TOLDOS 1988

In the Torah portion Toldos we learn how Yitzchak gives the blessing to Yaacov.  He had intended, though, to give the blessing to Esau, his elder son.  It is hard to understand, though, why Yitzchak would want to give the blessing to Esau.  After all, the Torah states that Esau was a Yodayat Saiyed.  He was a person who knew how to hunt, an Eesodem, a man of the fields, and Yitzchak recognized this because he told him, "Go out to the field and hunt for me a hunt."  He knew that he was a violent man.  He knew that he was not a studious man.  Why would Yitzchak want to give the blessing to Esau?  What's more, we cannot say that he did not know about Esau's bad qualities, although it is true that the rabbis say when it says that he was Yodaya Sayed, that he knew how to hunt, that it meant that he was cunning with his lips, that he knew how to say the right thing to his father, to ask the right questions of his father so his father would think that he was religious and that he was interested in Torah and learning when really he was not.  He just used words in order to entrap people.
Right before we learn about the blessing we learn how it says that when Esau was 40 years old he took a wife, and there was bitterness in spirit to Yitzchak and to Rivka.  Yitzchak knew that Esau was not following in the proper way.  After all, he had married a woman who his father and mother did not approve of.  He did not go back to Mesopotamia to get a wife from the family.  He married a Hittite woman.  He intermarried. He did not do what his parents had wanted him to do, so why was it that Yitzchak still persisted to give him the blessing?  What's more, why is it that Rivka took the means that she took?  Why did she resort to trickery and deception?  Why didn't she just go to her husband Yitzchak and tell him that Esau was not worthy and that the blessing should go to Yaacov?

Perhaps we can understand this is we look at what happened immediately preceding this in the Torah portion.  We learn how Yitzchak, himself, was a man who always retreated in the face of controversy.  When he dug wells and was successful in the land of the Philistines, the Philistines grew jealous of him and they stopped up his wells, and he did not fight or protest but just left and went to the Negev.  There they followed him again when he dug wells and stopped up the wells that he dug there until finally they realized that it was fruitless.  Yitzchak was the eternal victim.  Yitzchak, when he was taken to the Akedah, after all, was not a little boy of 7 or 8 or 10 or 11 or even 12 or 13.  According to the rabbis, he was 37 years old, but, yet, this is called the test of Abraham not the test of Yitzchak.  Why should this be?  After all, why didn't he protest when he learned what was going to happen to him?  Why didn't he say, "G-d didn't speak to me.  He did not tell me about this command. How can you take upon yourself, Abraham, to do such a thing?  I am a grown man." Yet we do not hear that he protested at all.  Later on in life when he met his problems he did not protest.  He was the eternal victim. Perhaps Yitzchak knew that he was the mystical type.  After all, the rabbis say that when he was put on the altar the angel's tears fell upon him eyes and that is what dimmed him to the world, and maybe caused him not to protest too much.  He was a man who looked at things in an altogether different way than do most people.  Perhaps he realized that maybe that was not the way to be.  Maybe people took advantage of him because he was the eternal victim type.  They knew he would not protest.  Maybe he felt that this type of anti-Semitism was caused because he was a victim. He invited it, and, therefore, he wanted to have as his heir a person who would stand up for himself, a person who would be strong, a person who would not invite this type of hatred.  When he looked at his son, Yaacov, he saw himself.  He saw an eternal victim.  He saw a person who

would invite aggression, who would invite victimization.  This he could not countenance.  This he did not want.  If he had this failing he did not want his son and heir to have this failing also.  He thought that perhaps it was his fault that he was victimized so much.  He was the one who invited the aggression.  Rivka knew better.  Rivka, who grew up in the home of Laban, who was a man who was filled with hatred for Jewish ideals, knew that anti-Semitism had nothing to do with the victim, that anti-Semitism was a disease of the person who perpetrated it, but that whatever the victim did, whatever we Jews do, it does not make any difference. They hate us because of our ideals, like Laban hated Jacob because of his ideals as Hitler said that he hated the Jews because they gave the world a conscience.  Yitzchak thought that perhaps it was his fault, that if he would just change a little bit he would not invite this hatred. Maybe he could not change because this was his character, but his son Esau could be different and not invite this hatred.  Rivka knew better.
In a certain sense this is the argument, too, in Israel today between
the Labor Party and the Lichud.  The Labor Party thinks that the Arabs
really hate the Jews because of the land.  If we will divide the land
everything will be hunky dory, that there is a rational cause for the
Arabs' hatred of the Jews, and if we settle this cause there will be no
hatred of the Jews.  The Lichud, on the other hand, does not believe this
argument of Yitzchak.  They take the side of Rikva.  They say the Arabs
will hate us no matter what we do, and if we are going to give up land,
especially in strategic positions, we are just going to make our position
worse and they will attack us with greater strength from these more advantageous
positions.  The only thing we can do is to be exceptionally strong until
the Arabs realize that they have to make peace with us, not because they
love us or have stopped hating us, but because they have no choice.  This,
too, unfortunately, I am afraid, explains why the people, by and large,
in Israel hate the religious, not just dislike them but hate them.  They
hate the people with the black hats and black coats.  In fact, this phenomenon
is not confined to Israel.  We find this among many Jews in the United
States.  They actually hate this type of a Jew.  Why do they hate this
type of a Jew?  A survey was made in Israel and it was found that those
with the black hats and black coats are hated more than the Arabs.  Why
do they hate these kind of Jews?  Because they think that they are eternal
victims, that somehow when we Jews dress like this and act like this we
invite aggression, and, therefore, it is our fault that we are victims,
not that it is the fault of the Arabs or anti-Semites, but it is our fault.
We invite the aggression.  This, of course, is not true.  In the 2,000
years of exile when Jews did not fight back in the diaspora, it probably
saved Judaism because you know that if you fight back you antagonize your
neighbor more and he is willing to annihilate you.  When you have a moral
enemy, a Christian or Moslem, they get tired of killing you and will stop
after their anger runs its course.  A few people will be killed in a pogrom,
but the rest will be saved.  This is a technique that we all know in interpersonal
relationships.  If you want to get rid of someone, just agree with everything
they say.  They will run out of things to say and they will leave you
alone.  If you don't argue with them they will leave you alone.  Of course,
this does not work with a Hitler whose is ideologically committed to kill
you.  You have to rise up and fight if for nothing more than to preserve
your honor.  When the Jews fought in Europe it was an act of desperation.
They were wiped out to the last man.  When the Warsaw Ghetto revolted
the Germans made sure they killed everyone they could get their hands
on.  Of course, they probably would have killed us anyway.  We took some
Germans along with us which was good, but every time the Jews fought the
Germans killed everyone to the last man.
We have to realize that the reason the Jews in Israel were saved was not because they were fighting Jews, not because they joined the British Army and formed a special division within the British Army, that is not why they saved.  They Jews of Israel would have suffered the same fate as the Jews of eastern Europe, with their black hats and all, if Rommel would not have been defeated at the Battle of El Alamein by Montgomery.  It was the defeat of Rommel which saved the Jewish population of Israel. No matter how we Jews would have fought, if Montgomery had lost the battle of El Alamein, the Jews in Israel would have been put on cattle cars and shipped to Auschwitz, too, as the Jews just a few hundred miles away in Turkey and Greece were shipped to Auschwitz.  What saved us was the defeat of Romme1.
We should not transfer our disgust and anguish and frustration at the gentile nations who hate us onto our fellow Jews.  We are not victims of anti-Semitism because we invite these attacks because we look like victims.  We are victims of anti-Semitism because the anti-Semities hate Jewish ideals and Jewish ideas.  We should not blame ourselves for anti-Semitism.  It is true that not all Jews are perfect and some Jews act in a despicable way, but this does not the hatred toward a whole people. Those who act badly should be hated and should be prosecuted and put in jail, but Jews are hated no matter what we do by anti-Semites because we are Jews, because we stand for Judaism and Jewish ideals even thought many Jews do not practice them.  In fact, as Kristallnacht has just passed it is good to remember these things.
Rivka knew something that Yitzchak did not know because Rivka was raised in the home of an anti-Semite.  She knew but could not convince her husband of this, that Jews are hated because Jewish ideals are hated, and, therefore,
she preferred that Yaacov get the blessing.  If he is to be hated, let him at least know why he is hated.  Let him carry the blessing.  In Israel today we should not vent our own frustration on people who wear black hats and black coats because they are not the cause of the Arabs hating us.  Their stance does not invite victimization.  The Arabs and others hate us for what we stand for, not for what we look like but for what we stand for.
I am reminded of the story of a man who had a grandfather clock that broke. He took it in his arms and took it out to the street to a store around the corner.  As he was rounding the corner, another man did not see him and ran right into the clock.  The man was thrown to the ground.  The man with the clock quickly helped pick him up, dusted him off, and said, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."  The man looked at him and said, "Why can't you wear a wristwatch like everybody else?"  It does not make any difference what we Jews wear.  We are not hated for what we wear or for what we look like or because other people think we look like a victim.  We are hated because of Jewish ideals.  Let us always try to live according to these Jewish ideals.  Let us be strong, too.  I also believe we should fight back, and many of those who wear black hats and black coats also believe so.  The Yera Chasidim serve in the army, maybe not right away, and the Lubavitchers serve in the army, and most of them serve in the army.  Let us always remember not to transfer our frustration and disgust to other Jews, but let us realize that the anti-Semites hate us because of our Jewish ideals.  Let us be strong in these ideals so the Mashiach will come.