I want to take a few minutes to explore the applications of Levina’s concept of responsibility in this week’s Torah portion as well as the limits of those applications. To summarize: In this week’s Torah portion, Toldot, Isaac and Rebecca are barren. Isaac prays and Rebecca conceives twins. She receives a prophecy that the oldest twin, Esav, will worship the younger one, Jacob. At one point Esav sells his birthright to Jacob. Unaware of this fact, Isaac tries to give Esav the special blessing for the firstborn, but is tricked by Rebecca and Isaac and winds up giving the blessing to Isaac instead, thus fulfilling Rebecca’s prophecy.
In Genesis 25:21 it says, וַיֶּעְתַּר
יִצְחָק לַיהוָה לְנֹכַח אִשְׁתּוֹ, כִּי עֲקָרָה הִוא; וַיֵּעָתֶר לוֹ
יְהוָה, וַתַּהַר רִבְקָה אִשְׁתּוֹ. “And Isaac entreated God while
facing his wife, and God entreated Isaac, and Rebecca became pregnant.
In
this scene, Levinas’s conception of responsibility is at work: It is
Isaac’s facing Rebecca that imbues him with the responsibility to pray
for children on her behalf. At the same time, Isaac faces God as an
ethical being, and this face-to-face (so to speak) encounter with God is
defined by each facer taking responsibility for the fac-ee: Thus, just
as Isaac “entreats” God, so too, God “entreats” Isaac, (actively allows
himself to be entreated and grants Isaac’s request.)
Contrast this with a later scene: Coming home exhausted and hungry from
a day of hunting, Esav sells his birthright to Jacob in exchange for
lentil stew, reasoning in Genesis 25: 32, “I am going to die anyway, of
what use to me is a birthright?” The Torah censures Esav’s actions; the
birthright blessing was designed to help Esav fulfill his potential as a
human being, but Esav, being tired from his hunting career, did not
feel up to the challenge, so he gave up on it, ate and went to bed.
Why did one face-to-face encounter result in responsibility, while the other resulted in an evasion of responsibility?
The answer lies in the presence of God in each encounter: Isaac faces
Rebecca as a man who stands before God, thus imbuing him with
responsibility towards his wife qua his relationship with and
responsibility towards God. Whereas for Esav, God is not in the picture.
I just want to note for a second that if one wants to get
Soloveichikean about it, one could argue that Isaac is homo religiosus,
Esav is cognitive man, and Jacob is halachik man.
This is where the limits on the applicability on Levinas’s coneption of
responsibility come into play: For Levinas, the face-to-face encounter
in it and of itself becomes the imperative for responsibility, while in
the Torah, the human face-to-face encounter is not enough; it is the
encounter with God that turns the human face-to-face encounter into the
moral imperative.
We constantly face exhaustion and the temptation to be like Esav: How
many times, tired from all-nighters, is it so tempting to give up on
whatever it is that is really important to us, whether it is religion,
fighting genocide in Darfur, or spending time with friends? It is
important to remember however, that ultimately our humanity is more
important than our academic career, and to not give up on our goals for
ourselves as people in the course of pursuing academic success.
Secondly: As students, we come into daily face-to-face encounters with
multitudes of people. Do we use these encounters to engage in
responsibility and ethical relationships with people, or do we, like
Esav, seek to evade responsiblity?
I hope that this semester we can all engage in meaningful, responsible,
and ethical relationships with ourselves, with God, and with each
other.
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I have notes on the bottom, positing maybe Yitzhak is homo religiosis, Esav is cognitive man, and Jacob is the halachik man, as per the Rav Soloveitchik, but I never really fleshed out that idea - please feel free to take a shot at it and let me know what you come up with :)
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