Rabbi Heller's Blog

This weekend we mark the confluence of Parashat Toldot and Thanksgiving. There is actually a thread of connection between the Torah portion and the festival on the secular calendar.  For many of us, Thanksgiving is about gathering with family or friends for a festive meal. In the portion this week, we see two times where shared food is entangled with complex family dynamics. First, Esau trades his birthright for a mess of red porridge (made with lentils, not cranberries). Then, Isaac agrees to bless Esau, on condition that Esau will bring him venison from the hunt. As the story goes, Jacob egged on by their mother Rebecca, takes the blessing by impersonating Esau and bringing roast meat from the flocks, again trading food for blessing.

When Esau calls out, as he is about to consume Jacob’s feast, “I am about to die, what do I care for a birthright?” he can be understood to be saying that he is so hungry that he cannot think about important matters, but maybe the converse is true.  As he faces existential concerns, and looks his own mortality in the face, he has no patience for the values of his extended family. 

So too for us. While the Thanksgiving meal should be a source of blessing, some of us may fear not only physical but emotional indigestion. The book of Genesis understands that family dynamics can be profoundly complicated. The regular tensions may be exacerbated by the fact that those gathered around our table might espouse contradictory views on foundational issues. You may not be merely wrestling over who gets the last drumstick, you may be wondering how that person across the table could hold beliefs, or support causes, that deny your essential identity, being or safety, or are just wrong, and they may have the same feeling about you. When one declares “I am at risk of death? What care have I for this birthright!” it is a bit anticlimactic to follow that with “and please pass the cranberry sauce.” Conversely, Jacob joins the meal with his father only by denying his identity and values, and claiming to be someone he is not.

Perhaps on Thursday you will be sitting at a table where there are absolutely no disagreements. If so you either have an unusual family, or are dining alone.   Or perhaps your family has developed the ability be open and intentional, listen, and if need be, agree to disagree.  Some families may do best to declare a thanksgiving truce, opening mouths to admit food, but not to release opinions, or concentrate on more traditional foci of family strife, like college football.

Perhaps it is possible to do better than Isaac, Esau and Jacob. Perhaps we can come to this Thanksgiving with a sense of gratitude. We understand that from the very first generations of our people, it was not always easy to break bread without breaking ties. It is hard to not conceal who we are. Can we be grateful that we have each other, and in having fundamental disagreements with those we love, but somehow still sitting at the same table, we are continuing a sacred legacy.