search
Lazer Gurkow

Shaming A Child to His Father

Two young ladies were sitting on a bus chatting about their mutual friend who was engaged to be married. They reviewed her negative habits and traits and chortled that if only her fiancé knew the half of it, he would never marry her.

An elderly lady seated behind them tapped them on the shoulder and thanked them profusely. She introduced herself as the fiancé’s grandmother, and said she would hurry home to call her grandson and suggest they call off the wedding. The girls were devastated. They insisted that they were dramatizing for fun. They did not mean a word they said. The girl is a doll. She is golden. She deserves to be married.

The older lady smiled and reassured them that she was not the fiancé’s grandmother and they had nothing to worry about. But she concluded with a knowing look, “What if I were?”

The Blind Father
Our Patriarch Isaac grew old and blind (Genesis 27:1). While blindness does sometimes come on due to old age, in this case, our sages did not believe it was a symptom of aging. After all, G-d had blessed Isaac upon the passing of his father (Genesis 25:11). It makes little sense to suggest that G-d’s blessing of good health would fade with age. His blindness must have been caused by something else.

Our sages presented several reasons, but I want to focus on one of them. G-d deliberately made Isaac blind to ensure Jacob received the blessings Isaac intended for Esau. (Midrash Rabah 65:8.)

A quick review of the story: Isaac knew his older son, Esau, was not as humble or studious as the younger Jacob. Yet, Isaac thought highly of Esau. He believed Esau’s aggressive, outgoing nature and natural leadership skills could be marshaled, channeled, and utilized for good.

Isaac planned to bestow great blessings upon Esau in his old age, hoping it would inspire him to greatness. He believed if Esau turned a corner, he could leverage his immense energy to become the world’s greatest influencer.

G-d, however, knew that this would be a grave mistake. Rather than channeling Isaac’s blessings for the good, Esau would utilize them to further his wicked ways. He would indeed become a leader, but not a good one.  He would oppress others for personal gain.

G-d, therefore, arranged for Isaac to be blinded before he could give these blessings. This opened the door for his wife Rebeca to send Jacob into Isaac’s study dressed like Esau. Isaac could not see, but he could hear. When he greeted Jacob, and Jacob replied by invoking G-d’s name, Isaac was immediately suspicious. He knew Esau did not easily invoke G-d in conversation. Nevertheless, Jacob was able to allay his suspicions, and Isaac blessed Jacob instead of Esau.

A Drastic Choice
No matter what you think of Esau, you must admit that this was a drastic choice on G-d’s part. What makes it acceptable to heap suffering upon one person to benefit another? In this case, Isaac was made to suffer blindness to benefit Jacob.

Moreover, it wasn’t just a temporary blindness. Isaac was a hundred and twenty three years old when he blessed Jacob. He passed away at the age of one hundred and eighty. This means he suffered blindness for fifty-seven years, all to benefit Jacob.

Now, I get it—I really do. It was not just for Jacob; it was for all of history. If Esau had received the blessings, the twelve tribes might have been born to Jacob, and the entire history of the Jewish people, not to mention their receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai, would have been irrevocably altered.

Still, there was a much simpler way for G-d to prevent the blessings from ending up with Esau. He could have informed Isaac that he was laboring under false assumptions. His hopes that his blessings would inspire Esau were nothing but a pipe dream. Esau was incapable of being inspired. He would drag the blessings and everyone around him down rather than lift them up.

It’s not like this would have been a major surprise for Isaac. He was already aware that Esau was not as holy as Jacob. As we already noticed, Isaac did not expect Esau to invoke G-d’s name while he fully expected it from Jacob. He knew Jacob was the better son, so it would not have been a total surprise. Why did G-d not simply inform Isaac of this rather than cause him blindness for so many years?

Shaming A Child to His Father
The answer is that no matter how obvious the truth is, no father ever wants to be told that there is no hope for his son. Isaac would have much preferred to suffer blindness for fifty-seven years than to experience the humiliation of receiving such painful news about his son. This was not a case in which G-d cavalierly visited suffering upon Isaac unnecessarily. This was a case of G-d being sympathetic and sensitive to Isaac’s true feelings.

That answers our questions and justifies G-d’s behavior with Isaac. Yet the question must be asked: Why does the Torah tell us about this? Why does the Torah record Esau’s shame for posterity when G-d did not even want to tell Esau’s father about it, though he already had an inkling?

The Torah is not a storyteller; it is a book of instruction. If the Torah tells us a story, it is to teach us a lesson. If the Torah says something shameful about someone, it teaches us what to do and what to avoid doing. What moral instruction are we to take from this story?

The moral of this story is that no matter how painfully obvious another Jew’s flaws might be, we must never gossip about it. It might be fun to hear about another’s flaws and it might be fun to be the one to share those juicy bits of gossip. The question, however, is how does this person’s father feel about it? How does he feel knowing that his son’s flaws are the source of gossip among his friends?

Remember that we are talking about Esau, the worst human specimen of his time. Likely one of the worst of all time. Yet, G-d would not say something dispositive about him to his father. G-d would not inform Isaac that Esau was beyond salvation, beyond hope. G-d would not shatter his father’s heart with such news though Isaac already had an inkling that this was so.

Our Father in Heaven
Sometimes, we think that though it is forbidden to gossip about most Jews, there are some Jews about whom we should gossip. Some Jews are so terrible that they deserve to be the subject of our gossip. When we think this way, it behooves us to remember that G-d would not even gossip about Esau. How many Jews are worse than Esau was?

It behooves us to remember that G-d is the father of every Jew. He said to each of us, “I am G-d, Your G-d” (Exodus 20:1). No matter how secretly and quietly we share gossip, G-d hears it. Think of the pain we cause our Heavenly Father when we speak ill of His child. Ah, we say, but G-d already knows. Yes, and so did Isaac. Nevertheless, G-d would not pain him by telling him what he already knew.

Neither should we.

About the Author
Rabbi Lazer Gurkow, a renowned lecturer, serves as Rabbi to Congregation Beth Tefilah in London Ontario. He is a member of the curriculum development team at Rohr Jewish Learning Institute and is the author of two books and nearly a thousand online essays. You can find his work at www.innerstream.org