When Is It Right to Be Wrong?
Parashat Toledot , Genesis 25:19–28:9
Eric Meiri, Devar Emet Messianic Synagogue. Skokie, IL
It’s not easy being a parent. My wife and I are at a challenging phase in our parenting journey: dealing with a 3½ year old who desires to push every boundary and act out in disobedience to our parental instruction. I guess I can be thankful that he is not yet at the point of always responding to an instruction with the delightful interrogative, “why?” As parents, my wife and I are responsible for teaching our children the difference between right and wrong. We not only need to provide instruction to our children, but we should be able to offer examples of how to properly follow instruction, and also live out such instruction in our own lives. Thankfully, we have God’s Torah as our foundation, and his Ruach to empower us.
But what about when the circumstances aren’t so straightforward? What about when that black and white gets a little grey? At this point in our parenting journey, I am not going to get into those nuances with my 3½ year old son, but at some point we will have to deal with them. And this week’s Torah portion presents a most difficult dilemma: Are there situations in life where it is acceptable to be dishonest and deceptive?
Oy vey iz mir . . . Let’s dive into this parasha a bit and see what we can come up with.
In the times that I have gone through this Torah portion I always walk away conflicted and confused. There is a lot of behavior here I would discourage in my children: Parents divided in showing favoritism to different children; exploiting your brother’s exhaustion to obtain his birthright; a first-born son disregarding and despising his birthright; a man lying about his wife being his sister; and someone marrying multiple idolatrous foreign women in spite of the wishes of his parents and God. Not much holiness being pursued here so far.
This leads us to a conflicting and difficult-to-understand event, Rebekah and Jacob’s trickery of Isaac. What makes it so challenging to deal with are the unknown elements of this story. Was Isaac aware of what Adonai revealed to Rebekah about the “older [serving] the younger” (Gen 25:23)? Did she just never tell him? Or did he know but was disregarding this prophecy and giving in to his favoritism for Esau? Or maybe Isaac had not only become blind in sight but senile in mind and memory as well? Or maybe he was just really hungry?!? And Rebekah, was she obeying God by deceiving Isaac? Or was she not trusting God by interfering? What about her statement that if Jacob’s deception was discovered to “Let [the] curse fall on [her]” (Gen 27:13)? Is she acknowledging fault here? Or is she just so confident in God’s blessing?
There is no shortage of Rabbinic and Christian commentaries seeking to fill in the gaps or infer the intentions and motivations of Rebekah and Isaac. Truly, only God knows.
But focusing on Rebekah and Jacob’s actions brings us back to our original question. Are they right in their deception and dishonesty towards Isaac in order to bring about God’s plan? Trying to come up with answers to these questions is really tough. Tough enough as an adult, let alone to try and explain to children. (While writing this drash I actually consulted the children’s storybook Bibles in our home to see their take on the issue. Two of them completely skipped over this story, the other two don’t mention Adonai’s prophecy to Rebekah at all and instead just throw her under the bus.) Take your pick of which commentary you want to use to come to a conclusion, but the amount of variation of opinion on these questions shows me that there is not a clear-cut answer here. There is nuance. There is grey. And we need to be able to address this, both in our Scriptures, and especially in our world today.
I say this because we are dealing with a lot of grey in America right now. Our democratically elected leaders are being seen as fascist dictators. Our electoral processes are being viewed as flawed and abused by fraud. Our nation is at odds over how to reconcile historical racism and address the concern of its ongoing impact on our present day institutions; as well as how to balance economy, safety, and liberty in response to a global viral pandemic. The extremes on each side paint a picture of the other with broad strokes of hurtful rhetoric. The lines of righteousness and wickedness have never felt so blurred. We have come to a crossroads in our society with an increase in the number of people who believe that our structures of authority have become so corrupt and evil that they would consider violent revolution as a means to achieve justice. But just as in our discussion on the Torah portion, as we try and draw conclusions on these issues we must recognize that we are not getting all the details and ultimately are just choosing to believe whose opinion we consider to be the most reliable. And ultimately, everyone involved is flawed and sinful.
So far in this drash I have asked a lot of questions without offering answers, and I have provided a lot of depressing examples of division in our world. Perhaps I can still offer a few conclusions. Regardless of how we feel about Rebekah one thing is clear and gives her some higher credibility in her actions: she was given a direct prophetic word from Adonai, and she took action to see his word carried out. This is confirmed in this week’s haftarah portion, which declares that “[God] loved Jacob and Esau [he] hated” (Mal 1:2–3). Esau was sinful in despising his birthright and dishonoring his parents and God. His own actions made it evident why God foresaw that he should not receive the blessing. So in Rebekah’s defense, her dishonesty was in direct response to God’s word and will.
What about a response to clear and obvious evil in more recent history? This is true in the case of those who lied in order to hide Jews from being murdered by Nazis during the Holocaust. I think we can all agree that the Nazi agenda to murder all Jews would not only warrant people to engage in dishonesty to prevent their actions, but would even require a military campaign to strike down such evil. Any reader of the Tanakh will certainly see that there were times when God commanded such action against people groups who were a similar threat. And also against those who would challenge Adonai’s sovereignty and were liable to draw Bnei-Yisrael away from the worship of the One True God.
The pursuit of honesty deserves our utmost and unwavering commitment. Our society is ridden and saturated with dishonesty that people see as justified based on circumstances of the situation. Little white lies in order to avoid conflict, embellishments of the truth in order to make oneself seem more favorable and appealing, and even outright deception in order to advance an agenda or cause. Where does this end? What is the limit? How quickly does word turn into action, lies into violence? When is this justified? I can offer two examples:
If you have a direct word from Adonai Elohim and are being used to carry out his will.
To resist and combat evil that is obvious and egregious, especially when it is being committed against God’s people.
Unless you are one of the historical persons of the Bible, like Rebekah, I would argue that example #1 is not applicable to you. As for example #2, this is a rare situation that most of us may never experience. It is an exception, not the norm. If an act of lying or aggression means your fear of Adonai is greater than your fear of man, then you get a pass. But if that is not clear, and your motivations are caught up in politics and a biased presentation of data and information, then I would exercise caution and stick to the peshat of God’s commandments.
In America right now, we are very divided in what is being perceived as good and evil, right and wrong. I am worried that it is tearing us apart as a nation, and even within our congregations and families. I pray for God’s wisdom to guide us to have humility and discernment on these issues. And from this, I pray that we can communicate effectively to our children and raise them up to be a true light in the darkness, especially as it becomes more difficult to make the distinction between the two.