I was struck by a Midrash that was quoted in a Dvar Tora yesterday afternoon at the Young Israel of Scarsdale at Seuda Shlishit. Referencing R. Amnon Bazak, the speaker attributing to him calling to his readership’s attention a passage in Midrash HaGadol. The Midrash wonders how could Yitzchak have been so oblivious to his son Eisav’s bad behavior to the point where he appears to indiscriminately love the miscreant, even more than he was emotionally invested in Eisav’s more righteous twin, Yaakov (see my blog post for 11/13/15 “Biblical Text and Rabbinic Interpretation” at https://yaakovbieler.wordpress.com/2015/11/13/biblical-text-and-rabbinic-interpretation/#more-162):

(Beraishit 25:28) “And Yitzchak loved Eisav”

And didn’t our father Yitzchak know about Eisav’s deeds, that they were repulsive? (See my blog post for 11/9/15 “Existential Weariness—Could Proper Education Have Made a Difference?” at
https://yaakovbieler.wordpress.com/2015/11/09/existential-weariness-could-proper-education-have-made-a-difference/#more-153 )

And the text states, (Tehillim 139:21) “Do not I hate them, O LORD, that hate Thee? And do not I strive with those that rise up against Thee?”

So why did he love him?

But he only outwardly acted as if he loved him, in order to bring him close and to draw him in,

For behold it is a logical derivation: If when he (Yitchak) loves him, his actions are reprehensible,

If he hated him and distanced him, so much the more so!

And our Rabbis have said, “A person should always bring close with the right hand, and push away with the left.”

The Midrash assumes that Yitzchak made a premeditated decision to act as if he loved Eisav in the interests of Eisav’s not becoming even more alienated than he already was from Avraham’s traditions and lifestyle. The individual giving the Dvar Tora that I heard offered a proof text for the Midrash’s contention, by the Tora’s account of what transpires following Yitcchak and Rivka’s instructions to Yaakov to find a wife from among his mother’s relatives in Padan-Aram:

Beraishit 28:6-9

6 Now Eisav saw that Yitzchak had blessed Yaakov and sent him away to Padan-Aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he blessed him he gave him a charge, saying: “Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan”; 7 and that Yaakov hearkened to his father and his mother, and was gone to Padan-Aram; 8 and Eisav saw that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Yitzchak his father; 9 so Eisav went unto Yishmael, and took unto the wives that he had Machalat the daughter of Yishmael, Avraham’s son, the sister of Nevayot, to be his wife.

It was contended that had Yitzchak at least given the impression that he cared about Eisav, the latter would have been less likely to try to please his father (note that even though it initially said in Ibid. 26:35 that both Yitchak and Rivka were disturbed by Eisav’s marriage choices, it is only Yitzchak (Ibid. 28:8) that Eisav tried to please by marrying an additional wife from the line of Yishmael.

Nevertheless, as is indicated by several commentators, even as he marries an additional wife, he does not divorce his Canaanite wives, creating the impression that he was only trying to meet his father “half-way,” particularly if it is assumed, as again some commentators do, that Yishmael had not repented at this point in time.

At the end of the day, a comment in Postman’s and Weingartner’s classic educational work from the ‘60’s, Teaching as a Subversive Activity, (when the cultural pendulum swung some twenty years later, Postman wrote Teaching as a Conserving Activity), comes to mind, i.e., “Children have highly sensitized ‘crap-detectors’.” In other words, children are extremely astute at determining when what they are being told is dishonest or manipulative. Assuming Midrash HaGadol’s perspective (which I think is difficult to do in terms of the bare bones of the biblical story, however evocative the homiletical point of the Midrash may be), was Eisav aware of his father’s duplicity? Eisav is depicted by the Rabbis as “hunting” his father’s mind in an attempt to misrepresent himself as more religious than he really was (see RaShI on Ibid. 25:28 s.v. BeFiv); now we have a source contending that Yitzchak was in turn “hunting” his son’s mind. And all of this deflection and misrepresentation fits into the manner in which the relationship between Rivka and Yitzchak is depicted, with NeTziV on Ibid. 24:65 noting that the lack of communication between husband and wife in the relationship between Rivka and Yitzhak begins with her placing a veil over her face at first sight of her intended husband, one that in effect is never lifted throughout their lives! One wonders if a straightforward, honest approach between parent and child as well as parent and parent wouldn’t have best served everyone’s interests in not only this human drama, but those that we experience today.