Efrat, Israel: “And Jacob took him rods of fresh poplar, and of the almond and of the plane-tree; and peeled white streaks in them, making the white appear which was in the rods. And he set the rods which he had peeled over against the flocks in the gutters in the watering-troughs where the flocks came to drink; and they conceived when they came to drink” (Gen 30:37,38).

What happened to Jacob during all those years when he lived in Haran together with his Uncle Laban? Initially, in last week’s portion of Toldot, we were introduced to him, as a “…wholehearted man, a dweller in tents,” (Genesis 25:27), a pure and somewhat naïve personality who was more introspective and inner-directed than the kind of person who lives outdoors and roughs it in the natural world: if a tent is the Biblical symbol for a house, a house of study and a house of prayer  (Numbers 24:5, in accordance with the Midrash), then Jacob was wed to the hearth and to the book (Bible) rather than to the field and to the  hunt. And although a central, and perhaps even self-defining, act occurs to him (and even to a certain extent by him) in his “taking” of the birthright, (an act in which he is both the actor and also the one upon whom the drama is enacted) we still find him dreaming, at the opening of our Biblical reading this week, of a ladder connecting heaven and earth, of ascending and descending angels, and of G-d promising him the inheritance of the ancestral Land of Israel. 

But in “Laban-land” we encounter a very different, seemingly altered, Jacob. He strikes a business deal with Laban, ostensibly asking for next to nothing for himself when he sets up a system to divide and share in the natural increase of the flocks of sheep and goats they’ve been tending.  He asks Laban to remove all the striped, spotted or speckled sheep and goats; his share, the share of Jacob, the shepherd son-in-law, will be limited only to the striped, spotted and speckled lambs and goats that happen to be born. After the removal of these very types from Jacob’s pool, Laban readily agrees. Why shouldn’t he? No one has ever offered him such a generous and ‘sweet’ deal. Jacob’s terms are what dreams are made of: the father-in-law and his sons are about to become wealthy. 

But apparently, among his other talents, Jacob possesses expertise in husbandry, and he manages to turn the tables on his father-in-law by “manipulating” the flock, using a genetic experiment nearly 4000 years ago. He proceeds to take various planes of wood, peeling them so that the white stripes from beneath the surface are revealed, creating striped and streaked wands of wood, which he then places near the water troughs where the sheep and goats usually mate. The result of the animals cohabiting in the presence of these wands is to be seen in the numerous striped and streaked offspring they give birth to. In effect, Jacob becomes a very wealthy man by revealing the “lavan” (Hebrew for white, which is also the name of Laban) under the surface of the planes of the wood (Gen. 30:37).

On the surface it might seem that not only has Jacob turned into a “deceiving manipulator,” but that he’s traded in his dream of uniting heaven and earth and his eventual return to Israel, his ancestral home, for a huge flock of ringed, spotted and striped sheep, a “killing” on the stock market that gives him earthy, material prosperity while ignoring all his years in the yeshiva of Shem and Ever (Gen. 31:10-12). What happened? And why did it happen? 

Our Talmudic Sages placed great store in the power of a name, “…as is his name, so is he.”  Jacob’s Hebrew name “Ya'akov” carries several connotations.  Here is how the Bible pictures the birth of Ya'akov:  "And afterwards [Esau's] brother emerged, with his hand grasping onto the heel of Esau; so he named him Ya'akov [ekev means heel].” On the one hand Ya’akov can imply a heel-grasper, sneaking up from behind, a “heel –sneak” (Everett Fox so translates the name “crookedly usurping” based on Jeremiah 9:3 and Isaiah 40:4) 

On the other hand, the name may actually suggest a more positive quality, the admirable ability to “come up from behind,” succeeding against difficult odds by dint of extra effort and diligence, “surviving and triumphing at the end” (see S'forno, ad loc). Which is the correct name? Will the real Ya'akov stand up! 

Ya'akov’s character is so fully-fleshed out that he resonates with us as probably the most carefully depicted personality in the Bible. Our Sages call him “the most special of the patriarchs” because he, more than the other patriarchs, changes and develops, assumes many peregrinations and transformations, until he ultimately emerges, triumphant, as “Yisrael,” (as he was later named). And the Bible, if we read it closely enough, actually reveals the hidden keys to his personality and its development. 

Suffice it to say for now that Ya'akov suffers desperately from the fact that his father Isaac “loved Esau because the hunted venison was in his mouth” (Gen. 25:28), Esau and not Ya'akov. This pregnant phrase, the apparent reason for Esau's favored-son status, emphasizes “red-meat” materialism and smooth-tongued verbal manipulation   ("entrapment," tsayid), which were the major characteristics of Esau.

Hence Rav Haim Ibn Atar (the 18th century commentary known as the Ohr HaHaim HaKadosh) points out that the very next verse, no segue whatsoever, reads, “And Ya'akov prepared (Hebrew, Vayazed) a lentil stew; and Esau came from the field, being faint” (Gen.25: 29). Ya'akov had prepared the red stew - on purpose, vayazed, mazid - for his father Isaac; Ya’akov desperately wanted to merit paternal love, and hoped that perhaps his red stew would be a fitting substitute for Esau's red venison meat, and might even gain for him the coveted birthright. Thus taking advantage of this opportunity in order to buy with it the birthright from Esau seemed to him a logical extension of the purpose for which it had been cooked in the first place! (I am indebted to Shmuel Klitsner's excellent work “Wrestling Jacob” for this insight.) But undoubtedly Ya’akov the heel – sneak seems to be taking advantage of his brother’s hunger and exhaustion!

From this perspective, Ya'akov longed to be his father’s Esau, longed for the paternal caresses bestowed upon his brother, longed for the birthright that the patriarch was about to give the eldest son. As a direct consequence of his longings, it’s almost natural for Ya'akov to acquiesce to his mother Rebecca’s plan, to wrap himself in the goatskins, the out-doors garb of Esau, so that he become hairy like him and smell like him when he introduces himself to his blind father, “I am Esau, your first born.” (27: 18).

Jacob, the one who will succeed at the end and who, in the end, diligently surpasses Esau by coming up from behind, at this point in time has become a conniving usurper, a ‘heel-sneak’ who peeled away his authentic whole-hearted personality only to reveal another lavan-like layer of deception. The heroism of Ya'akov will emerge in his ability to grow back into himself – and his G-d – and emerge as Yisrael. 

Shabbat Shalom