The Three Patriarchs — Their Confrontations in Brief

Very well. Good evening, then. We are continuing our reflection on this identity of Israel, which is forever in the process of fulfilling itself, with the aim of establishing the ben Adam — the son of Adam. That is: to reproduce this universal man in his spiritual impulse, the man who carries within him that divine profile. We said that, sadly, this profile was lost for twenty generations until Avraham; but Avraham took it up again, and he took it up with the qualifier Ivri. Ivri is the man who does not want to follow the movements of the crowd, who wants to attend to his own particularity, his own mission, his own seter. You know, the word seter means “secret.” Each person has, indeed, his own secret, and one is not the other. When the kabbalists analyze the word seter (סתר), they read in it sof, tor and rosh. There are three letters in the word: samekh for sof, the end, the final purpose; tav for tor, the course of life and of history; and resh for rosh, the starting point. In other words, one must always, in principle, project oneself toward the goal to be pursued, and then, all through the life that lies before us, remain faithful to the rosh, to the original matrix. And it is said of the matbea of Avraham — the medallion Avraham wore, for he did wear a medallion — that on one side there was an elderly couple, and on the other side a couple of young men and young women.

In other words, there is no rupture between the past and what is to come; there is a will to renew, to breathe new life, again and again, into the past we have lived. That is how the name of Adam is built. That is the way in which the Avot, the Patriarchs, tried to reproduce this fallen Adam — and, as we said, this is still being accomplished. But in fact every Patriarch — and this is a constant in their lives — the Patriarchs, as Patriarchs, always have someone running alongside them in parallel, but on a totally different road. Avraham has Lot as a rival; Yitzchak, of course, has to deal with Ishmael, who contests him; and then, of course, Yaakov has Esav.

He is the opposite. But all of these are masks that lay claim to the other’s personality, that prevent the other from fulfilling himself completely — and not only within the family. For what happens at the level of Avraham, of Yitzchak and of Yaakov happens within the family itself, but also outside it: in terms of hanhagah, of leadership, of politics. With Avraham, of course, we are dealing with Nimrod — Nimrod, who wants to unseat Avraham from his spirituality. With Yitzchak we have Avimelekh, who wants to strip him of the Promised Land. And finally, with Yaakov, we have Esav — another who wants to seize Yaakov’s birthright and who claims that he, and not Yaakov, is the true Israel.

We said that this title of Adam is replaced by Israel. When Israel attains this title, there is no further change of name: one is Bnei Yisrael, the children of Israel. At that moment one becomes capable of transmitting, in turn, this reality of Adam. But we cannot discover this together without referring to the lives of the Avot, the lives of the Patriarchs. And the life of the Patriarchs, if you like — the order that governs it — runs through the end of the Book of Bereshit and on until Matan Torah, the Revelation. For until the Revelation there are no established rules; there are no mitzvot. There are middot — ways of behaving, ways of being, and that is all.

What we have to learn from our Patriarchs is not commandments, nor rules of life, but a model of existence — each in his particularity, each in his nature, of course. And first of all comes this opening of oneself: that is the hesed, the loving-kindness, of Avraham. That is why Rabbi Akiva said that everything — the whole Torah — rests on ve-ahavta le-re’acha kamocha, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But this “as yourself” means: it is in loving your neighbor that you fulfill yourself. If you do not show this love, if you do not open yourself to your neighbor, you will remain folded in on yourself, shut up in your ego; you will not be able to grow, to move forward. What allows you to move forward is hesed. And then, what does this hesed give you? It gives you the strength to master your own personality, to become master of yourself — that is the path of the Patriarchs. When one has become master of oneself in this love — and take note — one reaches something further. For I have said it and I say it again: the one who showed love in the true sense, without needing to put the person to the test, is Yitzchak. Yitzchak truly loved Rivkah. But he loved her — the text tells us — when he saw that the dough did not spoil, that there was indeed a blessing, that there was a light burning constantly in his dwelling, and that the atmosphere suffered from no shadow whatsoever. You see: she was reproducing for him the spiritual model of his mother, and then he loved. He had no need to put the person to the test. He loved her even before she gave him proof.

This love is a credit he extends; it is built on trust. And in this sense Yaakov indeed represents both emet and ahavah — truth and love. Truth, because he knew how to show this hesed, this gevurah in the face of Esav, and the love to which he bore witness. And here our Sages asked themselves: this love that is asked of us, ahavat ha-beriyot, the love of one’s fellow creatures — how is one to bestow it? How does one reach it? Does it pass through ahavat Hashem, through the love of G-d? Must one first have a firmly established spiritual line in order to project it onto one’s neighbor? Or is it love of one’s neighbor that conditions our love of G-d, our spiritual growth? It is the chicken and the egg. And our Sages say that these two loves are intertwined; they form one body, and one must never try to define the one by the other.

Consequently, sometimes it is the image of G-d in man that propels me toward him, and sometimes it is the presence of the other that imposes upon me the presence of the Other par excellence — with a capital O. That is Israel; that is Adam; that is indeed the project over which Esav and Yaakov contend, because these are two tendencies. And this, I must say, one needs to know; otherwise one understands absolutely nothing. It holds for the very study of Torah: if one wants to know oneself, it is through the mirror of the biblical text. You know, if we do not wed the biblical figure we are studying in all his aspects, we are incapable of understanding the Torah, of penetrating its secret, or even of finding a solution to our own problems.

I do not find the life of Avraham entirely within myself; but there are episodes that tell me I am Avraham. There are episodes that tell me I am […], that I am Yosef, that I am Yehudah. I live this through the stages of life — perhaps on a small scale, but it is there. And then I am that figure; I am that text. It is the book of my own story, the story of Adam, of the Adam I want to be — the one who bears this divine profile. And it is in the same way that one must view the biblical commentators. It is said that we have four levels of interpretation. These four levels interact — I would not say they are superimposed; they interlock. The peshat, the literal meaning, is itself a sod, itself a secret; it is itself a midrash, itself a remez, an allusion. It is not another facet of interpretation; it lives together with the same interpretation, with the four readings of the text. And then the text reveals its secret to me — but at the very moment it reveals its secret to me, it reveals me to myself.

That is why the struggle between Esav and Yaakov is decisive. Decisive — why? Because if we do not manage to find the means of incorporating Esav — that is, of putting on his garments, of having ha-yadayim yedei Esav, “the hands are the hands of Esav,” alongside ha-kol kol Yaakov, “the voice is the voice of Yaakov” — then we separate the voice of Yaakov, the voice of the spirit, the voice of prayer, from the problems inherent in everyday life. We lose our footing. We lose our footing because at that point we lack the strength to fight, and […] the world is handed over to violence. Which violence? That of Amalek. And Amalek — by whom is he generated? That is the problem addressed at the end, when Yaakov succeeds in convincing his father Yitzchak that he can be ha-kol kol Yaakov ve-ha-yadayim yedei Esav.

Then Yitzchak can say gam baruch yihyeh, “he shall indeed be blessed”: he deserves this blessing because he will not depend on an outside force. Rather, this inner struggle, present since conception, is resolved by the fact that Yaakov has taken this capacity into his own hands and integrated it within himself. So it puts him in difficulty, it forces him to flee his brother, it forces him to live twenty years far from his parents. But when he returns, he can — by engaging in combat with Esav — claim the title of Israel, claim the recognition of Adam. Now, we said that all this depended on whom? It depended on the woman. It is not for nothing that the serpent, at the very beginning, sees in the woman the victim — the principal actor of the story. If he truly manages to overcome the woman’s resistance, then in the end he has won his case. And unfortunately, he did win. He succeeded, he succeeded, and Adam suffered for it. But among the Patriarchs, the one who will truly set things right is the woman: she asserts her mastery of the situation, her personality; she does not let herself be pushed aside, and she calls to order: Sarah calls Avraham to order over Ishmael, Rivkah calls Yitzchak to order over Esav, and Rachel and Leah do the same regarding Lavan.

The same process will resume with the children of Israel in Egypt. The children of Israel in Egypt — you know very well that Shemot is the birth of the Jewish people, whereas the birth, the creation of the world, is in Bereshit. And we have two calendars in one. We have the calendar of creation, which begins in Tishrei, but we have the calendar of the people of Israel, which begins in Nisan. Nisan’s is that of our own history; Tishrei’s is that of the human, of the universal. But we must live both of them: the one in awe — the universal one stands under the sign of awe; Pesach is in love, it is Shir ha-Shirim, the Song of Songs; the universal one is din, justice.

There, on the day of Rosh Hashanah, […] it is the merit of Yitzchak. And [Pesach] is kol dichfin yeitei ve-yeichol: “Let all who are hungry come and eat.” Whoever is hungry, we will serve him food; whoever is in need, we will help him. That is hesed. So between these two stands Shavuot, Matan Torah. The giving of the Torah means mitzvot: they are no longer middot; the middot have become commandments. A people cannot be left, let us say, to the improvisation of its personality. It must be given elements to guide it on the road to success. So we have finished with the middot of the Avot, and we begin with the mitzvot, the commandments. And these commandments become necessary once the people has known exile, once it has come into contact with other cultures. It must then be helped not to scatter, not to be a Jew who defines himself in relation to another culture.

People used to say: “I am a French Jew,” and another is a German Jew, another an American Jew, another a Polish Jew. So you are not only a Jew: you are also Polish, you are also German, you are also French. There is a personality that is somehow altered by your belonging to another culture, to another citizenship. Where you can truly be simply Israel, simply a Jew, is when you are in your own land, Israel — then you cease to be German, French, Polish, and so on. That is the identity we claim, but which we do not have, which others refused to recognize in us as a people. Let us remember: in the countries where we were granted recognition, we were recognized as individuals, not as a collectivity.

We are full citizens, but we must never claim for ourselves a collective, national force — no, never that; quite the opposite. If we are recognized and granted rights, it is not as Jews but as French citizens of the Jewish faith, Belgian citizens of the Jewish faith, German citizens of the Jewish faith. And so being Jewish becomes a religion. But the Jew is not a religion: the Jew is Israel; he is Adam — he is Adam. All this will explain to us this last part, this conclusion of chapter twenty-seven. We have already said that there is a struggle here between two points of view. That of Yitzchak, who is ish adamah, the man of the land, who understood that one cannot simply be content with reopening the old wells of Avraham.

No — one must dig one’s own well; one must accomplish one’s own work. And so, with this work that he himself accomplished — the well of Rehovot, ki atah hirchiv Hashem lanu, “for now G-d has made room for us” — he wants to pass this teaching on to Yaakov, who is withdrawn into himself: above all into study, spirituality, love. But he is alone in this. He cannot see himself either working the land or leading a flock; yet he must show his willingness to become that, to do it when necessary. And he will do it. At Lavan’s house, it was no game — but he did it, he did it, and it is thanks to this that he succeeded. But is that the only reason he went to Lavan?

From this point of view, there are in fact two departures — there are indeed two departures. At the end of chapter twenty-seven, the text tells how Esav learns that his blessing has been diverted and that he will not be able to lay claim to his birthright. And we have distinguished between the birthright and simply being the eldest: being the eldest is simply physical, biological, whereas the birthright is not necessarily biological — the birthright has a spiritual character. Esav, who now laid claim to it, thought that all he had really given up was this title of eldest. This title of eldest was worth nothing [to him]; it does not pass on by inheritance. What would he do with it? One day or another he will die, and it will be of no further use to him.

But the birthright is what makes it possible to transmit, and that is what he claims — and it is what is claimed from us as well, by others. So what are we to do when we feel ourselves assailed by this outside force that bears a grudge against us because it has not obtained the recognition that we have? Rivkah says: behold, Esav is preparing to kill you. And yes, we are back with Kayin and Hevel — it all comes back. What are we really to do in the face of people who bear a grudge against us because we manage very well to carry both things at once? And not only do we manage it, but we succeed — we succeed perfectly. They would have liked us to be merely “of the Jewish faith,” but we are not merely of the Jewish faith.

We are Israel, and yet we have taken on the hands of Esav. We incorporate them — and we incorporate them together with the word of Yaakov: ha-kol kol Yaakov ve-ha-yadayim yedei Esav. They are part of ourselves. They are not other hands, not foreign hands. They are our own hands, obeying kol Yaakov, the voice of Yaakov. Hevel believed he could nevertheless live alongside his brother, alongside Kayin. In the end he was the victim: yes, his brother killed him. And Esav, too, is preparing to kill. So, knowing this, one must act as soon as things look bad — not stay where one is and hope for better days.

Kum b’rach lecha el Lavan achi Charanah, “Arise, flee to Lavan my brother, to Charan,” she says to her son. But where does she send him? She does not send him to a place where he will be in complete safety. Lavan is also a problem. But for the moment it is another country, where this hostility has not reached that extreme. “And there too, bear in mind that you will not find the same peace you would find in the Promised Land; but always think of yamim achadim, of spending a few days, until your brother’s anger subsides.” Rivkah is aware that she is the mother of both Esav and Yaakov. Rivkah speaks to Yaakov; she has not exchanged a single word with Esav. And Yaakov, without this stratagem directed by his mother, might never have had contact with his father either.

It is absolute silence. Rivkah does not speak to her husband; she exchanges words with him only after this diversion of the blessing. Until then, each lives in his own sphere, in his own life. And so, in the end, there is the respect that children owe their parents. It is not said [of Esav] that he knew how to listen to his mother’s voice or to respect his mother. No: Esav listened to his father’s voice. This is not the case with Yaakov, for of Yaakov the text says va-yishma Yaakov el aviv ve-el immo, “Yaakov listened to his father and to his mother” — to the father and to the mother.

Which father and which mother does this concern? Why this insistence? The father is the one in charge of your education. The mother is the one who gives you the means to defend yourself against the hardships of daily life. So who is your mother? It is Israel — the assembly of Israel. You must heed both the call of G-d and the assembly of Israel; you cannot turn a deaf ear to either. And Yaakov had this capacity. Whereas Esav, even in his spiritual impulse, could listen only to avi, “my father,” and not to immi, “my mother.” And here this raises a grave problem — above all when the question of posterity arises, the question of the children, for that is what weighs most on both of them, in the second place […].

Rivkah and Yitzchak — for Yitzchak calls his son; but first, forgive me, Rivkah. She says, lamah eshkal gam shneichem yom echad, “Why should I be bereft of you both in one day?” “I am your mother, I will remain your mother — of Yaakov and of Esav alike. This preference given to one over the other comes from the fact that I was told, when there was that struggle in the conception of my children, ve-rav ya’avod tza’ir, ‘the elder shall serve the younger’: two personalities, two strong personalities, will contend for dominance, and in the end the elder will bow to the demands of the younger.” But she probably did not mention this to her husband. And now what she fears is failure on the other front. What is the other front? It is that of Yaakov’s wife, of the other one — all the more so since she knew that [Esav] had altered the personality of Adam by taking daughters of Canaan, who were morat ruach, a bitterness of spirit, who became spiritual guides, who wanted at all costs to introduce their [idolatry] into the spiritual path of the holy ones: religious syncretism. And there, there is a failure. There is a failure because the child born of these marriages will not be Ivri; it will not be the child of Avraham the Ivri; it will not be the child of the man Avraham wanted to recover, whom he had guarded jealously since the origins of Ever. We have spoken of this undifferentiated stock of the first man, which was not to be broken apart as happened in the dor haflagah, the generation of the dispersion. Avraham had taken it up on his own account, and the husks — Ishmael and Esav — were stripped away. But now, if Hittites and Hivites interfere in this procreation, the child will be […], no longer Ivri; the profile of Adam that could indeed restore this undifferentiated stock will no longer be possible. And that, sadly, is what happens with Esav. For he tries to correct his course, but to correct it he would have had to send away the Hittite and Hivite daughters he had taken — the two wives, who were idolaters.

But no. What does he do? He perceives that these women did not much please his father, since his father had instructed his brother not to take Canaanite daughters and to go and choose his future wife in the family of Nachor, which had remained attached to Ever. Why had it remained attached to Ever? Not on the male side, but on the female side. The female side, which was capable of bearing children, still retained within it the possibility of reproducing this undifferentiated stock. And that is Rivkah, Rachel and Leah. So [Esav] goes and chooses a daughter — thinking he is doing the right thing — from the line of Ishmael: Machalat bat Yishmael, Machalat the daughter of Ishmael. And this we have lived through, and we still live through it in history, for behind Ishmael, Esav always hides — or Esav hides his identity.

And when there is an alliance between Ishmael and Esav, who will be born of this union? Amalek. And the fruit of this alliance of Esav with Ishmael is the creation of a new identity, which is brought to light, for here the text says Esav hu Edom, “Esav is Edom.” A new identity comes to light: that of Edom. And this recalls, indeed, red — the sun — with its infrared and ultraviolet. […] The infrared […]; the ultraviolet, […] a wider radiance. But the man here is Esav — Esav. And of him it is said va-yelech.

He walks. You see, the text says va-yelech Esav el Yishmael, “Esav went to Ishmael.” There is a small nuance here to which people do not always pay attention: va-yelech Esav el Yishmael — he walked. Of Yaakov it is not said that he walked: he went out, he left. He does not remain in the state he was in; he moves forward. No — he comes out of his shell and sets out on a new road. That is the difference that will always remain and will mark the two lines of descendants. That of Esav: let us move along at a steady pace and always try to keep the same profile. Whereas that of Israel is hadash, it is mitchadesh — perpetual renewal. There — I will stop here, if you have any questions.