When You Cut One Finger, the Whole Hand Hurts

My great-grandmother was a mother of eight children. Her three oldest children were daughters born to my great-grandfather's first wife, who died when her daughters were 1, 3, and 5 years old. My great-grandmother raised Jeanette, Francis, and Ruth as though they were her own daughters, along with her five children, including my grandmother. Whenever asked which of her children she loved the most - a potentially explosive question given her blended family - my great-grandmother would always reply with a comment along the lines of, "When you cut one finger, the whole hand hurts." (I hope my family will forgive me if I didn't get the quotation quite right.) What I think she meant was that if she loved any of her children less than the others, they would all have suffered.

I am fortunate that my great-grandmother was one of my ancestors. Isaac and Rebekah, however, could have used her wisdom. This week's Torah portion, Tol'dot, tells us of the birth of Isaac and Rebekah's twins, Jacob and Esau. Jacob was the gentle one, loved more by their mother, Rachel. He spent his time with her at home. Esau, the rugged one, loved more their father Isaac, hunted game and spent his time in the great outdoors. When it comes time for Isaac, on his deathbed, to bestow a blessing on his older son, Rebekah steps in to help her beloved son steal Esau's blessing. She dresses him in a goat skin and passes him off as his hairier brother. Jacob tricks his blinding father and steals his brother's blessing.

We often forget about what happens next (Gen. 27:30-40). Esau returns from the field with the game that Isaac has requested, ready to nourish his dying father. When he sets the food before his father and asks to receive his blessing, Isaac lets him know that Jacob has stolen his blessing. It is then that my heart goes out to Esau, that I wish that my great-grandmother had been there. "Bless me! Me too, father!" he exclaims, but Isaac explains that there is no blessing left for him. Esau cannot believe it. "Did you not reserve a blessing for me?" he asks, becoming overwhelmed. Isaac can only reply by saying it's out of his control. And then, Esau begs a third time - and my heart breaks a little with his - "Do you have only one blessing, father?" Isaac musters up a blessing that at best tells Esau to move away and then maybe things will be okay.

What Isaac and Rebekah didn't understand, what my great-grandmother did, is that love cannot be divided. It is like fire. If it isn't cared for and nurtured, it will either grow wild and out of control or it will fade to embers and ash. But if love is nourished, like fire it will increase with warmth and light as it separates from its source.