Rebecca and Isaac, I think are my favorite Patriarch/Matriarch pair. Each of them is awesome in their own right, Isaac inheriting his parents’ legacy, loyally following in their footsteps and in the way of God, and Rebecca, bravely and with great kindness and faith, setting off across the desert to be part of the destiny of the people of Israel. As a couple, as the parsha begins, they are unified in the mission of building this destiny. Of all the women described in the Torah as “barren,” Rebecca is the only one whose husband explicitly prays for her. The words used to describe his praying for her, vaye’ater nokhakh ishto, are remarkable. Vaye’ater is not the usual word for prayer, and Rashi connects it with the concept of abundance, perhaps that Isaac prayed copiously for Rebecca. And the word nokhakh, does not usually mean on behalf of. It more often has to do with physical proximity. He prays near her, with her, and he does it a lot. Their connection here as a couple is striking.
But they are also notable in each of their individual connection with the divine. Rebecca, when she feels her twins struggling within her womb, does not turn to Isaac to pray for her. She turns directly to God, and receives her own direct answer, the only one of the Matriarchs portrayed in this way in the Torah. Rebecca and Isaac have always struck me as the most egalitarian, and in many ways the most relatable of the matriarch / patriarchs. They are a true power couple, each of them committed to each other, committed to a common mission, committed to the divine, each a powerhouse on their own.
Even so, things don’t go so smoothly for Isaac and Rebecca in our parsha. It takes them twenty years of marriage before they are able to have children. Then, they are blessed with twins, which, I gather from modern parents of twins, is a challenge in and of itself. And like their parents, each of these twins has a powerful, unique and sometimes challenging personality. Each twin demonstrates leadership potential, but in different ways, and each twin has some qualities that could potentially get him into trouble. Rebecca and Isaac, each with their own perspective, have different views of their children’s strengths and challenges, and they fall into the trap of choosing favorites, a pattern that causes trouble for all of our patriarchs / matriarchs, and leads to bitter sibling rivalry.
One of my Tanakh classes recently ran across the issue of our biblical heroes choosing favorites among their children. We were studying the Joseph story, and one student, an only child, asked, “How did they know Joseph was the favorite?” Though sparked by a later story, the question, and the other questions it brings in tow are just as important here. How did our ancestors handle their feelings of favoring one child over another? Did they let their children know? Did they try to hide it? How do we come to terms with our heroes picking favorite children? I rephrased the question and posed it to the class, “Do any of you ever feel like your parents have a favorite child? What makes you think that one is the favorite?”
Each of the students who had siblings quickly picked the child they felt was treated most favorably. One child, an assigned a different favorite child to each parent. Their explanations of what made it seem that that child was the favorite ranged from less responsibilities to more privileges. Though I’m sure each of the parents of this class would say that they love their children equally, none of the children with siblings responded to the question as if it were preposterous that their parents would favor one child over another, or as if they had never thought of it before.
While as parents, we may feel the same amount of love for each child, we can’t help but see the differences among them, their individual personalities, inclinations, strengths and challenges, which require different parenting, different treatment, and which kids so easily interpret as “unfair”. While the challenges of “unfair!” from children can be hard, we can persevere, knowing that we are raising each one to take advantage of their natural gifts, to grow into the best, strongest, happiest, most fulfilled version of themselves that they can be. The more difficult moments are when two parents see a child’s qualities, strengths and challenges in conflicting ways, or have differing opinions on how those qualities guide what the child needs.
Rebecca and Isaac, power couple, each equipped to lead on their own, each committed to the same goal, are challenged as a couple as they look at their children and see them in conflicting ways, each nurturing the qualities they value most highly in the child who exemplifies those qualities most naturally.
Part of what I love about Rebecca and Isaac, as a matriarch / patriarch pair is that they are so relatable. Each is a real person, with admirable qualities, love for each other as a couple and commitment to their family. And they are so real in their flaws and their struggles. If this power couple struggles so long and hard with sibling rivalry, with giving each child what they need, and still, arguably, doesn’t get it quite right, how can I expect myself to get it right all the time? Isaac and Rebecca are not perfect parents, and not always in sync with one another. They make big mistakes, presumably doing the best they can, but their mistakes do not derail the mission of the Jewish people. They succeed in passing down the values, the mission, the relationship with God from Abraham and Sarah to Jacob, who will take up the endeavor of growing his children into a great nation.
Esau, when he learns that Isaac has given his blessing to Jacob, cries, “Do you only have one blessing, Father?! Bless me too, Father!” Isaac is hard pressed to find a second blessing. He has not considered that both children could be blessed, but for his favorite, he finds something he can offer. How many of us can read this account of Isaac’s view of what he will pass down to each of his twin sons without our hearts breaking. How can a matter of minutes between birth determine for him the difference between inheriting the land and the legacy of what will be a great nation, and receiving nothing? How is it that he only meant to have one blessing?
The Torah is a powerful book, and one of the most powerful things about it is that it preserves the faults, the struggles, the losses of our heroes. We get to see that being a parent, even in a power couple with a direct line to God, was not easy for our heroes, and they made mistakes that we would not repeat. While we couldn’t imagine treating our children so differently as this extreme case, we know that we will probably make mistakes. I remember reading early in my parenting days that we should speak of our children’s challenging qualities in positive terms, “persistent” rather than stubborn, etc. so that we recognize the ways these qualities will serve them well as adults, to teach them to use them in positive ways, rather than quashing them. It is our job to do better than Isaac and Rebecca, to recognize the potential even in the qualities we find most challenging in each of our children, and in partnership with everyone who is a part of raising and educating them, to nurture their unique qualities into a blessing. Like Rebecca and Isaac, we will certainly not always get it right, and may not even agree at all times about what to nurture and how. But we can learn from them always to reserve a blessing for each of our children.
Shabbat Shalom.