The Wicked Sibling
By Rabbi Shua Brick, Jewish Studies Teacher
The confluence of the biblical narrative of the fraught relationship between Yaakov (Jacob) and his twin brother Esav (Esau) being read over the first weekends after the debut of the Wicked movie has gotten me to obsess over the following question: Where does Wickedness come from? Was Esav born wicked, or was wickedness thrust upon him?
While the biblical narrative does not really seem to be disparaging of Esav nor share any particularly evil actions he may have committed, from the actions of his mother and brother, he seems to be a hot tempered, violent, and unworthy heir of the Abrahamic mission. That is why cunning and guile is required to steal the firstborn birthright – in last week’s portion – and Yaakov must flee the scene and begin his family elsewhere – the main narrative of this week’s parsha, Vayeitzei.
The rabbis seem to search the biblical text for different hints of impropriety and find excuses to accuse Esav of wicked deeds in nearly every sentence about him, usually things not explicit in the verse but are perhaps hinted to by a careful reading. For instance, he seems to have a partner Judith who changes her name, and while his father is alive she goes by a Jewish name (Gen. 26:34) , but in reality it is revealed after Isaac’s death, that she had a different name, Ahalivama (Gen. 36:2) The rabbis say this name change was because the earlier name was a purposeful ruse, so that it would seem he married someone his parents would approve of, but in reality she wasn’t the dream daughter in law that Esav tried to pretend that she was. (Rashi, ibid)
One textual support for the accusations of duplicity, may come how Esav is first introduced to us as “a hunting man, a man of the field.” (Gen. 25:27) While many biblical characters are described by the type of man they may be, they are never introduced with the word ‘man’ repeated twice, implying that Esav was actually two people – the one he was when his father was watching, and the type of person he was when his father was not in the room.
A more charitable reading of his story, is that for whatever reason, he was someone who could not live a fully integrated life, where he could be himself in all places and with all people. He lived a bifurcated life, but perhaps if he had been given space to be himself, and lived an authentic life, he could have been better equipped to push against that which was dragging him down, and instead could have risen to the occasion and defied gravity.
