Efrat, Israel – Is there a fool-proof recipe for raising obedient, productive and religiously observant children? Rav Moshe Besdin once gave me three rules to follow, on the day when I asked him to be Sandak at my son Hillel’s circumcision: “The first rule is siyata diShmaya heavenly help. The second rule is siyata diShmaya and the third rule is siyata diShmaya”, he wisely said. Nevertheless, conventional wisdom has it that the parents must be compatible, provid¬ing a unified role model, must never favor one child over another, and must allow the children to develop according to their own natures, albeit with modification therapy. From this perspective, let us review the Biblical story of the genesis of Jacob and Esau.

Are Isaac and Rebecca an ideal couple? The Netziv (Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, 1817-1893) directs us to their very first encounter. As Eliezer returns with Rebecca, Isaac’s future wife, and they approach their destination, they notice a man leaving the forest after an encounter with his God, a man radiant with the sense of divine nearness. Rebecca falls from the camel. When informed that this spiritual personality is none other than her intended husband, she immedi¬ately covers herself with her veil, a veil which, the Netziv informs us, is never again removed, in a psy¬chological sense.

One could call it “awe at first sight:” and for the Netziv, this moment permanently fixes the couple’s subsequent relationship. Rebecca will always feel awkward and spiritually inferior in the presence of Isaac.

Growing up in the idolatrous house of Laban and Bethuel, she suddenly finds herself in the holy world of Isaac and Abraham. And her sense of spiritual inadequacy stifles open communication between them; how can a less inspired person as she sees herself to be possibly disagree with the likes of a personage such as Isaac? Moreover, Isaac’s own scars from the binding would hardly make him the kind of individual who would know how to loosen her up, make Rebecca more talkative. Indeed, Elie Wiesel refers to Isaac as the first survivor, for whom daily chit-chat and small-talk is not part of his world view.

This fragile, silent relationship between parents leads to the next development: the predicament of favoring children. “Now Isaac loved Esau because he did eat of his venison . . .“ (25:28). Often we are drawn to the children who are different from ourselves, who will make up for our own inadequacies. Isaac is the more passive son of a dominant and dominating Abraham, an energetic and courageous Founder and path-breaker. Esau, the hunter, was everything that Isaac was not. Isaac’s heart goes out to the son who is remarkably cunning in the fields, in love with the outdoors, a robust and wild spirit.

In contrast to Isaac’s “venison” love, Rebecca’s love for Jacob is unconditional; “…and Rebecca loved Jacob” (ibid.) is how the verse ends. Perhaps she is naturally drawn to this naive, wholehearted and bookish son, so different from her memory of her own childhood and her brother Laban. With each parent favoring a different sibling, the results could hardly be different: brothers who are competitive rivals rather than loving partners.

Isaac’s choice for the blessings is Esau, unworthy in Rebecca’s eyes. And when a mother has to involve her son against her own husband in a scheme for the bless¬ings, is it any wonder that the distance between Esau and Jacob becomes unbridgeable?

Yet complementary harmony between parents is not necessarily a guarantee of cooperative off¬spring. Indeed, every parent must understand that each child is born with his/her own individual person¬ality, often distinct from that of their parents, and must respect – and even positively nurture – these individual differences.

In the beginning, Rebecca was childless. When she finally gets pregnant, she suffers so much pain, she wants to die. “The children struggled within her, and she said, ‘If it be so, wherefore do I live?’ (25:22)

Quoting the rabbis, Rashi points out that the Hebrew word for Rebecca’s struggle, vayitrozzu, is based on a root which means “to run.” Whenever she’d pass by a site of idol worship, Esau would struggle to run out there, and whenever she’d pass by a House of Study, Jacob would struggle to run out there. On a more profound level, this midrashic interpretation says that even pre-natally, Jacob and Esau were different people. In other words, each human being possesses proclivities that reach back into the womb, one likes bows and arrows, another chess and checkers, a third, books, and a fourth, special foods. Too often parents find it hard to accept the child for what he is, attempting to modify rather than transform the innate personality.

In verse 27, we read, “And the boys grew . .“ (vayigdalu hanaarim). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch comments that the parents had them grow up and become educated together, ignoring their different proclivities. They were both sent to the same yeshiva, as it were, with the same programs and teachers. As a result, the parents only confounded the problem, exacerbating the tensions within and between them. The basic principle, as we read in Proverbs 22:6, is that children must be educated in accordance with their own personalities. In that way, we might hope to achieve personality modification rather than restructure, which generally leads to frustration and even disaster.

Culled from this week’s portion, these points shouldn’t be seen as the final word in raising children, a subject as vast as the human personality. But one message cuts through everything: Parents must real¬ize that children are not carbon copies of themselves. Each child has to find his own way. Had Isaac and Rebecca handled their twin sons differently, perhaps the tragic split between brothers, which eventually becomes the split between Jew and Christian, Jerusalem and Rome, might have been avoided.

Shabbat Shalom