13
Dec
2006
8 Comments
More by this Author

Soup and Meaning-(Doesn't That Come With Bread?)

by

This is an article contributed by a commenter here who wishes to remain anonymous. Enjoy:

For those you that are less initiated, we Jews have a tradition of reading one part of the first five books (Torah) of the Old Testement each week. It is divided into 54 parts I believe, and each year one starts all over with the creation of the earth, Adam and Eve and all the little creatures that would swim and fly and generally hang around and leave droppings. Anyhow…this is a ritual I pretty much have kept up with and, funny, each time around there is a new insight if I focus.

Last week, Issac entreats G-d to let his wife, Rebecca, become pregnant. Darn if God doesn’t come through big, its twins! Well, not such good news since Pops ends up liking older brother Esau and Moms likes Jacob. Esau and Jake don’t much take to each other either. Here yet another dysfunctional Jewish family sad, but good for my counseling business.

Well, the boys grow up, Jake hangs around home mostly and seems to like cooking (no, he does not turn out to be gay, not at all, fathers kids right and left) while macho Esau likes to hunt. One day Esau comes back from a hunting trip and he is quite hungry. Jake is cooking stew, red stew (no, no blood of Christian or Muslim children since neither yet existed, nor did matzah, but isn’t that a whole different story?), apparently just good old lentils. Well Esau wants to eat, and Jake is ready to help Bro out, but for a small fee. Brother Jake wants Esau’s birthright (Esau vacated Rebecca first). So now we get the rub of my tale. Esau says “anochi holech la’mut”. Very roughly translated, by me, “WTF, I am going to die anyhow”.

Now the rabbis have various commentary on what he meant. This includes Rashi who felt Esau was aware of the dangers of hunting and felt he would not live long.

Me, I differ. I believe Esau was the first nihilist/existentialist. Esau just felt, “hell, life is a short trip and the hell with it, give me some soup”. “Ain’t nothing worth nothing. Here today, gone tamale”.

Anochi holech la’mut, “I am going to die” or could have been “what the hell, I am going to die anyhow”.

This forces what I believe the salient question of life; “what am I doing here, does life have a purpose, does it matter what I do?” Is death a dark endless sleep, is there a judgment or was Peggy Lee (“is that all there is”?) right?

If Peggy Lee is correct, then you know, let’s do just “break out the booze”. This view renders everything meaningless. It is a sad and frightening possibility that could very well be true, and would render life “a good joke for a select few and a bad joke for most”. (Credit Dennis Prager).

My instinct is that for most folk who are visiting blogs such as this one, whether religious or atheist, there is either a conscious or subconscious belief that life has purpose and that we must struggle to not only find that purpose, but make the world a better place.

Our visions and views of history differ, however do we believe there are certain absolutes that transcend religion, border, race? I unequivocally reject that dark vision of my distant relative Esau. As cynical as you or I might be, if your heart is in its essence; caring, loving and willing, then we must pick ourselves up each day and do these small things to make the world a bit better.