19 in Hirsch Translation]) “All love that depends on a [TRANSIENT] thing or physical cause will pass away when the cause is no longer there, but the love that is not dependent on a cause will never pass away. Which is the love that depends on a cause? The love of Amnon for Tamar; and which is the love that does not depend on a [TRANSIENT] cause? The love of David and Jonathan.”

As a parent, ideally, we should fill the role of God, loving each child for all of himself: applauding their strengths and supporting them to become strong, independent, happy adults. But so often, whether with children or even with our friends and other family members, our own needs can overshadow the ideal, unconditional love that we are capable of giving to each other. In the book, 20th Century Jewish Religious Thought, in the chapter on Love, Steven Harvey quotes Abravanel’s commentary on “Love your neighbor as yourself,” “Just as you love yourself not for pleasure or benefit, so should you have no ulterior motive for loving your neighbor.” This is also the main topic of Martin Buber’s famous work, I and Thou. He writes, “This…is the sublime melancholy of our lot, that every You must become an It in our world…as soon as the direct relationship has run its course or is permeated by means, the You becomes an object among objects, possibly the noblest one and yet one of them, assigned its measure and boundary…Every you in the world is doomed by its nature to become a thing or at least to enter thinghood again and again…The It is the chrysalis; the You the butterfly.”

Perhaps only God is capable of giving continual, unselfish, unconditional love. The commandment to love your neighbor as yourself is a worthy goal that we will probably never reach; yet we can look at our motives clearly, seeing when our need to take is greater than our desire to give. Rabbi Gelberman has written about the necessity of loving a person the way that person wants to receive it, not the way we want to give it, thus serving the person’s needs and not our own. May we love less selfishly and more unconditionally, walking in God’s ways, emulating the great love God has for us, and giving of ourselves generously to each other. May we be more open to each other, less withholding of our love, and more universal in bestowing it, being more God-like and more human at the same time.