Rabbi Eli Mansour once spoke as a guest lecturer in a shul, where an older woman approached him for a bracha. She had numbers tattooed on her arm. “I see you are a survivor of the concentration camps,” Rabbi Mansour said. “I can also tell that you are a religious woman. How did you keep your faith after experiencing such terrible atrocities?” The woman replied, “When we got to the camps, they lined us up to sear the numbers onto our arms. It was excruciating. The branding irons they used were made for cattle, not humans. I thought to myself, I would rather be a Jew who is being branded like an animal than the animal who is branding a Jew. By holding on to my observance of Torah and mitzvos, I became a better person and that prevented me from falling into depravity like those barbarians who acted like animals.”

This concept is illustrated in the contrast between Yaakov and Eisav in Parshas Toldos. Eisav returned from an exhausting day of hunting. He saw a pot of soup cooking on the stove and asked Yaakov for a bowl. Yaakov responded, “Sure, I’ll sell it to you for the rights of the firstborn.” To which Eisav replied, “Behold, I am going to die. What benefit do the firstborn rights have for me?”

Rashi explains that Eisav’s reasoning was perfectly logical. He made a calculation. The firstborn was supposed to serve in the Beis Hamikdash as a Kohen. There are very strict laws and punishments for a Kohen who serves in the Beis Hamikdash. Violation of many of the laws was culpable of capital punishment. A Kohen who drank a glass of wine and then proceeded to serve in the Beis Hamikdash was deserving of the death penalty. Eisav said, “Behold I will die”—He felt he was doomed for death if he were to serve in the Beis Hamikdash. Selling his firstborn rights to Yaakov was the only logical move he could make to save himself.

If so, what was so terrible about Eisav’s thought process? Rav Wolbe explains: True, serving Hashem as a Kohen in the Beis Hamikdash had its risks, but if Eisav truly valued the opportunity and privilege of serving Hashem, then he would eagerly have accepted the risk of losing his life. Eisav was a hunter—a man who placed his life at risk constantly for what he felt was valuable. The bottom line was that Eisav did not value serving Hashem; therefore, he did not believe it was worth risking his life to do so. In contrast, Yaakov valued the firstborn rights so much that he desired to purchase them from Eisav. Yaakov voluntarily placed himself at risk in order to have the opportunity to serve Hashem in the Beis Hamikdash.

The commentaries are very troubled about how this transaction of the firstborn rights was valid. How can one sell a spiritual privilege? Rav Wolbe explains that a spiritual level is acquired through the value one assigns to it. As such, whereas Eisav denigrated the value of the firstborn rights and thus lost that privilege, Yaakov appreciated its tremendous value and it was therefore properly transferred to him.

When Eisav returned from the field, Rashi quotes the midrash which says that Eisav had just returned from murdering Nimrod. The Gemara says that Eisav committed five cardinal sins that day, including murder, adultery and idolatry. Yet, the Torah does not mention these egregious crimes. The Torah only mentions that after Eisav sold the firstborn rights, “…he ate, drank, got up, left and spurned the firstborn rights.” The only criticism the Torah highlights about Eisav was his spurning the firstborn rights. Why is that so egregious as opposed to his other major sins?

Rabbi Eliyahu Svei explains that the crimes Eisav committed were terrible in that he was succumbing to his inner lusts and desires. Yet it was possible that Eisav had remorse afterwards and had done teshuva. Nonetheless, the Torah only highlights the spurning of the firstborn rights, since that demonstrated Eisav’s attitude toward serving Hashem. Eisav gave no value to the mitzvos. That demonstrated that he was at a level where he had no desire to connect with Hashem.

So how do we differentiate ourselves from Eisav? The Ramban notes that the word “vayiveiz”—he spurned—appears in Mishlei: “Baz l’davar yechavel lo—Those that despise the word shall be destroyed.” The pasuk concludes with “those who fear the mitzvos will be rewarded.”

That’s the answer. Rav Wolbe explains that Shlomo Hamelech is teaching us that the opposite of spurning mitzvos is fearing mitzvos. Showing a measure of fear in performing a mitzvah properly demonstrates that we truly value the mitzvah. It creates a feeling of awe which we can channel into the knowledge that we are serving our Creator.

Rabbi Baruch Bodenheim is the associate rosh yeshiva of Passaic Torah Institute (PTI)/Yeshiva Ner Boruch. Rabbi Bodenheim can be reached at [email protected]. For more info about PTI and its Torah classes, visit www.pti.shulcloud.com