In 2021, I participated in “In Good Faith,” a program that brought Church of England priests and Orthodox Jewish spiritual leaders together to learn from each other. At one meeting, we discussed the story of family deception at the heart of Parshat Toldot.
Isaac wishes to bless his older son, Esau. His wife Rebecca, convinced that their younger son Jacob must receive the blessing, helps Jacob disguise himself as his brother. Jacob brings food to his blind father and covers his arms in goatskins to mimic Esau’s hairy arms. Isaac gives him the blessing, believing him to be Esau.
At our meeting, the Jewish participants tended to accept the deception as a necessary evil, part of the larger story of Israel’s destiny. The priests were more troubled by the betrayal. Their reaction made me look again at the breakdown in communication in a story I had known since childhood.
The whole tableau is beautifully rendered in Gioacchino Assereto’s 1630s painting Isaac Blessing Jacob. What stands out to me is that Rebecca has her finger to her lips, in the familiar gesture of keeping a secret, while Jacob looks up at her in confusion and surprise. With one hand she motions for silence; with the other she steadies his arm.
Rabbi Sacks points out that Rebecca’s decision to have Jacob deceive his father suggests a breakdown in communication between husband and wife. The Torah does not explain how or why this breakdown developed. Regardless, the result is that Rebecca understands her sons’ personalities, and futures, differently from her husband Isaac. God has even told her that her older son, Esau, will serve her younger son, Jacob, but the Torah does not tell us whether she shared this prophecy with Isaac. In Rabbi Sacks’s reading, Rebecca cannot speak openly with her husband about her concerns. Instead, she turns to deception, and the family suffers.
Rebecca’s gesture invites us to consider what goes unsaid in our own lives. We will never know what would have happened if she and Isaac had communicated better. But we can learn from their story to share our concerns with the people we love and, in doing so, build stronger relationships.
Ilana Epstein is Rebbetzin of Mizrachi Melbourne, serving alongside her husband, Rabbi Daniel Epstein, Rabbi of the community. Prior to moving to Australia, they served at Western Marble Arch Synagogue in London, previously the Cockfosters and North Southgate community, following seventeen years living and working in Israel.
Ilana is a writer and programme developer with experience in Jewish leadership and Holocaust education. She has led educational delegations to Poland with the Holocaust Educational Trust and March of the Living UK since 2015. In 2024, she was commissioned to write historical material for the adaptation of The Tattooist of Auschwitz.
Ilana has served as Director of Educational Projects at Jewish Futures and previously as an educator for the United Synagogue. She devised and leads a development programme for the wives of European rabbis on behalf of the Conference of European Rabbis, and was selected as an inaugural Sacks Scholar in 2023.
This essay was written as part of our collaboration with The Rabbi Sacks Legacy Sacks Scholars.
