Vayeitzei

After fleeing Beer-sheba to avoid the wrath of his brother (who possessed that unfortunate combination of being simultaneously really pissed off, and really handy with a bow and arrow), Jacob arrives in Haran, where he meets his cousin Rachel and is instantly smitten. He offers to work for Laban, Rachel's father, for seven years in exchange for the girls hand in marriage. Laban accepts the proposition, and the Torah gives us a terrifically saccharine verse.

So Jacob worked seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him a few days because of his love for her. - Gen 29:20

Awwwww... anyway, we get to the big day, and either Jacob is blind drunk or his bride is wearing a burqa, because - what do you know - he marries Rachel's sister, Leah. So he gets a little pissed off and confronts Laban about it. Laban explains that he switched the girls because "it's not the done thing for the younger sister to get married before the older". For some reason, Jacob is cool with this. Maybe he was just overcome with awe and respect because he'd finally met his match when it came to screwing people's lives through deception and fraud. I'm not a fan of Jacob, if that's still unclear. Really not a fan.

Laban follows up with, "I'll tell you what: I'll let you marry Rachel as well, but after you do you gotta work for me another seven years." At this point, the right next move for Jacob
is obvious: marry Rachel and run. Instead, he marries her and then actually works another seven years for Laban. Then he purchases some of Laban's flock for additional work. The text doesn't specify a figure, but the midrashic consensus seems to be six years.

Now here's the good part. He gets to the end of his six years and flees, in case Laban decided to take Rachel and Leah back. Dude. If you're going to flee, you may as well have done it thirteen years ago. You'd have the same wives, you'd just be down a few sheep. Big freaking deal.

Speaking of wives: by the time chapter 30 of Genesis rolls around, Leah has four kids; Rachel has zero.

Rachel saw that she had not borne children to Jacob, so Rachel became envious of her sister; she said to Jacob, "Give me children - otherwise I am dead." - Gen 30:1

Needy bitch, right?

Jacob's anger flared at Rachel, and he put her in her place with his mighty pimp hand. - Gen 30:2

No, just kidding.

Jacob's anger flared at Rachel, and he said, "Am I instead of God Who has withheld from you the fruit of your womb?" She said "Here is my maid Bilhah, consort with her, that she may bear upon my knees and I too may be built up through her. So she gave him Bilhah her maidservant as a wife, and Jacob consorted with her. Bilhah conceived and bore Jacob a son. Then Rachel said, "God has judged me, He has also heard my voice and has given me a son." She therefore called his name Dan. - Gen 30:2-6

Does anyone else find this whole affair really, really creepy? Get hubby to impregnate the maidservant, grab the kid, claim it as your own? Kinda messed up.

I know I did firsts last week, but I can't miss the opportunity to drop this one in. Here goes: the first example of male prostitution in the Torah:

Reuben went out in the days of the wheat harvest; he found dudaim in the field and brought them to Leah his mother; Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me some of your son's dudaim." But she said to her, "Was your taking my husband insignificant? - And now to take even my son's dudaim!" Rachel said, "Therefore, he shall lie with you tonight in return for your son's dudaim." When Jacob came from the field in the evening, Leah went out to meet him and said, "It is to me that you must come for I have clearly hired you with my son's dudaim." So he lay with her that night. - Gen 30:14-16

The Torah™: proud supporter of the pimp trade since 1313 B.C.

Toldot

Now here is a riddle
To guess if you can...
Who is the monster?
And who is the man?

- Walt Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Toldot is the story of two brothers: Esau, a hunter, a man of the wild; and Jacob, a scholar, a man of the book. Theirs was a rivalry that predated even their birth; as unborn twins they engaged in fetal fisticuffs - a pastime which certainly didn't endear the tykes to their collaterally damaged mother. (Gen 25:22) The boys were born Esau first, with Jacob grasping his brother's heel. Already the literary symbolism draws us to Esau as the protagonist, with Jacob the clear antagonist. As they boys grew, their parents played favourites; Esau was Isaac's golden boy, whilst Rebecca preferred Jacob. (ibid 25:28)

The mutual hostility of the brothers draws to a crescendo in a simultaneously spectacular and farcical piece of intrigue, the recounting of which occupies the entire 27th chapter of Genesis. Isaac's advanced age has robbed him of his sight, and he fears his time is almost up. He asks Esau to prepare for him one final feast, after which the elder Patriarch intends to grant his final blessing unto his favourite son. Ever diligent, Esau departs on a hunt.

Rebecca has overheard the exchange, and quickly hatches a scheme to ensure that her favourite son comes out on top. She urges Jacob to bring two young goats from their flock to her, so that she may prepare a meal for him. He can bring it to his blind father, who will think him Esau and mistakenly grant him the grand blessing. Jacob objects; not because he feels that there might be some kind of ethical problem involved in stealing from his brother by callously manipulating their blind, dying father; but because Esau is a hairy man, and if Isaac touches the impostor, the ruse is up. "Chill," Rebecca tells her frantic son. "I got it all figured out." Jacob brings the goats and Rebecca fries em up. She then takes the furry skins of the kids and covers Jacob's arms and neck with them, to simulate Esau's hairiness.

The preparation complete, Jacob enters the room of his father. They exchange niceties and, suspecting something is up, Isaac asks to feel his son's arm. The old man then exclaims:

"The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." - Gen 27:22

Plus a hundred points for poignant foreshadowing, but minus about a billion for good thinking, yeah? (Beeblebrox 1979) "Oh well, I feel fur, and it's a lot more likely that Esau's voice just magically changed into Jacob's than it is that Jacob, you know, put on a jacket - so, on with the blessing we go!" The kinesthetic deception successful, Jacob fraudulently receives the blessing and vanishes into the night, moments before Esau returns from his hunt and totally loses his shit.

Interestingly enough, midrashic commentary on this tract, and indeed, this relationship, invariably paints Jacob as the hero and Esau as the villain. The midrash performs all kinds of literary gymnastics in a desperate effort to imply that by "Esau liked hunting" the Bible means "Esau lied to his dad, served idols, commited regicide (seriously), seduced married women, and, presumably, cheated on his taxes (or at least his tithes)". These efforts can seem confusing, until we remember three fundamental points:

1. In the text: Esau (from what little we see of him) acts like a good human being and a great son.
2. In the text: Jacob is clearly a jerk.
3. In real life: The midrashic commentators are all descendants of Jacob.

Make sense now?

Shabbath Shalom.

Chayei Sarah

One of the fun things about reading the earlier parshiot of the Torah is that you can point out all the Biblical firsts as they float by. For instance:

Abraham heeded Ephron, and Abraham weighed out to Ephron the price which he had mentioned in the hearing of the children of Heth, four hundred silver shekels in negotiable currency. And Ephron's field, which was in Machpelah, facing Mamre, the field and the cave within it and all the trees in the field, within all it's surrounding boundaries, was deeded. - Gen 23:16-17

First purchase of a burial site in the Torah. In the struggle between science and religion, Stephen Jay Gould advocates a principle of "non-overlapping magisteria" - the idea that science and religion occupy different, and complementary, fields of study. God isn't a scientific concept, the reasoning goes, nor is the Bible a scientific text; so it's absurd to try to judge religion by scientific standards, or the other way around. This notion is not only wrong, but profoundly dangerous, because it ignores the effect that religious ideas have on the real world.

This transaction in Genesis - the purchase of a cave in which several Biblical matriarchs and patriarchs were to be interred - has real implications in modern Israel. One of the major objections that many Zionists have to the establishing of a Palestinian state is the inevitable concession by the Israelis of several sacred sites, including this very cave. The site is holy to the Muslims as well, and they'd very much like the burial place of their forefather, Ibrahim, to be included in their state. These tensions almost certainly played a role in the 1994 Cave of the Patriarchs Massacre, when rogue Israeli soldier Baruch Goldstein opened fire upon a crowd of Muslims at prayer, killing 29 and injuring 150. Religious beliefs play a very real, very brutal role in the affairs of the modern world.

Rather, to my land and to my kindred shall you go and take a wife for my son, Isaac. - Gen 24:3-4

First "blue blood" policy. We're dealing with the absolute founder of the Monotheisms, and he's already insistent about his son only marrying within the family. The more things change...

And it was, when the camel had finished drinking, the man took a golden nose ring, its weight was a beka, and two bracelets on her arms, ten gold shekels was their weight. - Gen 24:22

First nose ring in the Torah. Idea: get a nose ring. When conservative family members protest, point out that the Bible clearly endorses such things. Let me know how it goes.

And Isaac brought her into the tent of Sarah his mother; he married Rebecca, she became his wife, and he loved her; and thus was Isaac consoled after his mother's death. - Gen 24:67

First use of the word "love" in the Torah. Note, by the way, the couple's ages - according to Rashi, Isaac was 40 at the time of his marriage; his wife, Rebecca, was three. If psychoanalysis floats your boat, you might also like to note the curiously Freudian wording of the verse.

And finally... the first instance in the Torah of a man telling another man to touch his penis. You think I'm kidding?

And Abraham said to his servant, the elder of his household who controlled all that was his: "Place now your hand under my thigh." - Gen 24:2

Shabbath Shalom.

Vayeira

So Abraham awoke early in the morning, took bread and a skin of water, and gave them to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulder along with [Ishmael], and sent her off. She departed, and strayed in the desert of Beer-sheba. When the water of the skin was consumed, she cast off the boy beneath one of the trees. She went and sat herself down at a distance, some bowshots away, for she said, "Let me not see the death of the child." And she sat at a distance, lifted her voice, and wept. God heard the cry of the youth, and an angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, "What troubles you, Hagar? Fear not, for God has heeded the cry of the youth as he is there." - Gen 21:14-17

The medieval commentator Rashi gives us a corresponding celestial narrative of this verse, derived from the Hebrew "שם-הוא באשר" -"as he is there". When Hagar prayed for her son's life, the angels pleaded with God to let Ishmael die, as his descendants would kill and oppress the Jews. But God refused, and miraculously saved the child, on the grounds that Ishmael was not yet guilty of any wrongdoing; "as he is there", in his present state, he was an innocent.

This fascinating piece of Midrashic lore is a striking example of one of the oldest conflicts in philosophy: that of deontological vs consequentialist ethics. Simply put, deontology focuses on the inherent rightness of actions, whilst consequentialism looks at the outcome, or consequences, of actions.

A common and powerful examination of this conflict take the form of a thought experiment: suppose one had the opportunity to travel back in time and kill an Austrian baby named Adolf Hitler; would it be the right thing to do? A deontologist would argue that killing babies is always wrong, and that one is always obligated to refrain from such actions. A consequentialist would counter that the good being wrought - the prevention of World War II and the Holocaust - far outweighs the evil of killing a single baby.

The dilemma is further examined with exquisite subtlety and humanity in the graphic novel, and movie of the same name, Watchmen. [SPOILER ALERT: the following two paragraphs contain major plot details from Watchmen.] The movie revolves around a vigilante named Rorschach and his attempt to uncover a conspiracy. As the details come together for both protagonist and viewer, we learn of a plot to massacre millions for the sake of preventing an impending nuclear holocaust. Rorschach, a strict deontologist, says the following of his continued efforts against small-time criminals while the Apocalypse draws ever closer: "Soon there will be war. Millions will burn. Millions will perish in sickness and misery. Why does one death against so many? Because there is good and there is evil, and evil must be punished. Even in the face of Armageddon I shall not compromise in this." Rorschach's assertion is a deeply resounding one, in no small part because we constantly face echoes of his conundrum in our everyday lives. When we give food to the hungry, we do not eradicate hunger. Let us labour under no such delusions. We give food to the hungry, because good needs to be pursued for its own sake, regardless of the folly and futility of doing so.

Rorschach's worldview stands in deep contrast with that of Ozymandias, perpetrator of the grand scheme. Ozymandias sees a Cold War in imminent danger of becoming very hot, and decides to kill off large civilian populations while framing a scapegoat, in the hope that the USA and the USSR will put aside their differences to combat this perceived new threat. After his plan is implemented, he explains and justifies it to Rorschach and his fellow heroes. From the god-like figure of Dr. Manhattan, who can (partially) foresee the future, he seeks reassurance: "I did the right thing, didn't I? It all worked out, in the end." "'In the end?'" echoes Dr. Manhattan. "Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends."

Here lies one of the fundamental problems with consequentialism. The full ramifications of our actions are never truly foreseeable. The popular video game Command & Conquer: Red Alert demonstrates this using a form of the Killing Baby Hitler problem given above. Red Alert takes place in an alternate universe in which Albert Einstein invents a time machine, and uses it to prevent Adolf Hitler's rise to power, and thus World War II. But the lack of a hostile Third Reich to weaken and check Stalin's fledgling regime means that the Soviets grow far more powerful than they otherwise would have; and threaten the West not just with nuclear might but with massive conventional military force.

There is far more to be said on the topic. Rashi gives us a starting point, and a fine example of ethical reasoning, but he does not spoon-feed us the solution to our own dilemmas. Let us take his example and further explore the topic ourselves. As the name itself suggests, Genesis is not meant to be an end, but a beginning.