The Essential Question

Toldot 5777 / 3 December 2016

We often celebrate the Jewish tradition for its openness to the spirit of questioning. Yet, as deeply embedded in the consciousness of Israel as the spirit of questioning is, it has just as often been constrained, sometimes squelched, only to re-emerge. At present we live at a time of deep questioning and powerful squelching of questions simultaneously. And even the questions we ask may be the wrong ones.

This morning I’d like to begin by mapping a short genealogy of the spirit of questioning as it first is expressed in our culture in the biblical text. This will not be an exhaustive investigation, but rather a sampling that, I hope, will be indicative of the role questioning and its preciousness in our history down to our own time.

The subject was suggested to me by what might otherwise have seemed like a throw away line in this morning’s Torah reading. Amid all of the exciting incidents comprising the lives of Yitzchak, Rivka, Yaakov and Esau, this plaintiff question might have been overlooked. However, as we will see, it provides the context for all the adventures to come in the Parsha and, at the same time, it takes its place amid a pattern of such questions around which the entire Torah narrative may be said to have been built. Rivka’s question, when she felt her twins struggling within her womb was simple: Im cain, lama zeh anochi, “If thus, why do I exist?” Is this an over-reaction? Does the movement of her children within her warrant this existential dilemma? Yes, it was an over-reaction, purposely rendered in order to draw our attention to it. For if this is not the beginning of philosophy then I’m not sure what could be unless it is one of the earlier question in Genesis that have lead up to this moment. The first such question appears in Bereshit 3:9; it is a question put into the mouth of God at the moment human innocence gives way to human consciousness: “Adonai called out to the human and said, ‘Where are you?’” – Ayecka. This is Abraham Joshua’s Heschel’s famous God in search of man. It is the Bible’s assertion that the inexplicable placement of this last element of the creation, or the last stage of  the evolution of the Universe, this human, is fundamentally put into question by existence itself. “Where are you?” What role will you take in this otherwise cold, infinite Universe.

Or perhaps it is with the next question we encounter, also placed in the Divine mouth:
“Why are you distressed and why is your face fallen” Thus speaks the questioning Universe to each of us as Cain when all our desires for reward and recognition are disappointed.

Or it may be the well known question: “Where is Abel your brother?” Or “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Or “Shall not the judge of all the earth act righteously?” Any and all of these questions could be said to be the most fundamental questions of human existence. But when viewed together, and I believe they were intended to be viewed together, they demonstrate, along with Rivka’s question, that the mysterious nature of being human cannot be contained by a single question.

“Where are you? Why are you distressed? Where is your brother? Am I my brother’s keeper? Will not the judge of all the earth act justly?” and finally, “If thus, why do I exist?” One could write a sermon, or a book or two books on each of these questions. As I have said, I want to focus on just one, the last one, the one that Rivka cried out in pain and confusion. We may not have two nations struggling within us, but we are certainly in the midst of numerous binary struggles: Israel and Palestinians, Red States and Blue States, Black and White, native born and immigrants. Like Rivka, we feels as though we are being torn apart and watching our world be torn apart, yet unlike Rivka, we rarely stop to ask ourselves the existential question: “If thus____(fill in the blank), “If any of life’s inevitable struggles” then why do I exist.” And without asking the question, without drilling down deeply within ourselves as I imagine Rivka did, without challenging the Universe itself to explain to our satisfaction why we are here, we can never begin to know.

If Rivka’s question is essential, then our first assumption should be that the biblical philosopher who put the question in Rivka’s mouth within the narrative, also used the narrative to offer at least his or her answer to the question. In our narrative the oracle that Rivka receives might seems to have nothing to do with such philosophic questions: “Two nations are in your womb, Two separate peoples shall issue from your body; One people shall be mightier that the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” For many centuries we have assumed that we knew what this means. It justifies the supremacy of Jacob over Esau. It justifies the trickery that Rivka orchestrates to insure this supremacy. It comes to stand for Israel’s sense of the God-giveness of its mission that hovers over the biblical story and the actual history as it unfolds, particularly in the contemporary context. But what if we have been reading it incorrectly? What if beside the needs of the narrative there is another reading that better reflects the impulse of the philosophic author?

What then is the different reading? It hinges on the unequal terms of the comparative couplet: “One people shall be mightier that the other,” on the one hand and “the older shall serve the younger” on the other. Esau is clearly mightier. Jacob is clearly the younger. Assuming that Esau is the mightier of the people, then saying that the older will serve the younger suggests that might will be overthrown. It is not to be might or power that will cause the older to serve the younger, but by something else and that something else answers Rivka’s question and this riddle-like oracle addresses her existential question. Yes, this life is filled with struggle and strife; yes, even brothers will turn against one another and people’s will turn against one another; and the mighty will oppress the weak, but the very meaning of existence will be discovered when the older will serve the younger, when the weak and the oppressed will be lifted up and those who live only by power will submit themselves to those they have oppressed. “You ask,” Rivka, “if this be a world of struggle and oppression why do you exist?” Precisely because only in your carrying this message to the world, that the older will serve the younger, that those with power will serve those without power does your existence have any meaning. But it does have meaning and you do have a mission; not Rivka, but all of humanity who are brought by struggle to cry out and ask this question. You do have a mission and it is one that ordinary history will oppose at every step. There will be almost no surcease in the struggle until every power structure is turned upside down. This is not the story of Esau and Jacob, or even Israel and her enemies, but a riddle that opposes everything we think we know about how the world works.

The philosopher who framed both the question and the answer in the Rivka fragment had no illusions. He or she understood that we would constantly be called to wonder what it all means, whether its all worth it; that there would be times when the political, social, economic and technological impositions of power would seem to rob life of a sense of meaning; and he or she understood that the very structure of the Universe stood as an answer to the question. That the struggle itself is an extension of the process of creation. That the need to turn things upside down, not to become comfortable with the status quo, not to become to comfortable with the powerful or certainly to become the powerful, would always confront us. But that as long as we had the strength to reach out and grab the heel that threatened to step on us and uproot it, then life would have a meaning that transcended the difficulty of the struggle. This is the task that faces us: We have been awakened out of the illusion of our own power. We have been reminded of our tradition’s basic insight that it is the meaning of our life to speak truth to power whether that be in Washington DC, Jerusalem, or Standing ‘Rock. This political season has given us a gift. The gift of rediscovering meaning in a world where for a moment we might have wondered: “if thus, why do I exist.” You exist and I exist and Jewish tradition exists so that the younger might overturn the older and the stronger.