Right now, my daughter Gabby is obsessed with the movie
Frozen. This means that I end up
watching some, or all, of the movie, on average, once a day, as she demands to
watch Frozen from the moment she wakes up until virtually the moment that she
goes to sleep at night. Thankfully, it is a very good movie with some wonderful music in it, but I do find
one element of the story frustrating.
The story seems to gloss over the fact that Anna and Elsa's childhood
relationship is broken completely by the advice of the trolls and the way that
their parents interpret it. For much of
the movie, the sisterly relationship is broken, due to a lack of contact and
communication between the two of them.
I wonder if we can draw some parallels with this week’s
Torah portion, and the relationship of Esau and Jacob. From the very beginning of this week’s Torah,
it is clear that there is to be a struggle between the two brothers. When Rebecca goes to God and asks about all
of the struggling in her womb, she is told that there will be two nations, two
separate peoples, one shall be mightier than the other, and the older shall
serve the younger. From the very
beginning Rebecca therefore knows that
according to God’s decree, Esau will serve Jacob. And yet, she appears to let the two of them
go about their business and Isaac, especially, to go about his business, without
sharing this vital piece of information.
We know that Esau sells Jacob his birthright for a bowl of soup and we
know that later on in the story, Isaac decides to give his blessing to Esau,
and Rebecca, overhearing this, tells Jacob to go in and lie to his father and
pretend to be his brother Esau. Rebecca
may have been right that Jacob was supposed to be the one to inherit the
blessing. And she may have been correct
that Jacob was the one who would continue the birthright given to Abraham and Isaac.
But the way she went about this, the way that she set Jacob
up against Esau, lying to their father, breaks the sibling relationship. The brotherly relationship is broken by the
actions of Rebecca, who chooses a path of deception, rather than honesty in
broaching the difficult subject over who would receive the birthright. In the aftermath of this incident , the
brotherly relationship is broken and Jacob and Esau do not see each other for over 20 years. When finally they are reunited in the Torah,
they embrace one another and it is clear that the love that these brothers
shared is still there. But it is sad for
us, as the reader, to observe the way that their relationship was frozen. The way that it is broken by the action of
their parents.
There is a similar cautious tale in Frozen but I don’t want
to spoil that movie for you. To us, as
we read about the separation and break in the relationship between Esau and
Jacob, perhaps we can be inspired to pick up the phone and thaw a once frozen
relationship, learning the lesson of these two brothers.
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