Rabbi David Fohrman: Okay, Imu. לֹא תַחְמֹד — You shall not covet. לֹא תַחְמֹד בֵּית רֵעֶךָ — the house of your friend, לֹא־תַחְמֹד אֵשֶׁת רֵעֶךָ — the wife of your friend, עַבְדּוֹ — servant, אֲמָתוֹ — maidservant, שׁוֹרוֹ וַחֲמֹרוֹ — ox, donkey, anything that your friends have. Might this remind us of anything even later in the Yaakov story, after he finally takes leave of Lavan? Is there an opportunity to be jealous? To be jealous of wives? To be jealous of oxen? To be jealous of donkeys? To be jealous of כֹל אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ?

Imu Shalev: I mean, I don't think there'll be any oxen or donkeys, do we?

Rabbi Forhman: There are oxen and donkeys. There are indeed. Because the next thing that's going to happen is that Yaakov's going to meet up with Eisav for one last time. And when he does, he's got all this wealth. He's got these maidservants, he's got these servants. He's got this whole camp. He's got donkeys, he's got oxen. He's got everything, and he is worried. What is he worried about? He's worried that Eisav will look upon his wealth and that he'll threaten them.

Imu: Alright, you made it! The final episode of our season, and the final commandment. Number 10: “Thou Shalt Not Covet.”

From Aleph Beta, this is A Book Like No Other, generously sponsored by Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum.

So Rabbi Fohrman just did the big reveal. The resonances with this last command show up in the very next story in Genesis, Yaakov's encounter with Eisav. And rest assured, we're going to get into all the evidence for that claim, but if you trust me for a minute that the evidence is there, can we just appreciate how incredibly elegant this is? I mean, that this whole sprawling trail of connections we've seen between the commandments and Jacob's story ends up here, full circle, back to the conflict between these brothers.

It's been a long time since that conflict, both in the text but also since we've discussed it in this podcast, so to set the stage for our reading of Yaakov and Eisav's final encounter, we're going to put aside the oxen and the donkey, and actually the entire tenth commandment just for a bit. Let's go back to Genesis 27, back to the original Deception itself.

Now, what I want to do with you is share with you some tape where Rabbi Fohrman and I explore what the day of the Deception might have felt like for each brother and the wounds that they each walked away with, wounds that might still have been haunting them when they meet again. 

Rabbi Forhman: So Imu, I want to go back and play a little game with you, which is, what if you were there? It's one thing to analyze these stories from the perspective of readers paying attention to all these literary clues, where you're kind of a third person looking in at the lives of these people. But one of the things that all literature does, and the Torah is literature, is the Author is kind of asking you, the reader, or beckoning you to not just read as a third person, but maybe read as a first person too, which is to kind of adopt the position of the character in the story and see yourself vicariously living through their eyes.

So I want to ask you to kind of put yourself in the shoes of Jacob and of Eisav, and to sort of ask yourself, what is this story like from each of the perspectives?

So if you are Eisav, if I can just interview you, if I am Bobby, pal of Eisav, and I see Eisav kind of looking glum, and I say, “Hey Eisav, what's going on? You looked really into it when I saw you hunting that deer yesterday, but now you look kind of out of it. What happened over there?”

Imu: My jerk of a brother, Yaakov, “Heely,” as we like to call him. He “heeled” me once again. Would you believe that he dressed up in my clothes and went to Dad and he pretended like he was me and he got that blessing that was intended for me?

Rabbi Forhman: That sounds really awful. How did Dad feel about that?

Imu: He was just as upset as I was. He was really upset. I saw him shaking, and yeah, he was really upset.

Rabbi Forhman: Can I ask you just a little personal question? I mean, just stop me if I'm treading on thin ice over here, but once Dad realized, did he give you a blessing?

Imu: Look, I asked him, do you only have one blessing? What about me? He did have another bracha for me, kind of after I asked him. He gave me from the fats of the earth, the dew of the heavens above, and he told me that I would live by my sword. And something about serving my brother, and he said that I will rebel and throw off the yoke of my brother from upon my neck.

That is a terrible blessing, that a father would give one brother to the other.

Rabbi Forhman: Right. Gee, I mean like, boy, did Dad think you're supposed to serve him?

Imu: Yeah. I mean, it's explicit there in the verse that “you shall serve your brother,” right? That’s what it says. 

Rabbi Forhman: Okay, so if you are Eisav, how do you feel about Dad here? How do you feel about what your father did? How do you feel about your relationship with Dad? Talk to me about that.

Imu: I mean, I can't adopt the first-person without struggling with a question of whether Eisav knows whether he's mad at Dad or whether he's just mad at Yaakov. Because the text tells you that he hates his brother and then he wants to kill him. But I would imagine that Eisav, the strong man, is quite prideful, and prideful of many things, prideful of his strength and of his position, but also of the love of father, and he's lost all of that in one fell swoop. Now Father, who had always loved him and prided him, just immediately allies with the other brother and gives you a bracha where you're going to be the servant of the other one. And the silver lining is that, from time to time, you'll throw off the yoke of oppression. It's horrible.

Rabbi Forhman: The way the text tells it, Eisav was sobbing, he was screaming, וַיִּצְעַק צְעָקָה גְּדֹלָה וּמָרָה. Here's this prideful man reduced to tears over this terrible notion that his father doesn't love him enough to give him a blessing or to somehow make it right when he asked him to go out hunting. So if you are Eisav, the shattering truth which you're left with, that’s so deeply shameful or humiliating, that you began the day thinking that you were this favored child that your father loved and you ended the day wondering whether father loved you at all.

Let's switch gears and ask what it's like to be Yaakov. So now you're Yaakov, you are on your way to Lavan's house, you're absconding, your brother is trying to kill you, and I am your buddy who just catches up with you for a few moments. And it's like, Yaakov, you're running away, I get it. But before you leave, I understand because you’re my buddy, you're my pal. Is this great because you got that blessing? Are you happy at least now? Is this what you wanted?

Imu: So it's a good question, my nosy friend, the nosy friends of Eisav and Yaakov. I did get the blessing, but the truth is, now that I'm running away, I thought I was stepping into true firstbornness. I thought I was stepping into being recognized as my father's heir. And in the blink of an eye, I have nothing. Yesterday I wasn't the firstborn, but I had a home, I had family, and now I have nothing.

Rabbi Forhman: But at least you got that blessing. At least you finally got that recognition from Dad.

Imu: I don't even know. That's confusing to me, because on the one hand, he said the words when he was looking at me. He didn't know it was me, he couldn't really see me, couldn't feel me. Maybe on some level, deep level, maybe he thought it was me, but I don't know. He thought he was blessing my brother.

Rabbi Forhman: So if you step out of that for a moment, and thank you for playing Yaakov there, it's just so striking that both Yaakov and Eisav end the day with this deep crisis, thinking, “Does father even recognize who I am? Does father even value me?” Each for their own different reason.

For Yaakov, it's like, sure, I got something great. My Dad told me these wonderful things, thinking I was someone else.

Imu: It's actually a good point, because I think you make this point in your book which is that when Yitzchak says גַּם־בָּרוּךְ יִהְיֶה, he really is bestowing the blessing to Yaakov (Genesis 27:33). He's actually saying, “That thing that I thought I was doing by blessing Eisav, retrospectively I’m glad Yaakov finally was emboldened and showed me that he could take action, so he does retroactively deserve the blessing.”

But I'm only realizing now that Yaakov never knows that. Who does he tell גַּם־בָּרוּךְ יִהְיֶה to? He doesn't tell it to Yaakov.

Rabbi Forhman: That's interesting. He tells to Eisav.

Imu: He tells it to Eisav. This strange blessing situation devastated both of his sons, because he tells Yaakov, who he thinks is Eisav, that Eisav should be blessed, but then he turns around to Eisav, and he didn't say, “Oh, no, no, no, I thought I was giving it to you.” He's like, “Ooh, it was Yaakov. That Yaakov, he'll stay blessed.” So he devastated both of his sons.

Rabbi Forhman: Exactly. And the weird thing is, if you're Yitzchak, Yitzchak never went into that day wanting to do that. He was just like, oh, I have this son I always love. I'm going to bless him. It's going to be great. The day is just a net plus. I'm going to walk out of there much closer to Eisav, and Yaakov understands his place in the family. He always did. He was the heel. He was the second-in-charge guy.

And interestingly, remember: וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ יַעֲקֹב — He called him Yaakov  (Genesis 25:26). They both called him Eisav: וַיִּקְרְאוּ שְׁמוֹ עֵשָׂו (Genesis 25:25). But that name, “Heel,” it was a name that Yitzchak gave him, a second-in-charge name from Yitzchak's perspective. Yaakov has a place, he's made peace with that, and here's a moment for a celebration of Eisav.

Look at the devastation for him. He may not even know. Out of that day walks two children that both have this shattered vision of whether Father really regards them at all.

Imu: Okay, so with this psychological portrait of Yaakov and Eisav in mind, let's fast forward in the text, past Yaakov running away, past his stay with Lavan and his escape from Lavan, back to the brothers’ reunion and its resonances with Commandment Number Ten. We are now decades after the Deception and all the devastation that came with it, and whatever wounds still linger internally, externally Yaakov is in a very different position.

Like Rabbi Fohrman said earlier, he's rich. He's loaded. He's got servants and livestock. And, to my surprise, the way all this wealth is described really does echo the language of לֹא תַחְמֹד, “You shall not covet your neighbor's wife or slave or ox or donkey,” our first clue that this event and the commandment may be connected.

So this is the coolest thing ever, because just two or three verses after this גַּלְעֵד event, when we find out about Eisav marching towards Yaakov, Yaakov says in chapter 32, verse 6: וַיְהִי־לִי שׁוֹר וַחֲמוֹר — I have oxen and donkeys, צֹאן וְעֶבֶד וְשִׁפְחָה — I've got a male servant and a maidservant. This is the language of the Ten Commandments.

Rabbi Forhman: Literally the language of the Ten Commandments, literally down to the ox and the donkey. Want to know about ox and donkeys from the Ten Commandments?

Imu: And the slave and the maidservant.

Rabbi Forhman: And the slave and the maidservant. I got all this stuff. This is putting this stuff out for the possible jealous eye of Eisav. The last time you saw him, he was so consumed with jealousy that you took his blessing that was going to reward you with all these riches, and now he sees all these riches. How's he going to feel? 

Imu: Yeah, he's going to be super jealous.

Rabbi Forhman: He’s going to be super jealous. And then the messengers come back and he's got 400 men. He's coming after you. Yaakov prays, and then Yaakov does something. What does he do? He sends gifts to his brother, and as he sends gifts to his brother, he says to those bearing those gifts, “Look, you know, אֲכַפְּרָה פָנָיו בַּמִּנְחָה הַהֹלֶכֶת לְפָנָי,” in verse 21, “אַחֲרֵי־כֵן אֶרְאֶה פָנָיו אוּלַי יִשָּׂא פָנָי — Maybe, maybe Eisav will lift up my face. Maybe I can somehow make it up to him.”

Yaakov realizes, “My brother really may be aggrieved. My brother may look at me and I would need forgiveness in his eyes. I got this blessing surreptitiously. It all happened in a flash, but I got this blessing that promised me all this wealth. I don't know.”

And he starts giving some of this wealth to Eisav, and finally, behind all of those gifts, is Yaakov himself. וְהוּא עָבַר לִפְנֵיהֶם — He went in front of all of those camps, וַיִּשְׁתַּחוּ אַרְצָה — and he bowed low seven times, עַד־גִּשְׁתּוֹ עַד־אָחִיו — until finally he reached him, until finally he reached his brother (Genesis 33:3).

Imu, bowing low, did bowing have anything to do with what Yaakov got from Eisav?

Imu: Oh, the blessing.

Rabbi Forhman: What was the blessing?

Imu: יִשְׁתַּחֲווּ לְךָ בְּנֵי אִמֶּךָ? Are those the words?

Rabbi Forhman: Yes, “Your mother's sons should bow before you,” right? And you had a blessing that you should be the one, Yaakov, before whom your brothers bow. Now Yaakov says, “You know what? I think I need to bow before Eisav.” I bow to the ground seven times עַד־גִּשְׁתּוֹ, until he finally reaches him. In the purloined blessing, Yaakov had come forth and had approached Yitzchak, and now Yaakov is approaching Eisav and coming to Eisav. וַיָּרׇץ עֵשָׂו לִקְרָאתוֹ — and Eisav comes and he runs towards him, וַיְחַבְּקֵהוּ — and he hugs him, וַיִּפֹּל עַל־צַוָּארָו — and he falls on his neck, וַיִּשָּׁקֵהוּ — and he kisses him (Genesis 33:4).

You know, back in the blessing that was taken, Yitzchak also kisses him, but now Eisav kisses him. וַיִּפֹּל עַל־צַוָּארָו, what a fascinating metaphor — And Eisav falls on his neck. That language, “on his neck,” what does that remind you of?

Imu: That's also the blessing. There was a yoke.

Rabbi Forhman: The consolation prize blessing to Eisav was…?

Imu: You're going to serve your brother, but you'll be able to rebel and throw off the yoke of your brother from upon your neck.

Rabbi Forhman: Ah, so the blessing was, you're going to be able to throw off the yoke of the brother from upon your neck. And what's happening now?

Imu: Brother's on your neck, but in a good way.

Rabbi Fohrman: Brother’s on your neck, but there's no yoke anymore, in a good way. וַיִּבְכּוּ — And they cry. They cry together, and Eisav is kissing him, and there's this moment of reconciliation which echoes the zero-sum game and the blessing, but there's no zero-sum game anymore.

Imu: Oh my gosh, I love that. Wow, wow.

Rabbi Forhman: There is no “I'm up and you're down.” All there is is two brothers crying on each other's necks.

Imu: It's literally throwing off the zero-sum.

Rabbi Forhman: That's right. Instead of throwing off the yoke of my brother and rebelling against him, I throw off the blessing that says that we have to be at war with each other by putting your neck on my neck and giving you a hug.

Imu: Wow.

Okay, so, I know what you're thinking, or at least, what half of you are thinking. Eisav doesn't affectionately cry on Yaakov's neck. He bites it. That's the famous Midrash, and it speaks to how a lot of us are taught to read this story, as fraught and tense with Eisav as the bad guy. And if that's how you're used to reading it, Rabbi Fohrman's take may seem sappy or overly sentimental to you. But I think whether you agree with Rabbi Fohrman's take or not, what's important is to understand how his reading is grounded in the text. 

For one, there's just the simple facts that we're told. There's a hug, there's crying. On the surface, they don't seem like they're contentious. Just the opposite. But it's not only that. Rabbi Fohrman's also considering the telling ways that Eisav and Yaakov's encounter contrasts with the relationship these brothers were supposed to have based on the blessings. The imagery of Yaakov as the one bowing to Eisav and of Eisav as weeping on his brother's neck, not throwing a yoke off of his own neck, all of that, it's just too provocative to dismiss.

Now, how this reading lives together with the Midrash, that's really a conversation for another day. But p’shat and Midrash often exist on different planes. So without feeling like you have to abandon Chazal, I hope you can at least see how Rabbi Fohrman's reading is compelling in its own right, and especially how this reading is beginning to resonate with לֹא תַחְמֹד. Because here are two brothers once consumed by jealousy and rivalry, and they're beginning to reconcile. What's happened to their jealousy, and what can we learn from this moment about jealousy, and especially about overcoming it?

We're going to get deeper into these questions as we continue our learning, so let's get back to it. Picking up after the hug, Eisav looks up and he sees Yaakov's wives and children, and he asks a question.

Rabbi Forhman: Eisav will say: מִי־אֵלֶּה לָּךְ — Who are these? You know, when his father said, “Who are you?” Yaakov had lied. And now, perhaps Yaakov could worry Eisav might be threatening him. “Who are these kids?” And Yaakov is truthful: הַיְלָדִים אֲשֶׁר־חָנַן אֱלֹקים אֶת־עַבְדֶּךָ — They're the children, but they're not the children that I was promised in a blessing. They're not the children I deserve. They're the children I got from God. This is the moment that Eisav could have been jealous of all the wealth and all the blessings, and Yaakov perceives that and says, “You know, you don't have to be jealous. God was kind to me for reasons of grace. He just gave this to me free, and these are these children.” And children bow, and Leah bows, and all of that bowing is a way of saying, “I'm not asking you, Eisav, to bow. I can bow before you also. I want to share this blessing with you. I want you to have some of this blessing.”

And at that point, Eisav comes and says, “You know what? I don't actually need all of this. יֶשׁ־לִי רָב — I have enough, אָחִי — my brother. יְהִי לְךָ אֲשֶׁר־לָךְ — I don't need all of this.” In essence, Eisav is saying, “I'm not jealous. I'm okay. I have all the wealth I need. You can have what you have. I don't need it.” But Yaakov says, “No, אַל־נָא — please no. I need you to take this gift.”

And then, just skipping a verse, Yaakov is going to say something really interesting: קַח־נָא — Please take, אֶת־בִּרְכָתִי — my blessing. He no longer calls it a gift. אֲשֶׁר הֻבָאת לָךְ — That has been brought to you. Fascinating words.

When Yitzchak told Eisav that there was no blessing left, he said: בָּא אָחִיךָ בְּמִרְמָה וַיִּקַּח בִּרְכָתֶךָ — Your brother came in stealth and took your blessing (Genesis 27:35). Now Yaakov will say, “Eisav, please take my gift. It's a blessing for you אֲשֶׁר הֻבָאת לָךְ — that has come to you.”

Imu: Pretty loaded word.

Rabbi Forhman: It's those words that were searing in Eisav's ears, that father said, “Your brother came and took this,” and now brother is saying, “I’ve got a blessing for you. It's coming to you.” Why? Because: חַנַּנִי אֱלֹהִים וְכִי יֶשׁ־לִי־כֹל — God has given me all of this. I have everything that I need. I can part with some of this for you. I don't need this either. וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ וַיִּקָּח — And he insisted, and Eisav took it because Yaakov insisted.

And those words, יֶשׁ־לִי־כֹל — I have everything and therefore I don't need to be jealous of you, I can part with all of this and share this with you, that word כֹל is going to come back in the tenth command that says “No jealousy.” לֹא תַחְמֹד בֵּית רֵעֶךָ — Don't hold on to everything that your re'ah has, his wife, his maidservant, his manservant, his ox, his donkey, וְכֹל אֲשֶׁר לְרֵעֶךָ.

Imu: Oh, that word comes back.

Rabbi Forhman: There's that word. Everything that your re'ah has. Yaakov says, “All of this, this is everything. But you know what, I can part with some of it. You take it.” Neither brother gives in to jealousy.

Imu: It seems like the formula for not being jealous is actually feeling like you have everything. If you have a sense of wholeness, then you're not coveting anything outside of yourself, and that seems to be what Yaakov is saying here. יֶשׁ־לִי־כֹל,  and so he can give to Eisav.

Rabbi Forhman: Each one can say, “You know what, I have enough. It's okay. I don't need to covet.”

By the way, that word “covet” is so fascinating. That word, לֹא תַחְמֹד, does that remind you of anything in the extended Jacob and Eisav story? We're all the way at the end, at the very end of the Ten Commandments. There's that last word that goes all the way back to the beginning, that terrible crisis of the stolen blessing. Where did לֹא תַחְמֹד show up there? Chamad.

Imu: The בִּגְדֵי חֲמֻדֹת (Genesis 27:15).

Rabbi Forhman: The coveted clothes of Eisav. That's what Rivka took and put on him, the coveted clothes of Eisav. And why were they so coveted? Why did Yaakov so desperately want those clothes and need to put them on?

Imu: What an interesting metaphor actually, because he coveted the clothes of Eisav because those clothes made him dress up like the man that Eisav was. It made him smell like the fields. He could play dress-up and basically be Eisav.

I wonder if that tells you something about what this command about not being jealous is really all about, right? We're jealous of Bobby's car and Bobby's house because it's like you think that if you can put on Bobby's life then you'll somehow become Bobby. But you're not supposed to be Bobby.

Rabbi Forhman: You’re not supposed to be Bobby. When I feel like there's nothing left of me, I'm so worthless, I'm going before Dad, if Dad would just know who I am he would just dismiss me. But maybe I could just wear these clothes and sort of be more Eisav-like, and then father would think I'm worthwhile. I just need the clothes. I just need the clothes, because the clothes make the man, but then there's nothing inside anymore and the clothes swallow me up.

And that's what jealousy does. Your whole identity gets swallowed up as you try to amass these things that your friend has, thinking I'll be more and more like him if I just have his things.

Imu: What's even more interesting to me is the zero-sum formula. Why would you ever enter into a zero-sum formula, particularly with brother or with someone within the family? And it's if you perceive that there is scarcity, it's if you perceive that there's a limited resource that we have to fight over.

Rabbi Forhman: And what, Imu, was the greatest limited resource they fought over?

Imu: The bracha.

Rabbi Fohrman: Was it really?

Imu: Well, father's love.

Rabbi Forhman: Father's love. The bracha was just the תְּרָפִים. The bracha was just the token of it. I was fighting for the token.

Imu: Oh, that's fascinating. Once Yaakov got the bracha, as we said earlier, he didn't even get what he really wanted.

Rabbi Forhman: He didn't.

Imu: He really wanted father’s love.

Rabbi Forhman: I wanted Father to look at me and say, “You're worthwhile, you're great, you're everything that you need to be.” And so they're fighting over this token of Father's love, but even if they get it, what do they have? Because it's not really Father's love.

Imu: They’re still not whole.

Rabbi Forhman: It's just this thing that father thinks there's something divine that he has called a bracha. L’havdil elef alfei havdalos, the same way that, as different as it is, Lavan thinks that he's got something divine, these תְּרָפִים. For Yitzchak, everything is all about this bracha. For Lavan, everything's all about these תְּרָפִים. The temptation is for the kid to go to try to take the thing that father thinks is the most precious thing in the world, but really the kid just wants the father to love him.

And that's what the fight is. The problem is, Yaakov has not come back to Yitzchak, and for all we know, Eisav hasn't either.

Imu: So you're saying they're economically whole, they feel like they have lots of stuff and maybe they can look each other in the eye and give each other hugs. But the thing that they were both after, neither of them seemingly gets, which is Yitzchak's love. So that's a big hole here, pardon the pun. 

So, just to spell out why this felt like such a hole, like H-O-L-E, everything else we were seeing suggested that the brothers had learned not to covet; that instead they had found contentment in their own family and possessions. On a deeper level, it seemed even in their own selves.

If לֹא תַחְמֹד is calling back to how Yaakov dressed in Eisav's coveted clothing, then this moment of reconciliation is almost like the moment that Yaakov takes that costume off. He doesn't want to be Eisav anymore. He seems to have found wholeness, this time W-H-O-L-E, in who he is. And we were speculating that maybe this is the commentary that Genesis was offering on the commandment. The Torah was telling us that you can covet and covet and covet every piece of someone else's life, but you're not going to get what you want if what you want is actually to be someone else.

So far, so good. Only, here's where things were getting tricky. There was something Yakov and Eisav wanted that wasn't oxen or donkeys or the latest look in ancient Near East outerwear. There was a real loss that they were both suffering. They both had this searing doubt that their father really loved them, or at least loved them as much as he loved the other brother.

So even if they had overcome all of their other jealousy, and it wasn't about the wealth or the blessings or any of that anymore, it was hard to believe they didn't still want something, that they didn't still covet the love that they thought that the other had.

Now, look, if all they had learned was not to lust after the superficial objects of their jealousy, not to think that that would heal their actual wounds, I think we can all agree that that's still a valuable lesson, and very relatable. But if the Torah is trying to tell us something more ideal about finding actual wholeness, well, then again, we were left with a hole.

So something you should know about Rabbi Fohrman's methodology, he doesn't actually set out to address big conceptual issues like the problem we were just discussing. The Torah is often just not that neat, and we just have to live with complexity. Sometimes there are still holes left in the story. 

But in this case, he had noticed something, a little detail that's easy to gloss over but kind of strange when you dwell on it. And when he did dwell on it, well, it seemed to fill in our hole. Here's the detail that he noticed: If Eisav and Yaakov are having this moment of mutual non-coveting, shouldn't the story end with each saying, “I'm good, I don't need what you have?” But that's not how the story goes.

Rabbi Forhman: Yaakov and Eisav, at the very end, say, “I don't think I need these things. I can share them with you. And I don't think I need these things either. I think I'm okay.” Except that Yaakov says, “I need you to take these things. Could you do it for me?” Why does Yaakov need Eisav to take those things so very much?

Imu: You're referring to the fact that he pushes him to take the מִנְחָה.

Rabbi Forhman: Yes.

Imu: You’d think that the nice thing here would be for both of them to be Buddhists and renounce all of their possessions, but actually it seems to be really important to Yaakov that Eisav, who just did the most wonderful thing in the whole world and says, “I have enough, I don't need it, I'm good,” but Yaakov really pushes him. וַיִּפְצַר־בּוֹ — He pushes him and then Eisav takes it.

Rabbi Forhman: Why does he need to, so much? And so this brings us to a verse that I skipped over before. It's verse 10 in chapter 33, and it's such a difficult verse to read. This is Yaakov trying to tell Eisav that he really needs Eisav to have the blessing:

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אַל־נָא — No, please, don't deny this gift. אִם־נָא מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ — If I have found favor in your eyes, וְלָקַחְתָּ מִנְחָתִי מִיָּדִי — I really need you, please take this gift. כִּי עַל־כֵּן, very difficult words to translate — For because of this, for through this, רָאִיתִי פָנֶיךָ — I will have seen your face, כִּרְאֹת פְּנֵי אֱלֹקים — like the face of God Himself, וַתִּרְצֵנִי — and you will have shown pleasure in me, have shown acceptance to me.

What is he talking about? This doesn't make any sense. What do you mean? I need you to take the gift, כִּי עַל־כֵּן — because by doing so, I will have seen your face as if it's the face of God and you will have been pleased with me. How is that going to happen by him taking the gift? There's just no way to translate the words. It's such a strange thing.

But what really does עַל־כֵּן mean? עַל־כֵּן means “because.” It means “through this.” Yaakov is saying exactly what he means. What did Yaakov want to do back in chapter 27 in the original Deception story? What was he so desperate to do? To be accepted, to get father's love. He needed to do what father was asking of Eisav? Give father a gift. Who was father? The great, vertical, “up there” man. My creator. You have to go to your creator, and you've got to give him a gift. And in his acceptance of the gift, he's going to smile upon you and say, “That's a very good gift.” And then you'll finally breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Yes, I finally have it,” and he'll bless you and he'll give you his love, and everything will be okay.

Imu: That word that is at the end of the verse is וַתִּרְצֵנִי — and you'll have wanted me, right?

Rabbi Forhman: “You'll have wanted me,” that's right. “You'll have pleasure in me.” And so, here's the thing, we talked before about the zero-sum blessing that was given. We talked before about Yitzchak liking one child instead of another child and putting both children in very difficult positions because of that, and we talked before about how Yitzchak, maybe unbeknownst to him, might have caused a situation where both his children walked away thinking “Dad doesn't really care for me. Dad doesn't really like me.” The real wound they carry isn't that I don't have stuff, isn't that I don't have enough promise of material wealth. It's that I'm not sure if my father loved me. What do I do with that?

And here's this moment, that finally Yaakov is like, “I don't know, my brother was probably really jealous. Let me go and bow before him. Let me renounce the zero-sum game. And Eisav runs to him and is like, “I'll renounce the zero-sum game. I'm not going to rebel against you and throw the yoke off of my neck. I'm going to fall on your neck and cry.” And Eisav kisses him and bestows love upon him, and Yaakov says, “Love? You, big brother? You're bestowing love upon me? One second, hold on a minute. I need you to take this gift. I need you to take this gift.” He says, “I don't know, I'm not going to take the gift.”

“No, I need you to take the gift, and I'll tell you why. Because אַל־נָא אִם־נָא מָצָאתִי חֵן בְּעֵינֶיךָ — if you like me, please take the gift. וְלָקַחְתָּ מִנְחָתִי מִיָּדִי כִּי עַל־כֵּן, here's those words — Because through taking the gift, you are going to play someone for me. You're going to play Dad. רָאִיתִי פָנֶיךָ — Looking upon your face will be looking upon the face of the ultimate creator God.”

By the way, interestingly enough, he had that vision that night of seeing what Chazal say, the Sages say, was the angel of Eisav, and battling with him, and seeing the angel of Eisav almost as this angelic Eisav-being. It's like Yaakov channeling that. “It's like looking at you. It feels like looking at a heavenly being, like looking at a creator myself. It feels like looking at a creator. וַתִּרְצֵנִי — The creator is pleased with me. The creator wants me. I can give a gift to my creator.” It's like Eisav is standing in as a father for Yaakov.

And then Yaakov says something else. “I will stand in as a father for you. What was the wound that you had, Eisav? The wound that I had is that father never wanted a gift from me. If you take this gift from me, you can play father for me. I'll feel that I finally have given you a gift. And you, what's your wound? You never got the blessing that father promised you. קַח־נָא אֶת־בִּרְכָתִי — Take my blessing. I'll play father for you. I'll give you that blessing, אֲשֶׁר הֻבָאת לָךְ — that is coming to you. You heard father once say your brother came and took the blessing. I'll say, come take the blessing that's coming to you. כִּי־חַנַּנִי אֱלֹהִים וְכִי יֶשׁ־לִי־כֹל — I have everything. I don't need to be jealous, neither do you. Now let's give each other the thing that each of us needs the absolute most, the love of a brother that feels like the love of a father.”

So our producer just said off-camera something which is really mind-blowing, which is, going back to the Ten Commandments, this whole thing began in Revelation with a problem. You can't see God, so how are you going to find Him? Don't use your senses, they'll lead you astray. You can't see Him. Isn't it fascinating that the end of the Ten Commandments, the commentary of Genesis, comes with Yaakov saying, “You can't see God. God is the ultimate Creator. But you can see your older brother playing creator. That you can see.”

Imu: What this means to me, just again, it's another plug for the wholeness of family,  but it's almost like, who are we? Who are all of us? We are little aspects of God floating around in this world. And when you forget that, you exit the family. Then it becomes zero-sum because it's about me, right? If we're not all the children of the same creator, then I need to steal from you, I'm going to kill you, I'm going to take the blessing. Me, me, me, right? But if you actually see the family unit and you understand, actually, you and I have the same Parent. Our Parent is God.

Rabbi Forhman: What's fascinating, the way you're putting it is, isn't it fascinating how the last command of this tablet is mirroring the first? Why shouldn't you murder? Because we're all the children of God, and we all bear that little Godly spark inside of us. And therefore, If I'm so angry at you that I want to kill you, what's the last stopgap measure that I can hold on to to keep me from doing that? I can't find my love of you anymore, but I can find God and say, “God, you're the Parent. I can't do it to my Parent. My Parent loves both of us too much. I just can't do it to Him.”

So when you can't find the love of your brother, find the love of your Parent and don't kill for your Parent's sake. But listen to the tenth command. The tenth command is, but are you sure you can't find that love of your brother? Maybe you can. Maybe your adversary can love you. Maybe he can heal your wounds. Maybe you can cry together. 

And when you do, maybe you'll find you can look at that Godly and Heavenly spark in your adversary that you now got some love with and say, “They can be like my parent too, giving me the thing I never got from my parent.” And in לֹא תַחְמֹד, you say, “I don't need what you have. I can just recognize the Heavenly, Godly spark in you. I can see you as if you're the face of God”.

Imu: I think that this is really deep, and there's a lot of dimensions to it, but there even feels like the idea of, you want to see God's face? You want to know what that looks like? Put your family back together. If you can unite the family, that's sort of what, quote unquote, God “looks” like. Something that feels fragmented, if you can see its singularity, if you can see its wholeness, then that's what God looks like.

So at this point, here's what I found really wild. It's almost as if לֹא תַחְמֹד, this tenth command, the capstone of the entire Ten Commandments, is shining a spotlight on the brothers reconciliation. Right at the climax of all of our connections, we're actually getting a redemption of the entire story and a repair to the rupture at its very core.

It felt like an incredible illustration of how masterfully the Torah's intertextuality is structured, and it just hit me how deep and intricate the Torah actually is for Commandment Number Ten to somehow be the perfect bookend to a story we've been telling, a story of anguish between brothers and their father, something that transpired over 21 years.  That, to me, is breathtaking, and it felt like an awesome conclusion to all of our learning.

It also felt strange to be done. Rabbi Fohrman and I had been immersed in this material for weeks at this point. We'd been eating, sleeping, breathing the ins and outs of these parallels, but it had been a long time since we'd stepped back and considered the big, big picture. I mean, how the whole thing fit together from day one to right now. So we thought we'd give that a try.

Rabbi Forhman: So Imu, looking back on this whole thing, I mean, it's just astounding to see the revelation of the Ten Commandments as tracking with the Jacob story over and over again, and just the three dimensionality that emerges is breathtaking, and I know I'll be thinking about it for a long, long time.

I feel like there's still so much more here, I'm quite sure, but I'll leave you just with one reflection that comes to me, and that is, in another series I did on the Ten Commandments, I always saw the tablets as kind of separate; that there's a tablet which is about vertical relationships, relationships with my creators, that's the first tablet; and then there's horizontal relationships, relationships with my peers.

What's fascinating in this discussion is how much vertical relationships bleed into the horizontal relationships. As you begin to see the story of Jacob sort of shedding light on the Ten Commandments, isn't that fascinating that every single problem in horizontal relationships — whether it's murder, whether it's adultery, whether it's stealing, whether it's bearing false witness against your friend, whether it's coveting — in some way in Jacob's case, it all had to do with some fundamental problem in a child's relationship with a parent, whether that parent was Isaac or whether that parent was Lavan.

I was angry at my father so I was going to take it out on the child and I'd murder him. I want to have this great relationship with my wife, but father came in and created this quasi-adulterous kind of relationship. I'm stealing, but why am I stealing? I'm stealing because I'm really trying to get back at father and take from him what he once took from me.

And it's just so fascinating because I think that the message here is, either heal that relationship that you have with the parent, because if you don't, it's going to bleed into all of your relationships, or possibly when you can't, and sometimes you can't, find a quasi-kind of reconciliation with father through brothers within the horizontal realm. Use the love that you can find horizontally to somehow allow yourself to go on, even if you feel wounded in that relationship with the parent.

And then, the tenth command tells you, you can move on with a sense that even if my father didn't completely appreciate me, I still have self-respect. I don't need to wear the coats of my brother. And interestingly enough, I can still honor my father and mother for what it is that they gave me. They gave me life, even if they didn't give me all the love that I needed. I can still honor them. End of Tablet Number One. And I don't need to covet what anyone else has. I'm still okay. Commandment Number Ten.

Imu: If I can meditate for a second on what's really meaningful to me about all this, the very beginning of the season you talked about a problem, which is really two problems. One is, why on earth would this episode of the Ten Commandments and Revelation be related to the most painful of episodes in Genesis of a father favoring one child over the other? And you talked about the problem that God has, which is, here is Father, God in Heaven, needing to reveal Himself to child but knowing that child really is not going to get it. They just will not understand who am I really. And the same problem is what plagues Yaakov, his son who knows that he's not truly seen in every way by father.

And what I'm floored by again and again in the Ten Commandments is that you think that you're going to find some totem to give you what you're really after, right? Like, maybe I'll get Dad's love. I'll get Dad to see me if I wear different clothes. Or maybe I can be like Bobby if I take Bobby's house or wife or whatever it is. But ultimately, it feels like the thing that unites everything here is everybody's got to tell the truth about who they are, and who you are in life is never an individual. You're part of a family, you're the son of someone, you're the brother of somebody.

So there's this tension, this temptation when you're trying to be seen, to be something other than who you are. But actually, the counterintuitive part is, you sort of need to understand who you are in relation to God above you, to parents above you, to sibling, to wife. I don't know, that's what I'm moved by. 

Rabbi Forhman: Just focusing on what you said for a minute, one of the themes that you were talking about, Imu, was the idea of wholeness here; that God, in order to be appreciated, needs to be appreciated for all the different, seemingly contradictory sides of Him, right? The God that loves you to pieces but can also be jealous if you spurn Him, the God that is the Creator of Heavens but also the Creator of Earth, the God that creates the sun and the moon but is not reducible to the sun and the moon. And if you start picking apart God and say, “Well, He made this or He made that, that's Who He is,” then you aren't in touch with His essence.

And you related that to the problem of the zero-sum blessing; the problem, which is that ultimately, just as Heavenly Father is indeed One, father needs to recognize that his family is one, that children are one, and therefore you can't prioritize one over the other. The only way that you could possibly celebrate a child is for his or her ability to facilitate your love of the whole, which is essentially what the Chosenness of God is all about.

So God comes back and says, “There is a version of chosenness, of singling out a child that's acceptable, but it is only acceptable because it is in service of the vision of family. כִּי־לִי כׇּל־הָאָרֶץ — The whole world is Mine (Exodus 19:5), and because the whole world is Mine, I need you to be treasured. I need you to be the מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים (Exodus 19:6). I need you to somehow facilitate My connection to the whole. And that's God's response to the blessing of Yitzchak. 

And then we get back to this question, which is, but how could it be that there's this awful story of subterfuge and pain and dispossession and children thinking that they're not loved, and that becomes the story out of which our chosenness emerges out of the ashes of that story? Why out of that story? And I think maybe the answer to that is, the people who got that blessing are exactly the people that I need to be My representative nation to the world. You've got to find your way to dig your way out of that hole. This is life. Life comes with children that don't get all the love they want from their parents. Life comes with rivalry. Life comes with sometimes your brother wants to even kill you. Life comes with abusive fathers-in-law. Life comes with all of the pain and difficulty that emerges from this story. Your challenge is to put it back together again.

What principles are you going to live by to be able to somehow put this back together again? Those principles, I think, become the Ten Commandments. What happened in this story that was good? What happened in this story that we can build on? That'll become a law. לֹא תִּרְצָ͏ח, right? How did Eisav refrain from murder? That's an amazing thing. Let's put that in the Ten Commandments. Things went wrong, okay, let's correct them. לֹא־תַעֲנֶה בְרֵעֲךָ עֵד שָׁקֶר. Don't do that. That's not a good way of testifying. We're not going to want to do that.

You're going to build on this, you're going to figure it out. And when you live by the laws, then you're going to show the other children in the family how you're supposed to live to be Godly. That's what it means to be Godly, to deal with all of this pain and struggle and find a way to make up with your brother, and through that find a way to live.

And if the other children in the family, if the other nations in the world can look at that and say, “Boy, these guys crawled out of quite a hole. Look, they managed to put together a life for themselves by some decent laws, maybe there's a model here.” Now you're doing what it means to be a מַמְלֶכֶת כֹּהֲנִים וְגוֹי קָדוֹשׁ.

Imu: So pause right here, which is actually what Rabbi Fohrman and I did at this moment, too. You know, everything Rabbi Fohrman was saying resonated with me, but it also left me feeling, I don't know, kind of awkward. And it wasn't just me. He was feeling it, too. Because this attempt to summarize or find a guiding principle through this whole season, neither of us felt like we were doing such a great job of it.

So we paused the tape and considered cutting everything from, like, the last nine minutes, everything since we started this big picture reflection. The only reason it's still on the podcast is because our producer went rogue. So if you like the last few minutes, thank her. And if you didn't, blame her.

Here's the thing. It's not that we disagree with anything we've just said, the strange way that parental relationships dominate these parallels, the challenge of finding wholeness in a place of fragmentation, the acknowledgment that life is messy, that sin comes from a very human place, and that chosenness is not a gold star but a familial responsibility. All of these are striking themes that emerge from our learning this season, and they're all worth, I think, reflecting on even more. But what made us uncomfortable was the exercise itself, stepping back and trying to say that this is the lesson or the grand thesis of the season. It felt too ambitious, too artificial, like we were trying to wrap up a galaxy with a bow.

The truth is that we were still in the middle of processing and just trying to understand everything we'd seen in the text ourselves. So what we decided to do is just leave it to you, dear listener, to figure out your own grand thesis. And we hit record again, this time trying out a different approach to ending our conversation, one less focused on what we had learned and one more focused on how we were feeling.

Imu: So Rabbi Fohrman, after having seen all this, and I know every time we talk about it over the last few months you're surprised again and again and again by what you see, but what are you feeling having worked on this for a while now?

Rabbi Forhman: I don't know. I'll tell you the honest truth, I feel this terrible sense of trepidation and awe at the same time. That the Ten Commandments should parallel the Jacob story at all, even one little connection, that sounds crazy. 37 different connections in order, with implications for how to understand the Ten Commandments? To me, it's breathtaking and awesome. I just feel there's many, many implications here, and many mysteries. The mystery of the double repetition of Revelation echoing the Deception story and then the Ten Commandments echoing the Deception story, the meaning of the interface between Revelation itself and the laws, what it means to have both of those together, what chosenness means in light of this, what each of the Ten Commandments means. Do you know those fractals, the Mandelbrot set?

Imu: Of course. Who doesn’t know the Mandelbrot set? 

Rabbi Forhman: Okay, just Google it. The Mandelbrot set is a simple algorithm. It's a very simple mathematical equation, but when you graph the mathematical equation, these gorgeous fractal spiraling patterns emerge, each whole containing a sum of its parts and each part containing the whole, and you can drill down into any tiny speck of the Mandelbrot set and then see the whole in that speck and then see another whole in that speck

Imu: Sounds like dizzying complexity and simplicity.

Rabbi Forhman: Yeah, that's exactly what this feels like. Zoom in on any one of these commands in light of these connections, and there's dizzying complexity and meaning, and it's such a gift and so awesome and mysterious at the same time. It's quite something, and I really thank you for being my chavrusa here in this. It's been such a gift to be with you on this journey. It really has.

Imu: Likewise. It's been incredibly fun and incredibly rich every day. I've been walking around talking to my wife and babbling about Eisav, and nobody understands what I'm talking about. But it is deeply, deeply rich in surprising ways, and I hope we did it justice here.

Rabbi Forhman: We certainly didn't do it justice. No, we didn't, and to even try, you'd have to go back, literally, I feel like you could go back into any one of these commands. There's so much to say. And I invite listeners, if this has meant anything to you, take a piece of it and meditate on it, and build it out for yourself. Talk about it to your kids. Learn it with your chavrusa. And you too, I think, will begin to see that in any piece of this, there's just so much there that it's astonishing.

Imu: I think that's a lovely way to put it, and in a way, I don't know, what comes to mind is halacha, the idea that you walk with God. It's like a walk, it's dynamic. That's what it always feels like. This really was a walk I got to go on with you, and its content, the meaning happens when you're moving through the verses. But if you stop and you look back and try to put a bow around it, it's too much to do that. But it was a great walk.

Rabbi Forhman: What's so fascinating about it to me is that, you know, one of the Sheish Zechiros, the six things that we're always supposed to remember, is the Revelation at Sinai. And it's interesting, the Torah doesn't say, “You should remember the laws that I gave you at Sinai.” It doesn't say that. “You should remember what happened at Chorev. Remember that God Himself came and showed up.” That's what we're supposed to remember.

And it's so strange. Like, we're just supposed to remember being there with God at Sinai, even more than the laws. There's this fascinating meta-level to that. It feels like, in the narrative in which God told us the story of that thing we're supposed to remember that was so mind-blowing, that He was there with us, it feels like He has encoded in that story an experience that is profound, that, if you plumb the depths of it, makes it feel like God was there with you. Just by reading the story of God being there with our nation once, you can have the experience of God being there with you.

Imu: You know what, it's funny you say that, because I also was going to say, “Hey, Rabbi Fohrman, doesn't it feel like a Revelation?”

Rabbi Forhman: It's almost like the Revelation was written in a way that, if you read it carefully enough, feels like a Revelation.

Imu: Yeah, it does kind of feel that way. The most simple thing is just utterly gorgeous, which is that this Revelation narrative, which you can read as God in the clouds giving you rules, is really about brothers. It's about making peace between brothers.

Rabbi Forhman: Yeah. Well, Imu, this has been a real gift. Until next time, thank you for being my chavrusa. We've got to do this more often.

Imu: This was great. Thank you.

Rabbi Forhman: Thank you.

Credits

This season of A Book Like No Other was recorded by the great Rabbi David Fohrman and the less great me, Imu Shalev. 

It was produced by the awesome Robby Charnoff. 

Our audio engineer is the tireless Hillary Gutman. 

A Book Like No Other's managing producer is the wonderfully organized and ever-fantastic Adina Blaustein, and our senior producer is the ever-creative Tikva Hecht. 

A Book Like No Other is a product of Aleph Beta, and made possible through the very generous support of Shari and Nathan Lindenbaum, good friends, great people. Thank you, Shari and Nathan, and thank you all, our greatest, bestest, awesomest listeners for listening.

Imu: All right, that was lovely. Let's do it again from the top, please.