{"id":4988,"date":"2018-07-09T13:34:36","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T11:34:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moked.it\/international\/?p=4988"},"modified":"2018-09-04T17:02:05","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T15:02:05","slug":"two-nations-womb-dealing-one-internal-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2018\/07\/09\/two-nations-womb-dealing-one-internal-voice\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cTwo Nations Are in Your womb\u201d: Dealing with More than One Internal Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"mascetti\"<\/a>By Yaakov Mascetti*<\/strong><\/p>\n

My friend Mendel, who refuses to be boxed into the term haredi <\/em> so I will refrain from doing so, is one of a kind \u2013 he lacks, from what I can see from outside, the internal struggles, the vicious strife between more than one force driving his actions. Of course he has his issues, and of course not everything is perfect in his world, and he deserves my respect and care because, like all of us, he is leading his own personal battles. It\u2019s just that my friend Mendel leads his own personal daily battles with more of a sense of equilibrium, instead of falling on one side and then lapsing onto the other \u2013 which is, of course, the way I deal with things. The balance is something one gets from home, from one\u2019s nuclear family \u2013 once the domestic system you absorb from your father and your good enough mother is imprinted onto your own system, the amount of work you will have to do in order to change even the minor aspects will be, so to speak, monumental. <\/p>\n

When Rebecca feels the strife between the two fetuses in her womb, between the two forces present in her, she laments her being the receiver of such a clash with the following words:<\/p>\n

Gen. 25:21-26 – \u201cIsaac pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD responded to his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived. But the children struggled in her womb, and she said, \u2018If so, why do I exist?\u2019 She went to inquire of the LORD, and the LORD answered her, \u2018Two nations are in your womb, Two separate peoples shall issue from your body; One people shall be mightier than the other, And the older shall serve the younger.\u2019 When her time to give birth was at hand, there were twins in her womb. The first one emerged red, like a hairy mantle all over; so they named him Esau. Then his brother emerged, holding on to the heel of Esau; so they named him Jacob. Isaac was sixty years old when they were born.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

The barrenness in which one is not torn apart by the struggle, leads to nothing \u2013 it gives no fruit, it has no continuation, it opens the path to nothing but the sense of a present, static stance. The Lord is thus prayed to by Isaac in order to disturb this barrenness \u2013 the ensuing reality is one of impregnated chaos, in which there are struggling individualities, discordant voices, clashing forces which need to be brought into a concordant agreement. One might even want to add that the intestine fight is confused, and Rebecca needs the Divine agent to tell her that it is a battle between two individuals and not more \u2013 this reality is unbearable to her, as it is unbearable to me at times, and the inquiry \u201cIf so, why do I exist?\u201d often comes up. How can one live like this? How can a person survive and produce thoughts worthy of being conceived in this chaotic and eternal war? The answer is, simply enough, that one cannot \u2013 but where there is chaos within, the expostulation, the delivery of that strife through outward signs leads to the simplification of things, to the individualization of forces and to their hierarchical disposition. While within Rebecca\u2019s womb the two fetuses are equally mighty and their strength is balanced, when they come out \u2013 Esau first and Jacob second \u2013 the struggle turns into a vertical order. And yet, even in this semblance of an orderliness, it is the younger who is empowered over the older, and it is the older who is forced to come out into the world for first with the younger brother\u2019s hand firmly locked onto his heel. <\/p>\n

In my entrails, in my spiritual and intellectual \u201cwomb,\u201d the older is usually stronger than the younger, and mightily pulls his own way \u2013 one half of my life lived in a certain way, with familial affiliations which cannot and must not be undone, a language and a culture which are, to say the least, distant from my present reality. The younger brother in me is Yaakov, he is the one who, no matter what, holds onto the heel of his older brother, and will not let go. The Sfat Emet notes repeatedly throughout the corpus of his commentaries on the Torah, that the only perfection man can attain is the awareness of imperfection \u2013 one can, in other words, aim to contain this strife within the balanced hierarchy of the two brothers, in the clear consciousness that this equilibrium is not perfect and that it will, at one point or other, lapse either here or there.
\n
\n*Yaakov Mascetti holds a Ph.D. and teaches at the Department of Comparative Literature, Bar Ilan University.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Yaakov Mascetti* My friend Mendel, who refuses to be boxed into the term haredi so I will refrain from doing so, is one of a kind \u2013 he lacks, from what I can see from outside, the internal struggles, the vicious strife between more than one force driving his actions. Of course he has… leggi <\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4296,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7610],"tags":[],"position":[],"class_list":["post-4988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pilpulopinion"],"yoast_head":"\n\u201cTwo Nations Are in Your womb\u201d: Dealing with More than One Internal Voice - Pagine Ebraiche International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/moked.it\/international\/2018\/07\/09\/two-nations-womb-dealing-one-internal-voice\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"\u201cTwo Nations Are in Your womb\u201d: Dealing with More than One Internal Voice - Pagine Ebraiche International\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Yaakov Mascetti* My friend Mendel, who refuses to be boxed into the term haredi so I will refrain from doing so, is one of a kind \u2013 he lacks, from what I can see from outside, the internal struggles, the vicious strife between more than one force driving his actions. 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