When Will We Ever Learn, Lessons from Toldot

This blog is dedicated to the veterans to whom we offer gratitude for their service to our nation, and its ongoing search for peace!

My mother was trained to be a social worker, but in truth she was a historian. At least, she was a purist in her history lessons.

For example, every year on Veteran’s Day, she would remind me that the original name for this occasion was “Armistice Day,” as, in 1918, the official armistice with Germany to end World War One went into effect ‘at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.’

That day marked the conclusion of the “war that will end war” (or as the name evolved, ‘the war to end all wars’). And wouldn’t you know that it was science fiction writer H.G. Wells who fashioned that utopian phrase, believing that the defeat of Germany and its allies – and the world’s witnessing the massive waves of death and destruction that this conflict brought to the world – would persuade future generations to avoid large-scale conflict and strive only for peace.

Were it only so.

In this week’s Torah portion of Toldot, we observe a much earlier struggle that took place in the stories found in the Torah. The twin sons of Isaac and Rebekah – Esau and Jacob – battle against one another while still within their mother’s womb. At that moment, the Torah is silent on the cause of their contention, yet one Midrash tried to solve this seeming omission.

​​​​​​​This Midrash explains that Esau and Jacob each knew of their powerful lineage of patriarchy, and they were fighting over who would come to command the worlds they would inherit: the “Olam Hazeh,” the current world, with its problems and strife, or the “Olam Habah,” the next world, a time of perfection and peace (Yalkut Shimoni on Torah 111).

For the twins, their pre-birth battle represented only the first shots, because the striving twins continued their rivalry into adolescence and onward. Eventually they crafted a modus vivendi, deciding that the best prescription for the illness of their hostilities was for one twin to go one way, and the other to go in a different direction. Agreeing to disagree was the correct resolution for them.

In our modern world’s theaters of conflict, contending parties rarely express a mutual desire simply to return home. Territory, resources, power, pride, glory: these are often the spoils for which nations contend. The early wisdom of our people Israel addressed this in the book of Exodus, in the Ten Commandments, where we are prohibited from merely possessing unreasonable and irrational desires for things that belong to others (Exodus 20:14). Maybe this was that generation’s hope that contention of any kind would end simply when people recognize the futility of constant conflict.

Like H.G. Wells, we were not mistaken, just ahead of our time, though, as a human race, we still need to understand that establishing a world of peace requires work, mutual assistance and support, and the desire to end conflict. The question for us in any age is whether, indeed, we possess those desires!

The wisdom of our people asserts elsewhere that, indeed, the world will one day be united under a single concept of order and peace (Zecharia 14:6-9). What is required is the will, the desire, and the sensibleness of all parties in conflict to recognize that we can all get along if we truly desire it.