Today’s d’var Torah is dedicated to my brother, my younger brother, my only brother, whose birthday is tomorrow. Seems somehow appropriate.

These are the generations, the birthings of Isaac.

Today’s Torah portion is about having enough blessing, enough love to go around. Let me set the stage. After many years of not having a child, Rebecca is finally pregnant but is terribly uncomfortable. Pained. She goes to l’derosh, to seek out, to inquire, to ask of an oracle, of G-d directly, what is going on? G-d answers immediately. “And the Lord said to her: ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your body; and one people will be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.”

Yes, G-d talked directly to a woman! That’s important for other reasons. But let’s start with looking at this verb l’derosh. It is important. It means that we can seek out. It is also the word that we derive the word midrash from. It is part of how we do Torah study and for me it is how Torah brings meaning to our lives. We seek out that meaning.

Here is part of how. There is a story told about four men who entered pardes, paradise, that’s where the English word comes from. Ben Azzai, Ben Zoma, Acher (Elisa ben Abuyah) and Rabbi Akiva. Ben Azzai looked and died. Ben Zoma looked and went mad. Acher destroyed the plants. Only Akiva entered in peace and departed in peace.

This is an important story because it teaches us that before we go looking for meaning, we needed to be grounded. We need to be firmly rooted. We need to understand the tradition. That’s why it was the tradition that only men who were 40 and married were allowed to study the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. Because it was believed that by then, men would be rooted and would not go crazy.

But what was that Pardes they were trying to enter? The rabbis also teach that PaRDeS is an acronym for how we study Torah, that studying Torah itself is paradise. The letters stand for

Pey—the Peshat, the simple, plain meaning of the text.
Resh—the Remez, the hint of meaning
Dalad—The Drash—that verb we are talking about, l’derosh, to seek out, to find the meaning in the gaps of the text, to make midrash.
Samach—the Sod, the hidden, secret, mystical meaning of the text.

This all fits with the idea that there are 70 interpretations of Torah. 70 faces of Torah.

So what I really want to do is look at Esau. We don’t usually. Usually we just say that he is a ruddy, hairy hunter who Isaac loves because he likes the taste of game and Rebecca prefers Jacob who stays by the tents. Oy, choosing favorites as a parent is not good parenting but it is right here!

Rabbi Lord Sacks tells a story of Rav Kook, the first chief rabbi of Israel, who was asked to counsel a parent of someone who had moved further away from traditional Judaism. “He had given his son a good Jewish education. He had always kept the commands at home. Now however the son had drifted far from Judaism. He no longer kept the commandments. He did not even identify as a Jew. What should the father do? “Did you love him when he was religious?” asked Rav Kook. “Of course,” replied the father. “Well then,” Rav Kook replied, “Now love him even more.”

That is abundant love. That is good parenting.

Lord Sacks counsels, “It may be that Isaac loved Esau not blindly but with open eyes, knowing that there would be times when his elder son would give him grief, but knowing too that the moral responsibility of parenthood demands that we do not despair of or disown a wayward son.” As Sacks teaches, even if there are some failures, loving your children, whatever they become, is one, for surely that is how G-d loves us.”

That is abundant love. That is abundant blessing. That is meeting each child, each person where they are. That is good parenting.

So how do we parent today, if we learn from this story that encouraging sibling rivalry is not good. None of us try to play favorites. In the case of my husband, each one felt that they were the black sheep at some point.

One member said that he did it “with shock and awe,” a form of reverse psychology. When one of his kids would complain that he was favoring the other, he would simply say, “because I love (fill in the blank) more. Usually they would stomp away mad or just give him a confused look but they got it and then would laugh.

Yet, we are conditioned not to like Esau because after all, like good theater we KNOW that Jacob is the preferred one. Jacob is the one that is supposed to receive the covenant, the promise of G-d. Jacob is the one that is supposed to inherit. Jacob is the one who is supposed to carry on the covenant. And no less than G-d directly has told us that through the oracle that Rebecca consults.

So Rebecca comes up with the ruse. She doesn’t quite trust G-d enough. She takes matters into her own hands. She sends Esau out to hunt. Jacob presents himself to Isaac who with dim eyes believes that Jacob is Esau bringing him his beloved game. A pot of lentils. No steak in it at all. Isaac is tricked and gives Jacob Esau’s blessing.

Now most of you know that I love steak. My favorite meal is steak, baked potato and asparagus. Yet, when Simon and I got married, we each carried with us into this marriage a well worn cook book, the More with Less Cookbook, written by the Mennonites, a sister church to the Church of Bretheran, headquartered right here in Elgin. It tells us it is possible to have more with less, that by eating more whole grains, beans, lentils, there are enough resources to go around. So included in your weekly hand out is the More with Less Lentil Barley Soup recipe, tweaked by my friend Anne Schwartz. It will be perfect for you tomorrow on the snowy day they are predicting.

Lentils—good protein. Nutritious Cheap. But I am still not sure I would sell my birthright for a pot of lentils. Here is the recipe:

Lentil Barley Soup

2 cups red lentils
3/4 cup pearl barley
2 carrots, diced
1 large onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, diced
8 cups water or stock
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 tsp. cumin
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (optional)
1 1/2 tsp. salt

Add all ingredients together in a soup pot, bring to boil and simmer one hour. Stir occasionally. The soup thickens as it cooks, so add water as needed to desired consistency.

Very hearty, thick soup… and it freezes well!
From the More with Less Cookbook and Anne Schwartz

Esau returns and is shocked that the blessing, his blessing has been given to Jacob. Isaac wonders what he is to do. He doesn’t think he can reverse his blessing to Jacob. He has already given it away. Never has it been done that way before. But Esau pleads. Then Isaac rises above his own understanding of tradition. And he crafts a new blessing, just for Esau.

“Behold, of the fat places of the earth you shall dwell, and of the dew of heaven from above;  And by your sword shall you live, and you shalt serve your brother…”

Last night we talked about blessings. In Hebrew, the word for blessing comes from the same word as knee, berech, because when we bless, we bend our knee. It is an acknowledgment that a blessing comes from G-d more so than it comes from us. It is more than a wish, precisely because it is connected to the Divine. In fact, our word daven, to pray in Yiddish, comes from the Latin for Divine. So what we are really doing is channeling G-d. A blessing is a gift from G-d.

The rabbis suggested that we say 100 blessings a day. Surely there are 100 things that we are grateful for each and every day. What we are doing, when we recite those blessings is to acknowledge that each of those is a gift from G-d, a blessing.

And because ultimately those blessings come from G-d, therefore there is enough blessing to go around. There is enough love to go around.

That is what this painful episode of Isaac and his sons Esau and Jacob comes to teach us. Isaac can love both. Isaac can bless both. There is abundant blessing. Abundant love. But we have to remember that there is enough to go around.

The blessing that Isaac creates for Esau is interesting. It begins the same way that Jacob’s begins, with the dew of the heavens. Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, the Velveteen Rabbi points out that “our tradition understands as a symbol of grace.” A blessing is a gift from G-d, like dew that falls from the heavens, G-d’s grace. Torah too is like dew for that reason. She adds, “Dew is the sustaining abundance that arises even in the desert, and grace is everyone’s birthright even when we’re in tough spiritual places. We too can receive Isaac’s blessing of dew: sustenance and nourishment for our tender places, kindness and wisdom to balm our sorrows and uplift our hearts.”

There is enough blessing to go around. There is enough love to go around. Even for us today.

We learn this from Rabbi Harold Kushner. One of the books he wrote after his iconic When Bad Things Happen to Good People is How Good Do We Have To Be. I reread this one every year. He contends that most of us have “a primal fear that our parents don’t have enough love for us all, and someone else may be getting a part of our share. Later in life when we are passed over for a promotion, when our doctor or our clergyman gets our name wrong, when someone pushes ahead of us in line, we may respond with a disproportionate sense of hurt because the experience reawakens within us childhood feelings that our parents may love someone else more than they love us.”

Yet what if that person your parents loved more, or so you thought, is your very own brother. And what if he thinks your parents loved you more and he is really, really angry and has threatened to kill you. Can you love him then?

Yesterday I had a unique opportunity, a blessing really, to participate in the dedication of new prayer space at Advocate Sherman. It was a brief ceremony where Christians, Jews, a Muslim and a Hindu all prayed. No one felt left out. The space is beautiful, right near the entrance, reminding all that faith and prayer can be an important part of healing. Doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, hospital chaplains, clergy from Elgin all participated. I read Psalm 30, a song for the dedication of the Temple, and taught that Chanukah means dedication. Perhaps the most poignant moment was seeing the Chief Medical Officer, Jewish, sitting next to a Muslim doctor on one side and a Hindu doctor on the other side.

There is enough love to go around. There is enough blessing to go around. But it wasn’t always this way. This very text has been used to teach that Christianity supplanted Judaism since it is the “younger brother” The book Elder and Younger Brothers: The Encounter of Jews and Christians by Eckardt and the work of the Vatican Council has done much to open up interfaith dialogue and re-establish the covenants of the “brothers”, Judaism and Christianity on equal footing. Nonetheless, the deep theological work that has been done has not always filtered down to lay people.

Precisely because there is enough love to go around. There is enough blessing, Now more than ever, it seems to me, we need dialogue, not isolation.

When I first applied to rabbinical school, a professor on the admissions committee asked me whether I thought there was a third covenant. I misunderstood the question and thought he was asking if there was some combined, third covenant which was outside of my ability to imagine at the time. That was not the question. He turned out to be Judaism’s leading scholar on Islam and he wanted to know how I regarded Muslims.

Later commentaries on this text give us a partial answer. G-d forbids the Israelites to wage war on Esau’s descendants, the Edomites.

“Give the people these orders: “You are about to pass through the territory of your brothers the descendants of Esau, who live in Seir. They will be afraid of you, but be very careful. Do not provoke them to war, for I will not give you any of their land, not even enough to put your foot on. I have given Esau the hill country of Seir as his own.” (Deut. 2:4-5)” And Moses commands the Israelites: “Do not abhor an Edomite [i.e. a descendant of Esau], for he is your brother.  (Deut. 23:8)”

So the event yesterday at Sherman was just perfect. We cannot hate an Edomite—for he is our brother. He is Esau. He is each of us. We are all created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of G-d.

Each of us have had times when we are Jacob, scheming, dreaming, climbing a ladder to reach what we think is ours. Sometimes two steps forward and one back, up and down trying to reach higher levels of holiness. Sometimes we are Rebecca, trying to make sure that our children inherit what is rightfully theirs, arguing, advocating, being a good Jewish mother. Sometimes we are Isaac, nearly blind, wanting to believe, enjoying our meal, and learning to break out of our preconceived notions, learning to think outside the box. And sometimes we are Esau. Cheated, mistreated.

Our tradition teaches us, “Hiney Ma Tov Umanaim Shevet Achim Gam Yachad. How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together.” (Psalms 133) Isaac and Ishmael. Jacob and Esau.