The story of Yaakov and Esav is basically about an unending competition, which begins even in the womb over who will be born first. Esav wins, earning the birthright which would be relevant for inheritance way later -- but Yaakov manages to get it from him in a deal for some lentil stew. The brothers compete for their father Yitzchak’s blessing, which is about both a spiritual legacy and an easier life for the blessed one and his descendants. In between these two stories, Yitzchak himself is in a competition with his Philistine neighbors over control of a series of wells that his father Avraham had dug and the Philistines claimed for themselves or tried to block Yitzchak from accessing.
These competitions are all in Parashat Toldot, a single Torah reading. And these stories are part of a larger motif of competition that goes throughout the book of Bereshit (Genesis), from Kayin and Hevel (Cain and Abel) all the way to the end through the twelve sons of Yaakov.
Competition is a fact of life the Torah acknowledges and depicts, from specific incidents between individuals to the destiny of tribes and nations. So what does Judaism generally have to offer us as a perspective on competition?
Obviously these Genesis stories portray the destructive effects of certain kinds of competition. In the Talmudic tradition, competition can be a generative dynamic. Talmudic Judaism itself is created and expressed through a series of discussions where rabbis try to best each other intellectually and spiritually. The generations that created the foundations of Jewish law in the Mishnah and Gemara are anchored by pairs of sages who pushed each other about every kind of topic: Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Yishmael, Rabbi Meir and Rabbi Yehudah, Rav and Shmuel, Rabbi Yochanan and Resh Lakish, to name a few. Not to mention Beit Hillel and Beit Shammai, two entire schools of thought. In the Talmudic literature, when a pair of sages squares off for the sake of Heaven, Torah is perfected.
In Talmudic thought we also find the notion of harnessing the yetzer hara, which is the selfish or competitive nature within us. Humans are regarded as having two motors, this yetzer hara, the so-called evil nature, and the yetzer hatov, the nature for good. In one view, the yetzer hara is what perfects goodness (Midrash Bereshit Rabbah 9:7), because it’s competition that pushes people to do constructive things like building a house, and more profound things as we've seen with the Talmud. If someone in the economic sphere becomes wealthy through competition, their wealth can become tzedakah that helps someone else on a scale that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Even if the original motivation is not pure, the outcome can be very good.
In a future video, I’ll talk about competition more particularly in the realm of business. For now, the Jewish view of competition can be summed up with reference to another Talmudic story, where the rabbis capture the yetzer hara and put it in prison (Yoma 69b). Many creative and productive activities come to a screeching halt. So the rabbis come up with the idea of altering the yetzer hara in some way and then release it back into the world, to get the best of competition without its destructive effects. That’s the Jewish perspective. If only the story told how us how to do that specifically, not just metaphorically!
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