I often think that word “solution” should be expunged from the language. I do mean that, among other things, in the sense of “solving the Israel-Palestine problem.” Speaking of “solutions” indicates that there is a definable, condensable problem, to which there is some kind of unique “solution” out there, which, if we could only get everyone to see it, could turn a hopelessly muddled situation into a good, well ordered reality. The American-style “can-do” mindset sets us to thinking that if there’s a problem, then of course we MUST and CAN solve it. But jumping too quickly to “solutions,” clever as we think they are, tends to pull our eyeball off the problems, which meanwhile languish and fester in all their knotty complexity.
Last week, I turned to the weekly Torah portion of Toledot for some illumination on this issue, with the help of the commentary of R. Samson Raphael Hirsch. Near the beginning of the reading, it is said of Rebekah:
The children struggled in her womb, and she said, “If so, why do I exist?” She went to inquire of G!d, and G!d answered her: “Two nations are in your womb, two separate peoples shall issue from your body; one people shall be mightier than the other, and the older shall serve the younger.” When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. The first one emerged red, like a hairy mantle all over; so they named him Esau. Then his brother emerged, holding on the heel of Esau; so they named him Jacob.
Even before they were born, these two children were locked in struggle. Rebekah was deeply and spiritually involved in their striving, and from before they were born until the end of the story, she struggled, as a mother, to cope.
A Talmudic proverb says that a child or a young person should be educated “according to their own way.” Hirsch asserts that the parents, Isaac and Rebekah, in their eagerness to pass on the spiritual heritage of Abraham, were wrong to try to educate these two very different children in the same classroom. Sitting in school was good for Jacob, but not for Esau. Like a child with an “attention deficit” issue, he rebelled and ran away to the fields.
Years pass, and the two boys confront each other over a stewpot. Whether this exchange was “for real” or, as Hirsch suggests, a boyish acting out of the rivalry between the brothers, each must have brought to it his own resentments: Esau, for his parents’ inattention to his specific needs; Jacob, for a deficit of father-love. As we know, “Isaac favored Esau, because he had a taste for game, but Rebekah favored Jacob.” Each, says Hirsch, also brought his own natural inclinations: Esau, roaming the fields, had no real desire for the property and responsibility that would come with the birthright, while Jacob longed for the heritage of his forebears. (As Hirsch points out, the upshot was exactly the reverse: Jacob, after the affair of the paternal blessing, ended up being forced to leave his parental home with nothing but his staff and the clothes on his back, leaving Esau to inherit the family estate.)
Sensing the enmity between the boys, Isaac tried to resolve it by imposing the “fair and square” solution of giving Esau his paternal blessing, as the rightful firstborn. But Rebekah understood that Esau, the loner, was unsuited to spiritual leadership. Dressing Jacob in Esau’s clothes, as Hirsch presents it, was a scheme to buy time; Rebekah knew that the deception would be discovered immediately – and such, in fact, was her intent. By foiling Isaac’s plan to hand over the leadership immediately – though he was still far from being on his deathbed – she hoped to allow her two sons more time to settle their differences and define their roles over against one another.
Here, too, though, she misstepped grievously. Esau’s understandable fury became murderous. Ever “the mother of Jacob and Esau,” as she is called at the end of the story, Rebekah was alive to the complex and conflicting emotions and inclinations of both her sons. Educated by her failures and continuing to grow and develop as a mother, she arrived at the painful understanding that their struggle could not be resolved quickly, and so they must be separated. She sent her favorite son away to a distant land, from which he was not to return in her lifetime. Living apart, however, the two men eventually arrived at a point in their life-paths where they were able to come together again without rage, if not in perfect brotherly love.
Today, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, Jacob and Esau, continue to struggle. What could not be resolved in the biblical narrative itself, and has not been resolved in the millennia since passed, evidently will not be resolved in our time, notwithstanding the almost painfully naïve ambitions of each new American president, or the duplicitous rhetoric of successive national leaders on every side. Don’t get me wrong: I think it is urgent to address the wrongs of the occupation, even as we protect ourselves from terror. But that is exactly the point. As we pursue the chimera of a “solution,” the occupation festers, the struggle continues, and rage, resentment and competition over resources claim yet more victims. Positing "fair" solutions is easy. Addressing the problems on the ground, while staying attuned to the spiritual and material yearnings of Palestinians and Israelis (including settlers), requires far greater wisdom, intense and unremitting work, and willingness to fail and try again.
Roger Cohen wrote this week in the International Herald Tribune that an Israeli-Palestinian solution is probably impossible under present conditions, given the hostility and fear that has built up on all sides. A truce, he declares, is not only the best one can hope for at the moment, but a worthy goal. I would add that if we can keep our eyeball, our minds and our efforts on the problems, we might even aspire to address and ameliorate them.
