Just One Blessing - Parashat Tol’dot

“Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” These might just be the most heartbreaking words in the whole Torah. Isaac, old and blind, is nearing death. He wants to give a special blessing to his favorite son, Esau. But Rebekah has other plans. She devises a scheme for Jacob to receive the blessing meant for Esau. So when Esau comes in to receive his blessing and learns that Jacob has already taken it, he cries out, “Have you but one blessing, Father? Bless me too, Father!” And then he bursts into tears. Esau, our paragon of stereotypical masculinity, the outdoorsman and hunter, the brawny, hairy, and slightly smelly eldest son, is shown to be a child who only wants what all children want: to be loved and accepted by their parent. Poor Esau.

Esau’s not known to be a deep thinker – after all, he trades his birthright for a bowl of soup. But his question, “Do you really only have one blessing?” is actually quite profound. With that one question, Esau challenges a whole ethos of the biblical world. In the world of the Torah, the answer is emphatically, “Yes!” Only one son gets to be the favorite, only one son inherits his father’s legacy, only one son carries on the covenant. The stories of Genesis are subversive in that they repeatedly favor the younger son rather than the traditionally superior older son, but they still insist on a binary system of favored and not favored, insider and outsider, ancestor and enemy. If the Torah’s authors believed there were multiple blessings to be given, much of the conflict and drama of Genesis would have been avoided. It would have been a much shorter book. So thank goodness we have evolved just a bit since these stories were written, at least in the realm of parenting. If Esau were to ask us this question now, we would say, “No, of course I don’t just have one blessing to give.

Blessings are not finite resources. Parents have the capacity to love and bless all of their children.” And yet, in other ways, the power of “just one blessing” still tempts and traps us.

The world of just one blessing is living with a scarcity mindset; with only limited resources, we all have to fight to get what we need, to get what we think we deserve. It is a zero-sum game; at its worst, it becomes the Hunger Games. At its most extreme, it’s marching through the street shouting, “Jews will not replace us!” It’s settlers cutting down Palestinians’ olive trees in the West Bank. It’s believing that immigrants are getting all of the mortgages and jobs and free health care and should therefore all be deported. In less extreme but infinitely more common ways, living in the world of just one blessing means being jealous of other people’s wealth or success, or of feeling that no matter how much we have, it’s never enough. Living in a world of just one blessing creates a society that feeds on divisiveness and exploitation of the most vulnerable, and on an interpersonal level, it leads to selfishness, conflict, and cruelty.

If that weren’t bad enough, living with a scarcity mindset also makes us dumber. Psychologists and behavioral economists have learned that when people perceive themselves to be in a situation of scarcity, they make more irrational or counterproductive decisions and even score lower on cognitive tests. As one researcher puts it, “Scarcity steals mental capacity wherever it occurs—from the hungry, to the lonely, to the time-strapped, to the poor…. [Q]ualities often considered part of someone’s basic character—impulsive behavior, poor performance in school, poor financial decisions—may in fact be the products of a pervasive feeling of scarcity. And when that feeling is constant… it captures and compromises the mind.” It’s definitely hard to actually live in a state of scarcity, but these studies show that even having the perception of scarcity is enough to have negative effects on us. As mental health professionals will tell us, living with a scarcity mindset makes us miserable: constantly worried, mistrustful of others, and afraid of change.  

So how do we change our mindset from one of scarcity to one of, if not abundance, then of “enough-ness?” I read an article by a psychologist named Susan McGarvie who suggested eight strategies for such a transformation: practice gratitude, reframe and challenge negative thoughts, surround yourself with positivity, invest in personal growth, give back, practice mindfulness and meditation, limit exposure to negative influences, and seek professional help. Even though these strategies are pretty “self-help-y,” many of them are time-tested methods for improving our well-being. And if we turn back to our Torah portion, we’ll see that Esau actually might be a model for us in undergoing such a transformation.

When Esau asks, “Do you really have just one blessing?” he is “challenging negative thoughts,” the thoughts that blessings are finite or that Esau isn’t worthy of his own blessing. When Esau leaves home and builds a successful life and family for himself, away from his scheming mother and brother, he is “limiting exposure to negative influences” and “investing in his own personal growth.” I’m not sure if Esau ever “practiced mindfulness and meditation,” though as a hunter, he spends a lot of time in nature, which is certainly a spiritual practice. No, he probably never “seeks professional help.” But he does “express gratitude” and he does “give back.” When Jacob and Esau meet again, twenty years after their rift, Jacob offers Esau many gifts to atone for the stolen blessing and birthright. Esau says, “Yesh li rav, achi. I have plenty, my brother.” And when Jacob still insists on giving him gifts, Esau accepts them in an ironic act of generosity.  Esau is now free from the rivalry and jealousy of his youth. Esau has everything he needs.

Thanksgiving is a perfect opportunity to check our mindsets, to challenge the thoughts and beliefs that make us jealous or selfish or hardhearted, and focus instead on gratitude for the many blessings we enjoy. May we be like Esau, able to overcome the failures and disappointments in our lives, so that we too can say, “Yesh li rav. I have plenty.”