Imperfect Ancestors
by Alex Shevrin Venet
Printer-frienldy version of the text
Throughout the generations, Jews have turned to Torah for guidance about our messy and problematic lives. So what can we learn when the stories of our ancestors are just as messy and problematic as we are?
Parsha Toldot begins with Isaac pleading on behalf of Rebecca, who is infertile. G-d responds, and Rebecca conceives. When I was taught this story as a young person, this outcome was unquestioned and good. Of course Rebecca must want to be pregnant, of course it is good that G-d fixed her barrenness. But soon after, we hear Rebecca speak, and it complicates that narrative.
“If so, why do I exist?” she cries out when the children struggle in her womb. Rebecca’s cry makes me wonder if divine intervention isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Was Rebecca’s cry about worry for her children, or was she in pain as they struggled in her body? How many of us, in depths of acute or chronic pain, have cried out, “why do I exist?” Maybe Rebecca was asking, “Why do I exist—if existing means being in this much pain?” Rebecca wasn’t the one to initially plead with G-d about her own body. Isaac intervened on her behalf. I can’t help but wonder whether Rebecca wanted to be fixed, wanted the intervention. Maybe she was asking, “Why do I exist—for you to take agency over my body?”
G-d’s response to Rebecca is a prophecy about the twins she carries (Jacob and Esau) and the dynamic that will play out between them. I struggle with this response. In an embodied moment, Rebecca cries out, only for the response to center not her and her body, but her children. We do not know what Rebecca said next in this conversation with G-d.
Later in the parsha, we see Rebecca engage in subterfuge, supplying her son Jacob with the stew and a costume to trick his father into bestowing a birthright originally intended for Esau. Taking this moment in isolation, it’s difficult to witness Rebecca robbing Isaac of agency and using his blindness against him. But after spending time with Rebecca at the start of the parsha, I notice a more cyclical theme. Isaac pleaded on Rebecca’s behalf to help her conceive, thinking he knew what was best for her. Now, later in life, Rebecca does the same, taking control away from her partner in the interest of what she thinks is best. The injustice of it is no less powerful, but to me, Rebecca’s actions look different in this light.
The parsha ends with the family torn apart because of the deception between Jacob and Esau, with both Isaac and Rebecca unhappy. Rebecca, again, wonders about her purpose— “what good will life be to me?” she asks, confronted with the possibility of Jacob’s future unspooling in a way she didn’t plan for.
Why do I exist? What good will life be to me? Rebecca’s questions in Toldot ring true to my experience becoming disabled and struggling with the true messiness of disability. Rebecca’s arc in this parsha isn’t aspirational. Even after her body’s condition is “fixed” by Isaac’s plea to G-d, Rebecca struggles. Even though she is perhaps following through on what she’s been told is her purpose, she lies and plays favorites and is selfish. She is not grateful for what’s been done to her body, even if it supposedly healed her.
Recently, an acquaintance remarked how well I was moving around. “It’s so great that the surgery worked,” she said. To her, the narrative of my life was a simple one: I’d injured my spine, surgery had fixed it, and now I was in the redemptive part of my arc, back to being abled. But my reality is messier. I am grateful for the amount of relief that surgery provided, but I’m still in pain every day. I struggle and am selfish. I am still learning what it means to be disabled and the fullness of the solidarity of our community. While I haven’t gone so far as Rebecca as to wilfully use someone else’s disability to take advantage of them, I’m grappling with unlearning a lifetime of ableism and the harm I’ve done before I knew better, the harm I still may do. And like Rebecca, I am trying to make sense of what it all means: why do I exist? What good will life be to me?
The Torah is full of imperfect ancestors. When I tell others what I love about my Jewish practice, I often cite the idea of struggling with G-d. But in this parsha, I recognize that Torah is also about struggling with humanity. Rebecca in Toldot is profoundly human. Her story is one of the pain of having a body that others perceive in need of fixing and what happens in the aftermath of that fix. She is harmed and she causes harm. She is protective and also betrays her family. She is committed to a future that will grow far beyond her and she also acts out of self-interest.
In other words, she is human, in all of our contradictions and messiness. And yet, every time I say the Amidah—laying in bed or sitting or rising to my feet in my aching body and bowing—I chant her name and bless her as one of my ancestors. She reminds me I can be imperfect and struggle and still find meaning.
Why do I exist? What good will life be to me? We all get to answer these questions in our own messy way.
Alex Shevrin Venet (she/her) is a writer, facilitator, and educator in Vermont. She is a co-founder of L'Chaim Collective, creating joyful Jewish community in the Green Mountains. Alex is the author of two books for teachers and is always nerding out about the intersections of education, disability, trauma, and community. An ADHDer and member of the messed-up spine club, Alex's favorite pain day activities are playing Stardew Valley and hanging out with her cat.
