November 26, 2022
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Toldot – Shabbat Thanksgiving
Siblings
November 26, 2022 — 2 Kislev 5783
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
I have been thinking a lot this week about Trevor Lawrence. Trevor Lawrence stands 6-foot-6. He is a professional quarterback for the Jacksonville Jaguars. As a freshman in college, he led his team, Clemson, to a national championship. When he declared for the NFL draft, he was labeled a can’t miss talent, a generational football prodigy with the size, the arm strength, and the intelligence to be one of the greatest quarterbacks ever to play the game. It has not quite worked out that way so far in his first year and a half. That’s a separate conversation. But he was one of the most heralded and anticipated college quarterbacks ever and was the first player chosen in the draft.
What is the connection between Trevor Lawrence and Thanksgiving weekend and parshat Toldot?
Trevor has an older brother named Chase. Chase is also tall. He stands 6-foot-2. But unlike his famous brother Trevor, Chase has zero interest in sports—playing or watching He has not played team sports since middle school. He watches Trevor’s games as a loving brother, but if his brother is not in the game, Chase has no interest in watching sports. Chase is a professional artist. He and his wife Brooke are oil painters and sculptors. They get a lot of commissions, and make a good living, doing art.
Here are two siblings—same mother, same father, same home. And yet they are so different. The athlete who has no artistic ability. The artist who has no athletic ability.
How do we understand sibling diversity? All human beings are unique. A famous mishna from Sanhedrin teaches that our uniqueness is a miracle in that all of us are created in God’s image, yet no two human beings are the same. But the case of siblings shines a special light on human difference because sibling diversity happens despite shared genes, shared home, and shared family.
Thanksgiving is the season when siblings who have grown up and out, and perhaps even live in different cities, find themselves gathered around the same dining room table again. And there, with fresh eyes, we encounter the paradox of all that we have in common and the many ways in which we are different. We all have our own version of Trevor and Chase Lawrence.
Our reading, parshat toldot, is powered by sibling difference, ratcheted up even more because it is not only siblings, but twins, who share so much, and yet are so very different from one another. Jacob and Esau share the same mother, same father, same womb at the same time, emerging into the same home, and yet Esau is ish yodeah tzayid, ish sadeh, a hunter, a man of the outdoors, while Jacob is ish tam yoshev ohalim, a homebody. These are not just theoretical constructs. Not just Bible stories. These are categories that I see among siblings in my own family. My nephew David lives in Jerusalem and has always lived in Jerusalem. He has never not lived in Jerusalem. He went to college in…Jerusalem. He went to graduate school in…Jerusalem. He got rabbinic ordination in…Jerusalem. He and his wife are co-rabbis of a Masorti congregation in…Jerusalem. They are raising their two daughters in…Jerusalem. Meanwhile, his older brother Yehuda left Jerusalem after his army service and is happiest living in Air B and Bs throughout the world: Greece one month, Thailand one month, Brazil one month, Boston one month. Same mother, same father, same home, same family story, but one brother is a homebody, the other brother literally travels the world, and they are around the same dining room table this Shabbat in Jerusalem.
If you have a sibling who is very different from you, if you are parents and you have children who are different from one another—and you are now together again for Thanksgiving weekend—what is a helpful way to think about this diversity?
I once heard a Ted Talk that is not specifically about diverse siblings. But it is nevertheless on point. The Ted Talk was given by John Wooden.
John Wooden was the winningest coach in the history of college basketball. At UCLA he won ten NCAA championships in twelve years, including a record seven in a row. No other team has ever won more than four. His teams also won 88 games in a row, also a record. He passed away at the age of 99. At the age of 91, he gave this famous Ted Talk about what he called the difference between winning and being successful.
He taught that winning and being successful are two very different things. Winning is about doing better than the other team. Being successful means becoming an ever-better version of yourself. With winning, your competition is the other team. Doing better than them. With success, your competition is yourself: doing better than you were. Growing. Optimizing your potential.
Remarkably, for the winningest coach in the history of his sport, Coach Wooden taught that winning is not the most important thing. The most important thing is that we fulfill our potential. He taught his players that, at the end of a game, when they would leave the locker room, their body language should be such that a stranger observing them, who did not watch the game, would have no idea whether they won or lost. Win or lose, their body language should be the same, because the most important thing is not to do better than the next guy. The most important thing is to be all that we can be.
He ends his Ted Talk with a shocker. He is often asked who were your most successful players? He does not answer what you might expect. He does not say Lew Alcindor, who became Kareem Abdul Jabbar and has scored the most points in the history of the NBA. He does not say Bill Walton, another star in college and pro ball. Both Jabbar and Walton won multiple championships for UCLA, and in the NBA, but when thinking about his most successful players, John Wooden did not mention them. Rather, he mentioned Conrad Burke and Doug McIntosh.
Conrad Burke and Doug McIntosh? Who in the world are Conrad Burke and Doug McIntosh? Most people have never heard of either player. Neither went on to have a pro career. Neither became any kind of star at any level. How are they the great John Wooden’s most successful players? Because they did the most with what they had. Their natural talents were limited. They were short. They were slow. They could not jump. And yet they did the work needed to maximize their potential. They came to practice early and stayed late. Through constant practice they became excellent shooters. They overcame their lack of jumping ability to become excellent rebounders by studying the trajectory of the ball and gaining the best position to get the ball when it bounced off the rim. Through constant conditioning they developed the stamina to become excellent defenders. Success means becoming the best version of yourself, and these two ordinary talents did just that.
John Wooden’s Torah would seem to apply to diverse siblings. Our job as siblings is to encourage our diverse siblings to be all that they want to be. Our job as parents is to encourage all of our diverse children to thrive in the ways they want to thrive. That seems like a simple solution to a complex problem. If you have, around your dining room table, an athlete, an artist, a homebody, and a world traveler, celebrate the athleticism, the artistry, the love of home, the love of travel, of each person. Affirm each person’s uniqueness. An elegant solution.
There is only one problem. If we are honest with ourselves, what gets in the way, when something gets in the way, is our desire to shape their story, to shape their character, to make them more like us. The challenge to celebrating difference is our desire that our loved ones be like us.
I was speaking recently with a woman who has a sibling in a different state who is going through some health challenges. They do not know how long this sibling has left. They love each other, but they have one big difference: their politics. Her politics, she lives in Newton, and his politics, he lives in the deep South, are very different and deeply felt. They were talking about how to make deep peace with each other, and with their relationship, and they realized the only way they could do it is to just accept the different political views that each holds. That difference just is. Can we accept difference when it cuts to the core of our values?
It is easier for an artist and an athlete to accept that one loves oil paintings and the other loves dodging middle linebackers.
It is easier for a homebody and a worldly traveler to accept that one loves routine and the other loves changing it up constantly.
But can we love people for who they are, in all their splendid difference, when one is deep red, and the other is deep blue; when one is deeply religious, their life is intertwined with religious community, and the other is totally secular, they have no connection to any Jewish community? Can we celebrate diversity across core issues of what makes us who we are? That difference can explain drift: why siblings drift away just because they are living different lives. No villain in this drama. No intent to be separate. Just the drift that difference slowly but surely creates.
As we celebrate the holiday weekend in the presence of the diversity that abides in our homes and families, can we channel the wisdom of the Hasidic master Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotzker Rebbe, who taught: “If I am I because you are you, and you are you, because I am I, then I am not I, and you are not you. But if I am I because I am I, and you are you because you are you, then I am I and you are you, and we can talk.” And we can enjoy Thanksgiving meals together. And we can still do life together despite, and in the face of, our real difference. Shabbat shalom.