TOLDOT

Beit Warszawa, 9th. November 2018

Rabbi Dr Walter Rothschild

The Hebrew word ‘Toldot’, the name for this week’s sidra, strictly means ‘Generations’ – Those who have been born – and is used more loosely to mean ‘The Generations’ and ‘History’. The Hebrew verbal root ”Y’L’D” is used to mean ”to be born” or ”to give birth” – ”Yeled” is a boy, ”Yaldah” a girl, the ‘Molad’ the birth of a new lunar month….

History is created by the lives and deaths of several generations; If they are still alive it is better to call it ‘current events’, if they have died it becomes ‘the history of previous generations’. Of course such a division is artificial, but it is what one may term ‘a working hypothesis’. At the moment when someone has started the next generation, their own generation moves back one step in the sequence and they are on their way into the past, they are on their way to becoming parents and hopefully, in due course, grandparents, great-grandparents and ‘distant ancestors’, or ‘elder statesmen’ or ’emeritus’. So when the Bible speaks of ”These are the generations of” somebody, it is almost always followed by who their children and grandchildren were and became.”

There are not just the ”Toldot Isaac” – (Genesis 25:19) but also the ”Toldot Ishmael” (25:12), the ”Toldot Esau” (36:1, repeated in verse 9) as examples of the way the text describes the descendants by moving ahead chronologically. So it can mean a look into the future as well as the past. Indeed the first use of the word is in Genesis 2:4: ”Eyleh Toldot haShamayim vehaAretz” – ”This is the history of the Heavens and the Earth” (though, admittedly, the Heavens are from then on virtually ignored!) Interestingly, in Genesis 5:1 we find the first reference to literary records – ”Zeh Sefer Toldot Adam, beYom barah Elohim Adam biDmuto…” – ”This is the BOOK of the History/Generations of Adam, on the day when God made him according to His own image…” – it actually marks the beginning of the generational listing of Adam, Seth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalel and so on. But we are not told who wrote the book or where it is now!

In Gen. 6:9 we read ”Eyleh Toldot Noach”, though here the list is very brief, covering just the one further generation with his three sons. It is in 10:1 that the story continues – with ”VeEyleh Toldot B’nei-Noach, Shem, Cham veYaphet…” – ”This is the history of the SONS of Noach” and the generations are then carefully given in accordance with the appropriate ancestor. In 11:10 the ”Toldot Shem” are enumerated or named again so as to bring us to Avram – the ”Toldot Terach” following in 11:27 just AFTER the list has reached Avram, as though emphasising this special birth.

I am stressing this point to show that when in this week’s sidra we focus on the history of Isaac, this is just one part of our history amongst many parts. Each individual has been born, and many – though not all – will go on to ensure that others are born. Of course from a modern, individualistic point of view this is selective, limited and essentially unfair. Why should we be defined purely by who came before us and who came after us? What about those people who do not want children, what about those who want but cannot have children, what about those who tried and had children but then lost them? And the answer is, Yes, this IS selective, it IS unfair, but it is also realistic. So often Reality does not match what we would like it to be. This disconnect is a major challenge to us, politically and socially and theologically. Reality says ”There will always be some people poorer than others”; Reality says ”Some people will always be born handicapped, some will acquire difficult and chronic illnesses, some will be depressive, some will become suicidal, some will be aggressive.” We know that some people are intelligent and some are not, that some are talented, and some are not. We can write books and preach sermons that say ”Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not abuse children or the weak!” – but there will still always be people who do! We can call out ”Ban War!” – but that alone will not stop wars from happening. To deny this is foolish and unrealistic. It is like those who say that, if only the Police were disbanded, there would be no more criminals!

So we can add to the categories, ”Some are fertile, and some are not.” I am not a doctor specialising in reproductive medicine, nor am I criticising those who make their own life choices, I am simply a rabbi reading an ancient text in which a couple, a married couple, go through twenty long, agonising, disappointing, perplexing, desperate years before – at last – they become parents. A few sidrot ago Abraham and Sarah went through the same agony and sought different options – first by adopting Abraham’s orphaned nephew, Lot; then by using the housemaid Hagar as an Ersatz Mother….. For them, at least, their identity depended upon producing the next generation even though, as we will learn, this by no means resolved all their problems! Quite the reverse, in fact….

In Arab culture many people are called ‘ibn’ – ‘the son of’, and others ‘Abu’ – ‘the father of’, or ‘Umm’, ‘the mother of’. People define themselves by the generation to which they belong. In Hebrew one is ‘Ben’ or ‘Bat’ someone. How many surnames in different languages use the term ‘son’ or ‘Fitz’ or ‘Sohn’ or ‘sson’ or ‘witz’ or ‘wicz’ or ‘vici’ or ‘shvili’ or other linguistic forms? Think of ”Johnson”, ”Robinson”, ”Williamson” – ”Wolfssohn”, ”Shmuelevitz”, ”Jakobshvili” and so forth…..

Isaac Abramowicz, Isaac the son of Abraham, or Yitzhak ben Avraham v’Sarah, and Rivkah bat Betuel, do not wish to become the ends of their respective lines. Matters are not helped by their social backgrounds; Isaac has had, to put it mildly, a very difficult relationship with a very elderly father and his mother has died; Rivka is also on her own, far away from any maternal or sisterly advice that she could have got at home. (Think of what Rachel later does, trying various techniques such as the ‘Alraunen’ roots or even stealing her father’s idols and sitting on them… In the end she dies giving birth to her second child.)

The section of history that we read this weekend reflects a part of this risk, that the family of Abraham will simply die out, reach a dead end, fade away.

If Rivkah had not got pregnant, the story would have ended here. There would have been no Jacob or Esau, no Joseph, no family history. Abraham’s dynasty would have lasted about as long as King Saul’s. We have absolutely no idea how many family histories were ended by such catastrophes as the Shoah or the War because, quite simply, there were no descendants left to remember the ancestors. The family lines died out and – except in very rare cases, where maybe a book or a building or a patent survive, or a distant relative who moved away in time – they are now forgotten. Every young soldier killed on the battlefield, every child murdered in a massacre, means that a line ends, violently and before it can reach fruition.

So Continuity requires generations. Right now in Europe we are facing an uncertain Jewish future, partly because many Jews are marrying later or not marrying at all or not marrying in order to raise Jewish families – at an individual level this is wholly justified, but at a communal level it leads to a failure to provide continuity. That people choose voluntarily to become Jewish, for whatever personal or family reason, is helpful in maintaining some numbers but is also not always without problems.

I am currently facing a bizarre situation in Germany where someone CLAIMS descent from many generations of Jews but, it seems, has been doing so without any actual basis. He was not born as a Jew, nor did he properly convert to Judaism. But, he says, he ”feels Jewish”. This desire to be someone else, not who you really are, is a strange and worrying phenomenon and quite widespread. I don’t just mean the daydreams of being a brave hero or spy or famous sportsman or musician, the fantasies of a fictional character such as James Thurber’s ‘Walter Mitty’. Everyone wants to be better, better-looking, better-off financially, and it can take us decades just to get used to being who we are and learning to live with ourselves. But those who deliberately set out to fake their identity, to distance themselves from their real roots, to adopt a false name or nationality or qualification, those who dress up as doctors or pilots and then create havoc when people believe them and trust them – this is something else. (There are even those who pretend to be rabbis, as we have seen in Poznan not long ago!)

The fact is that in Europe, now, there are barely any Jews. Here a handful, there a handful, but put all together merely a fraction of what there used to be. The Jewish world is not short of analysts who have already written us off as having no future, as being doomed. I do not want to share this despair, but I do take note of the Reality. We cannot just click our fingers and suddenly become large communities, we need to use the limited resources that we have, and work together where we can. At the very least, we must do our best to substitute Quality for Quantity. We must work to keep our communities alive, and every single one has a role to play in this endeavour.

Towards the end of our sidra, after many adventures, in chapter 28 verse 1 Isaac – who has until now been portrayed as mainly weak and passive – tries to take control of the situation, though in fact he is merely responding to his wife’s worries and complaints; He calls his son Jacob (actually one of his two sons, his twin sons, but that is the point) and tells him to look for a wife back amongst his maternal family, and prays that God may make him to be fruitful and multiply and become a ”kahal Amim”, a congregation of peoples. Esau, to spite his father, who until these incidents had preferred him over his brother, and who has four Canaanite wives, now deliberately looks for a daughter of Ishmael – that is, a cousin, a granddaughter of his grandfather Abraham – Mahalat, to take as a wife. The text does not make clear whether his motives are to please or to annoy his parents – and ironically in the later listing of Esau’s children in chapter 36, she is renamed Basmat. Through his wife Adah Esau becomes the grandfather of Amalek! Families are always more complicated than we like to think. Communities too. And a ‘Kahal Amim’ or a Family of Communities most of all!

But let us look Forward; the Covenant has been passed on to Jacob and the story will continue. Until the present and, hopefully, beyond……..