Parshat Toldot: Celebrating our veterans

Parshat Toldot 2015/5776

This week we pay tribute to veterans who served in the armed forces, who sacrificed in order to preserve and extend our freedom, and also to help others to be free.

One of our distinguished American veterans, a winner of the congressional medal of honor, Colonel Jack Jacobs, originally from Long Island City, was badly wounded in a North Vietnamese ambush on March 9, 1968.  In his memories of that day, he reflects, quote, “There is a huge benefit that comes with being a very small person.[Col Jacobs is not 5 foot 3]  I can survive on very little food and even less water.  I can curl up and sleep anywhere, crawl anywhere, hide anywhere.  Small people are not much of a target, and so I don’t understand how large, slow people survive the rigors and dangers of war.  If I were two inches taller, I’d be dead.”

Colonel Jacobs, by the way, said in a talk I attended that when he was an analyst on TV news he had to stand on a box when he gave his commentary.

In his case, he was happy to be overlooked by the enemy, happy to be a bit less of a target. 

While being disregarded by the enemy may be an advantage in war, being overlooked, disregarded, or not listened to is awfully painful for us here at home.  Many of us know that despite our best efforts and kindnesses, we have experienced all these alienating feelings.  Perhaps we were the last to be picked when choosing teams at recess in elementary school.  Someone else got the part in a play we thought was best for us.  Someone else got a scholarship or a promotion at work. 

Today we heard the story of Esau, son of Isaac and brother to Jacob.  We hear his pain and frustration at the way his brother twice has ‘supplanted’ him, taken away his birthright and his blessing.  In both situations, Jacob took the initiative, in the first he used the power of his ready made food and Esau’s casual and dismissive nature to take his birthright, and then in the second, Jacob lied to his already blind and weak father, taking advantage of a vulnerable person again, to Esau’s loss.

The word ‘supplanted’ va’ya’k’veni comes from the word akev, meaning heel, the root of the name Jacob who already seeks to take Esau’s place at birth as he holds onto his brother’s heel as they come into the world.

Knowing what it feels like to be taken advantage of, disregarded, overlooked, passed by helps us to identify with Esau’s bitter tears and cries upon hearing from his father that Jacob has taken the blessing designated for him.

Is there anything that we can do when we suffer the way Esau suffers?  Anything we can do more than lamenting the pain of loss and the challenge of rethinking what our future will be given that we did not fulfill our expectations of ourselves.  What can we do with what may now be a more negative image or feeling toward the people who wronged us?

We must confront the fact that Esau says he will seek revenge against his brother. 

But we also recognize that when the brothers reunite after years of living apart, Esau and Jacob embrace each other and Esau, seeing gifts his brother has brought to placate the brother he feels may still harbor anger, says, “Yesh li rav – I have enough, my brother, let what you have remain yours.”

Esau, who pledges revenge, now fulfills the teaching of the Rabbis about a righteous person, a righteous person says “What’s mine is yours, and what’s yours is yours.”

Though he does not say it in so many words, Esau has forgiven his brother.

And so one path for us is the path of forgiveness.  Forgiving ourselves for what we wished to achieve and did not.  Forgiving others so that their actions, whether intentional or unintentional, do not hold sway over our consciousness any more.

But long before Esau speaks words that evoke forgiveness, he does something else – he says to his father, “Halo atzalta li be’rachah – have you not reserved a blessing for me?...Bless me too!”  He speaks up for himself, and requests a blessing from his father.  As the Seforno points out in reading Esau’s request, Esau is thinking clearly, evaluating his options, and Seforno puts these words into Esau’s mouth, “Even though you thought to bless me with the higher blessing, one would not think that it was in your mind that I would have everything and my brother would end up divested of and lacking any blessing.”(Seforno to Gen 27:36)

In other words, of course Isaac must have had two blessings in mind, and he does, a blessing that speaks of healing for it ends by saying, “When you grow restive, you shall break your brother’s yoke from your neck.”  One day you will no longer live under someone else’s shadow, under someone else’s influence, you will find your own way and carve your identity into the story of our people.

May the spirit of Colonel Jack Jacobs, the small guy with a heroic heart, and the spirit of all our veterans encourage us to seek hope and possibility and potential where we might otherwise see obstacles, challenges, and closed doors.

Allow me to share in this spirit from the closing words of Colonel Jacobs book “If Not now, when?”

Some of us are fortunate to spend some time with the few who have served and bear the scars to prove it.  Yes, visiting badly wounded troops makes you self-conscious, uncomfortable, frustrated, angry, and guilty.  But it also generates pride that our society can produce such magnificent young people.  They have an unquenchable optimism, a certainty that they will overcome the rotten luck and physical constraints, and a conviction that they will prevail.  With the same dedication they displayed in volunteering to be our proxies, and in taking care of each other on the battlefield, these splendid citizens take pride in working hard every single day to accomplish simple things that the majority of us take for granted.  The USA would be a much better place if we would emulate them.