Our Parasha – Portion
deals with the lives of Rivkah- Rebecca and Isaac's – Yitzchak's twin boys,
Esau = Eisav and Jacob- Ya'akov. And the question that all ask is how come
Eisav , despite being raised by the greatest and righteous people of that
generation turned out to be a wicked human being while Ya'akov realized his
potential for greatness. The verse Bereishit 25:27 says that when the boys grew
up ….. Each boy followed a different path. Eisav became a hunter, a man of the field
trapping, tricking and ensnaring not only animals but men too. Ya'akov became
the scholar who devoted his life to learning and teaching God's ways. Rabbi Shimshon
Rafael Hirsch suggests that the striking contrasts in the grandchildren of
Abraham may have been due, not so much to the differences in their temperaments
and personalities, but rather as to the mistakes in the way they were brought
up. The medrash says that until the age of 13, the differences between Yaakov
and Eisav were not apparent. So as long as they were little, no attention was
paid to the slumbering differences in their natures and both received exactly
the same teaching and educational treatment. The famous words of Proverbs –
Educate your child according to his way , reminds us that we cannot change
tendencies, traits , temperaments and personalities but we can educate the
child so he can develop his special characteristics to serve God and maximize
his personal potential for the one pure and Jewish life. A nation and society needs
so many people who have different roles and professions. Each person has a
different path, but all have the same goal to serve God and to be of service to
society in their unique roles.
Eisav became a hunter
and warrior. He was supposed to use theses talents to fight the wicked and protect
the weak, and be the diplomat, politician and statesman for the sake of God. Eisav's educational and emotional needs were
not met in an environment of intense learning .The development of his unique
personal identity was hindered and so his talents would be dedicated for purely
personal gain and negative goals. He struggled to find intrinsic reward and satisfaction
from his learning. The only way he could feel satisfaction, self- worth and esteem was by
impressing others. So instead of nurturing his true identity Eisav focused
on ' superficiality ' and nurturing his
image. The sages describe him as man who
epitomized falsehood , a ' clay vessel plated with gold, gems or pearls' who instead of using his talents for the sake of
God , succeeded in manipulating people and leaders and seducing women who then left their husbands for him. When
hungry, Eisav asked Ya'akov to give him some of the' red stuff
'. Eisav related to the food by its color, on its most superficial level. He
does not even call it ' soup'. Eisav is
concerned with his image and so he decides to improve it by emulating his
father by marrying for the first time at the age of 40. Eisav is like the pig
when it lies down, stretches out its cloven hoof as to say – See I am a kosher
animal. He married a Canaanite woman who worshiped idols but changed her name
to Yehudit –a woman who denies idols - in order to deceive his father. Yitzchak
continued to strongly disapprove of Canaanite
women so in order to improve his image
he married Machalat, Abraham's
granddaughter from Yishmael, without divorcing his evil wives. Eisav felt he was perfect, fully made as in 'Eisav'
his name. He never needed to reflect on his actions and beliefs, but just do
something technical and external to improve his image.
Parents and educators
are very much responsible for kids focusing on their images and not nurturing
their authentic identities in that there is a ' one size fits all' approach to
education - all kids need the same education that will enable them to go to university or be in long
term religious learning in a Kollel.
Finland has a successful educational system because they focus on '
individualized education' and have a high-powered vocational training pathway
for which caters for at least 40% of kids. Kids don't have to be in full time
learning for all their to be long life learners and connected to holiness.
Today,
we have another problem, with parents and teachers pushing kids to succeed with
so much emphasis on academic achievement. Parents care less about children's
well-being and happiness than their achievement and success. They are the
reason for their kids' success and it makes them feel successful. Kids' feelings of acceptance , self- esteem and image is more dependent on external
events – on how well they do and behave compared to other kids. We see this at
school, on the sports field and how they rank socially. Instead we should be
helping kids to focus on what they are doing , connect to and enjoy their learning, exercise or other
social interactions. They should experience success of failure, not as reward
or punishment, but as information so they cope with failure in an objective
problem solving way and not focus on the self in an emotional-coping way. In
this way kids focus on nurturing their authentic identities and talents, become
intrinsically motivated and self-determined and are not concerned with their improving their
images. -
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