Did Our Patriarchs have Personality?
On Parshas Toldos and trying to psychoanalyze biblical figures
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
Yaakov, dressed as his brother Esav, steps before his father Yitzchak to receive Yitzchak’s blessings. Yitzchak, however, seems suspicious. “Come closer,” Yitzchak beckons, “so I can feel you, and figure out if you are, in fact, my son Esav.”
Why is Yitzchak so suspicious?
Rashi explains that Yitzchak became suspicious because it was uncharacteristic of Esav to mention the name of God so frequently. Yaakov, dressed as Esav, had just invoked the name of God—Yitzchak’s suspicions were aroused.
But that still doesn’t really answer the question. In the eyes of Yitzchak, isn’t Esav righteous? Why would the fact that his most favored son mentioned the name of God be unusual for Yitzchak? Esav was his favorite son, surely he didn’t think Esav was an atheist?! So why was Yitzchak so suspicious?
A second, more foundational question.
Yaakov and Esav fully diverge. They grow up, the Torah tells us: One is righteous, one is savage. How could such divergence emerge from one home?
Rav Samson Rafael Hirsch, somewhat controversially suggests that Yaakov and Esav diverge so starkly because they were raised in the same way. In the words of Rav Hirsch:
As long as they were little, no attention was paid to the slumbering differences in their natures. Both had exactly the same teaching and educational treatment, and the great law of chanokh le'naar al pi darko, meaning that each child must be treated according to its own potentialities with an eye to the latent tendencies of his nature, was forgotten. Although all of Abraham’s descendants were to be bearers of the same ideal—the dissemination of justice and righteousness—each was to fulfill his destiny in a fashion proper to his personality and endowment by nature or inheritance. Strength and courage, no less than brain and lofty thought and fine feeling, are to have their representatives before God, and all, in the most varied way of their callings, are to achieve the one, great common task of life.
Yitzchak and Rivka, explains Rav Hirsch, did not implement this principle in their parenting. Esav and Yaakov were both destined for greatness—but only if they were each raised in their own unique way.
This commentary, as we shall see, garnered a great deal of controversy. Is it permissible to criticize our forefathers in this way? Is it appropriate to discuss psychological principles of child-rearing to explain the differing personalities in the Torah?
To understand our questions, let us examine some of the historical controversies surrounding the methodologies employed to explain the personalities in the Torah.
Itzik Manger was a prominent early-20th-century poet and playwright. He often published poems and literary commentary on Biblical stories. And his stories, by design, were meant to be provocative. “The poems gathered in this book,” he writes in his introduction, “are a sort of mischievous toying with the gray beards of the patriarchs and the head-shawl corners of the matriarchs.”
Not everyone was amused.
As Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter discusses in his eye-opening article, “On the Morality of the Patriarchs: Must Biblical Heroes Be Perfect?”, Manger’s writing provoked a response from none other than Rav Ahron Kotler, who was then Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivas Etz Chaim in Kletzk.
Rav Kotler published a biting response in Warsaw’s Jewish newspaper, affirming the transcendent holiness of our biblical heroes. Rav Kotler writes:
The holy forefathers—who were the most luminous, loftiest, and purest personalities, the holiest creatures—represent the foundation of eternal spiritual vitality, the wellsprings of hesed, and the full range of positive attributes for the entire world, for all of mankind. The patriarchs are, in fact, held in the highest esteem by every nation on earth. The worst enemies of the Jews did not dare tamper with their luminous and holy image.
In a scathing rebuke of a contemporary rabbi, whom I am deliberately not naming, the Jewish Observer in March of 1991, published an article entitled, “Approaching the Avos—Through Up-Reach or Drag Down?” The article’s criticism is explicitly couched in Rav Ahron Kotler’s words—a full translation of his original article is included as well. The article concludes:
For an Orthodox rabbi- a one-time leading figure in kiruv, no less, to write in such an outrageous manner regarding seminal figures in Jewry, who were closer to malachim than to mortals, indicates that something is deeply, deeply wrong with his basic, fundamental understanding of the Avos: and something is terribly askew in his strategies of hasbara and kiruv.
The approach of Rav Hirsch, as Rav Schacter notes, is at odds with Rav Ahron Kotler. Each approach poses its own challenges. How does the approach of Rav Ahron Kotler reconcile so many of the later rabbinic texts and commentaries that are, quite explicitly, critical of Biblical heroes? And, for Rav Hirsch’s approach, where should one draw the line? Surely, there are some criticisms that are out of bounds?
One of the most fascinating articles I have ever read on any subject is Zev Eleff’s, “Psychohistory and the Imaginary Couch: Diagnosing Historical and Biblical Figures.” Do yourself a favor and read it. Dr. Eleff surveys the wider history, both inside and outside the Jewish community, of psychological interpretations and analysis of biblical figures. Beginning with Freud’s biography of Leonardo da Vinci, Rabbi Dr. Mortimer Cohen’s consideration of the psychological health of Rav Yaakov Emden, as well as Professor Arthur Green’s biographical treatment of Rebbe Nachman of Breslov, Dr. Eleff really leaves no psychological stone unturned.
The article concludes with one rabbi’s 1999 analysis of the personality of Yitzchak, suggesting that he may have had mental disabilities. Widespread condemnations followed quickly. An apology soon followed. The suggestion, the rabbi explained, “was an attempt to say that spirituality emerges from the whole being—not only from the mind but also from the soul.”
It is no surprise such debates become so animated, particularly in the more traditional Jewish community. As Dr. Eleff explains, “For the traditionalist rabbi heavily invested in the historical lives of biblical heroes, however, harsh criticisms, let alone psychological diagnoses of Torah personalities, cut at the very core of Orthodox values and its historical memory.”
When the controversial article on the personality of Yitzchak was published, most did not respond or criticize publicly. One person, however, did respond: Professor Shalom Carmy, a prolific writer and longtime teacher of Bible at Yeshiva University. His words on these matters in general have always resonated. In a later interview, he expressed his discomfort with certain forms of Biblical psychoanalysis as follows:
One reason that people shrink the larger-than-life personalities of Tanakh to pop-psychology size is that they are accustomed to treat themselves the same way. What characterizes pop-psychology? Casual deterministic assumptions, clichéd depictions of emotion, a philosophy that cannot grasp the dramatic, absolute, momentous solemnity of the moral-religious life. This is not the way I think of myself; it is not the way I think of you. It is not the way one should think about any human being created uniquely in the image of God. Once people see nothing wrong in entertaining secular conceptions of themselves, once they take for moral and psychological insight the tired idiom of the therapeutic, it's no wonder that they are tone-deaf to the grandeur of the Avot and Immahot.
Perhaps, aside from being a window to greatness, Biblical stories are also meant to be a mirror into ourselves. Yes, they were human—but their humanity can inspire us towards our grandeur.
If Yitzchak did, in fact, love Esav, why was he so suspicious when he heard Esav invoking the name of God? Didn’t Yitzchak think Esav was a decent person? Mentioning the name of God should not have been surprising.
Not everyone, Maharal explains, has the same relationship with God and spirituality. Some people are passionate, and outspoken, and cannot help themselves but to constantly mention God in their life. Like someone who just returned from Yeshiva or Seminary, and their response to every question is “Baruch Hashem!”
Some, however, are more restrained; their religiosity is more private, intimate, and rarely discussed. Yitzchak was such a person. He served God from awe, and such people are hesitant to mention God’s name at all in conversation. And this is what Yitzchak assumed was Esav’s religious personality as well. It is why he loved him so much. Yitzchak assumed that Esav also served God from awe and fear and, like father like son, refrained from invoking the name of God.
This is why Yitzchak was so surprised to hear “Esav,” explicitly attribute his success to God. That wasn’t his religious personality. Is this really something my son Esav would say? He knew something was up. Yitzchak became suspicious—not because he thought Esav was bad, but because he was not the kind of person to mention God in conversation.
And here we have a window for the form of Biblical archetypes that illuminate the variety of paths and doorways in the service of God. They each take different routes—some are enthusiastic, some are more internal—but each leads to an engaging relationship with God and Yiddishkeit. It’s how we understand the personalities in the Torah and it is how we should look at ourselves.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
On the Morality of the Patriarchs: Must Biblical Heroes Be Perfect?, Jacob J. Schacter
Psychohistory and the Imaginary Couch: Diagnosing Historical and Biblical Figures, Zev Eleff
Imitate the Ramban, Not the Professors: An Interview with Shalom Carmy, Asher Friedman
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Reading Jewish History in the Parsha has been generously sponsored by my dearest friends Janet and Lior Hod and family with immense gratitude to Hashem.