Delores

 “I was born in a land that God forgot,” said Delores, one of our traveling companions.  She was referring to the South American country in which she was born.  Her mother had been forced to drop out of school after the sixth grade in order to help support the family after Delores’s grandfather died.  Delores, who grew up in a house with a dirt floor, read stories in the Spanish-language editions of the Reader’s Digest about American families who lived in big houses and owned two cars, stories which motivated her to come to the United States.

At her English teacher’s suggestion, she corresponded with an American pen pal, who eventually invited her to visit her.  But Delores needed 45,000 pesos, a fortune to her, in order to obtain a visa.  Determined to earn the money, she did so by learning to type and working as a typist.  She had to wait until she was 21 before traveling to America.  She would have needed her father’s consent to leave at a younger age and he would have refused to give it.  

She stayed a short while with her pen pal, who had offered to help her, and then landed a job, all the while going to night school, first to obtain a high school equivalency certificate and then to continue her study of English.  She went to college at night while working as a typist at the school system of a large California town.  Slowly she worked her way up the ladder and eventually became the office manager for six elementary schools, the second in command when any principal was away.  She married and, while working, raised two children.  She loved her work but retired early to care for her mother, whom she had brought from Colombia.  "I'm grateful for every day," she told us.  "America is my country now."

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

How Donna Got Her Dog

“Please, God, don’t ask me to become a Catholic nun.”  This was Donna, one of our traveling companions, who was telling us about losing her daughter’s dog.   Both her adult children were out of town on assignments and both had asked her to care for their dogs in the meantime, her son’s black Labrador mix and her daughter’s two Chihuahuas.  Her home was outside the town in which both her children lived when they weren’t working somewhere else. 

After a day or two, the big black dog appeared to be sick.  So Donna loaded him into her truck along with the two Chihuahuas in order to take him to the vet in town   She was just about to start the motor when she wondered if she had turned off the water to the washing machine, which had been giving her trouble.  She left the truck, went into her house, checked the water (she had turned it off), and returned to the truck.  She brought the big black dog to the vet, who gave her some medicine, and then returned with the dog to the truck. 

It was a hot day, so she had left the truck’s windows open so as not to suffocate the Chihuahuas.  But to her horror, when she returned to the truck, she saw that there was only one Chihuahua inside.  Someone must have opened the door and stolen the dog.  Deciding to stay at her son’s home in town, which was near the vet's clinic, she rose early every morning to look for the dog, figuring that who ever stole it would walk it early so as to avoid detection.  She asked everyone in the vicinity about the missing dog, but no one had seen it.  Every day, she checked the animal shelter in hopes that the dog had turned up there. 

She called her daughter to tell her the bad news.  “I’m 35,” her daughter told her, “and I have no children.  Those dogs are my children.”  Donna felt stabbed through the heart.  “Please, God, help me find the dog.  If I find her, I’ll do anything you ask of me.”  Donna wasn’t even sure that God exists, but there are no atheists in foxholes and she was in one now.

After four days of fruitless searching, she had to return home in order to attend the wedding of a good friend’s daughter.  When she turned her house key in the lock, she heard barking.  It was her daughter’s dog.  Four days before, when Donna had returned to the house to check the water, the dog must have followed her into the house and then remained there.  Fortunately, there was plenty of water in her bowl but the dog, of course, was ravenous.  Donna bought more food, the dog ate until it was full, and Donna relaxed.

It was then that she asked God not to require her to enter a convent.  But what did God want her to do?  She figured she would know.  And then she remembered a small dog at the animal shelter.  Unlike the other dogs who would run up to any visitor, wagging their tails, this dog hung back.  If no one claimed her, she would be put down.  Then Donna knew what she had to do.  And, having seen her pitying looks at the feral dogs that haunt the tourist sites, hoping for handouts, it was clear to us what that would be.  She went to the shelter and adopted the dog, which, it turned out, was sick.  After it had been treated, it became as loving and outgoing as one could want.  “And that,” Donna told us, “is how I got my dog.”  

Of Geese and Kings

The Egyptian Museum, officially the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, lies at the northern end of Cairo’s Tahrir Square.  During the chaotic few days after Mubarak’s resignation, it was looted, but according to our guide, the thieves took relatively unimportant pieces.  They must have been in a hurry, because despite its poor lighting and even poorer labeling, it is one of the great museums of the world, containing 136,000 Pharaonic exhibits.  As large as it is, however, it does not have sufficient space to exhibit the remaining  40,000 items now crated in its basement.

We were thankful for our knowledgeable guide, who helped us navigate the bewildering mass of exhibits and who pointed out to us some of the most important pieces.  These included a 4,500-year-old painting of three pairs of geese, their colors as fresh as if they had been recently painted.  Our guide told us that grinding stones, such as lapis lazuli, and then mixing the powder with egg white and honey produced the paint.  As I recall, four of the geese are eating or drinking something, two on the right and two on the left, with a third goose standing behind each of these pairs, waiting, perhaps, for its turn.  The scene, in its naturalness, simplicity, and symmetry, is exceptionally charming.

We saw, of course, the magnificent burial treasure of the boy king Tutankhamun, with its staggering use of gold, enamel, and precious stones.  Presumably the burial treasures of more important, longer-lived kings must have been even more stupendous.  The most celebrated of these pharaohs was Ramesses II, who reigned from 1279 to 1213 BCE, longer than any other pharaoh, who, in the 30^th year of his 66-year-long reign, was deified.  He built cities, temples and monuments to himself all over Egypt, including the four colossal seated statues of himself that we saw at the temple of Abu Simbel, and when he died at the age of about 90, he left a rich, prosperous, and powerful kingdom.  His burial treasures must have been prodigious.  

I looked at his body in the museum’s mummy room.  No golden burial mask hides his thin, hook-nosed face or his wispy gray hair.  And of course I thought of Shelley’s sonnet, “Ozymandias” (the Greek name for Ramesses II): “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:/ Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.”  This great warrior king, absolute ruler of a great empire, lies as dead as any dog in the road, subjected to the stares of strangers, who have paid an additional fee for the privilege, as though he were an exhibit in a freak show.  Yes, his monuments still stand and yes, he will be remembered as long as Egyptian history is read, but the kingdom that he worked so hard to extend and preserve fell 150 years later, and he remains as dead as his most degraded subject, as dead as the painter of the six geese. 

That simple painting has lasted as long as the awe-inspiring stone monuments Ramesses II built to aggrandize himself and it has probably given more pleasure as well.

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Giza

“Avoid eye contact,” our guide advised us, “if you don’t want to buy anything.” He was referring to vendors on the Giza Plateau, site of two of the world's most famous ancient monuments, the Great Sphinx and the Great Pyramid of Giza.  These were within walking distance of our hotel – indeed, we could see the Great Pyramid through our hotel window -  but we traveled there by bus. This made it easier for our guide to keep all twelve of us together and it was probably quicker too.  Besides, we would suffer less exposure to the city's smog-fouled air.

Giza, the third largest city in Egypt, sits on the west bank of the Nile, across from its larger and older twin, Cairo. I had imagined that the monuments we were going to see lie far into the desert, and I suppose that this was once the case, but in fact urban sprawl has surrounded them.  A Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet stands about 300 yards from the Great Sphinx.  When we stepped down from the bus, vendors  immediately assaulted us, offering to sell us postcards, glossy guides to the site, and various inexpensive souvenirs such as necklaces, scarabs, and miniature pyramids.

The vendors were extremely aggressive, waving their merchandise in your face, some going so far as to press against you, trying to put into your hand a “gift.”  I never looked at the so-called gifts, so I don’t know what they were, only that I didn’t want them.  Some vendors were so insistent that I had to turn around and walk in the other direction.  Finally, I realized that avoiding eye contact was insufficiently discouraging.  In addition, I shook my head, which in most cases warned them off.  Perhaps their aggressiveness was a sign of desperation.  Tourism had fallen off drastically and the crowds of tourists normally found at the site had disappeared.  On the other hand, a greater supply of tourists might have called forth more vendors.

The Great Pyramid, built by the fourth dynasty pharaoh Khufu or Cheops (2589-2566 BCE), was the tallest building in the world before the construction of the Eiffel Tower.  It’s composed of 2.3 million blocks, whose average weight is 2.5 tons.  Its size is astonishing, considering the primitive tools – bronze, not iron - that fashioned it.   Its age was brought home to me when my wife told me that the amount of time separating us from Herodotus, who visited the site, was about the same as the amount of time separating him from the pyramid’s construction.  It’s been a tourist site for thousands of years, and no doubt there were vendors and touts to pester Herodotus. 

When you look at the pyramid, you see a massive triangle, soaring up to its apex from its base.  Our guide told us that the pyramid’s four bases were almost identical in length.  This information required some mental rearrangements, since I had thought that the base of a pyramid was a triangle rather than a square.  This would, of course, be impossible, but the idea had been lodged in my brain ever since I saw a photo of a pyramid, which goes to show that my consistently low high school scores on tests of spatial relations were entirely justified.  I had to discard another long-held notion, namely, that slaves, subjected to the lash, built the pyramids.  Our guide told us that a workers’ village, recently excavated near the site of the Great Pyramid, included a bakery, a brewery, and a clinic.  A permanent corps of about 10,000 workers was supplemented by, if I recall correctly, by about another 70,000.

My wife, intrepid as usual, climbed several of the pyramid’s courses, and she might have continued climbing to the top, a dangerous enterprise, were it still permitted.  She had to satisfy herself by looking down at me from a lower height, while I stood as squarely as I could on terra firma.  In fact, even the terra didn’t seem so firma to me, so I declined the opportunity to join her on an upper level.  It was the first of many times during our tour that I felt old.  Indeed, I was the oldest person in our group. 

That night, we attended a Sound and Light Show directly in front of the Great Sphinx, with the Great Pyramid and two lesser pyramids behind it.  Our guide warned us to dress warmly, for the desert air, even in summer, can be cold at night.  I wore as many layers as I could, including silk long underwear, but I shivered throughout the 45-minute performance.  To allow workers to get to the polls, which closed at 7:00 pm, the show began a half hour late, so we sat in the cold even longer than necessary.  The show was unimaginably hokey and entirely too long.  I tried to sleep, but I was too cold.  As one of our fellow travelers commented, the show presented the history of Egypt and made us feel as if we had lived through all of it.  But hey, we sat shivering while the polls were still open, during the country's first fair and free election.   Even the Great Sphinx had seen nothing like that.


2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Horus

At nine in the morning, our group, twelve travelers plus our superb guide, left the barge that had carried us upriver from Luxor.  We were now going to visit the huge Temple of Horus, the falcon-headed god of the sky, war, and protection.  Until the revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak, visitors traveled from the riverbank to the temple by bus.  But in the five or six days following Mubarak’s resignation, when the police presence collapsed, the horse and buggy drivers stoned the tourist buses, hoping to gain the business for themselves.  The police have returned, but the travel agencies, taking no chances, have abandoned the buses in favor of the dilapidated buggies, although the latter are slower, less comfortable, and more expensive, and although the drivers’ whipping of their horses often upsets the tourists.

The stoning of tourist buses was not the only violence during the period before the Military Council took firm control.  Our guide told us that he joined a neighborhood watch, armed with a knife – his neighbors were armed with weapons ranging from clubs to revolvers -  in order to protect their homes from roving, looting gangs.  By the time we visited, the police were back on the streets and the demonstrations had died down – save for the street fighting near Tahrir Square during last two days of our stay, of which we were unaware.

The only demonstration we saw was at five in the afternoon, a few days before our visit to Edfu, after we left the new Library of Alexandria.  The library had closed for the day and its workers were now demonstrating for the removal of the library’s director.  He had been an appointment of the old regime – the library was a pet project of Mrs. Mubarak – and the workers wanted him to leave.  Hosni Mubarak was in a prison hospital and his sons were in jail, along with 60% of his cabinet.  Now the library’s workers wanted their director’s head.  The workers’ demonstrations continued after the end of each work day, of which this was the 32^nd or 33^rd, if I remember correctly.  Such demonstrations would have been inconceivable, of course, under the old regime.

During our ten-minute buggy rides to the Temple of Horus and back, we saw many men sitting around smoking, chatting, and drinking coffee, seemingly unemployed.  Perhaps more of them would have been working had tourism not dropped through the floor.  Our flight to Cairo was only about 40% full, with most of the passengers returning Egyptians.  The hotels were reporting only 30% occupancy.  The most recent violence is likely to poison tourism even further during the high season of Christmas week.  But it’s an ill wind, as they say, and our group had neither to stand in line to visit the antiquities nor to jostle others at the museums. 

Our guide advised us to identify ourselves as Canadians, if anyone asked, since America had temporized at the beginning of the revolution, not showing unqualified support for it until it was clear Mubarak was finished.  Animosity to America, at least among the politically aware, was strong.  In Cairo, we passed both the Saudi and Israeli embassies, both heavily guarded by police, the first because Saudi Arabia had never embraced the revolution – the rumor was that the kingdom had offered to pay half of the Egyptian debt if Egypt would allow Mubarak to take refuge there – the second for obvious reasons. 

After our visit to the Horus Temple and as we were descending from our horse-drawn carriage, a photographer showed us the photograph he had taken of us in the buggy.  The picture flattered neither my wife nor myself, and if the horse had been shown, it probably would not have flattered it either.  We were only mildly interested in owning the photo, but we asked him what it would cost.  I forget the price he mentioned, but it was laughably high.  We told him politely that we weren’t interested.  As we walked down the steps to our barge, he kept dropping his price until he offered to sell it to us for one Egyptian pound, or about sixteen cents. We accepted his offer, he removed the photo from its elaborate cardboard frame, and he grudgingly gave us the print.  Sixteen cents was better than nothing, which is what it would have been worth had we not taken it. 

Shortly before this transaction, a child, perhaps ten years old and dressed in rags, asked for alms, repeatedly gesturing with her thumb and first two fingers towards her mouth.  She would have been pleased by a gift of a pound, but I felt it was wrong to encourage the caretakers (her parents?) who had sent her to beg.  Even so, what were their options?  I should have given her something and I felt bad that I hadn’t.  Horus, god of war, sky, and protection, was nowhere to be seen.


2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Tahrir Square and Prospect Heights

Yesterday’s Times reported the Egyptian army’s escalation of its crackdown on street protestors. Military police clubbed unarmed civilians, ripped the clothing from women as they beat them, threw stones and blocks of concrete from rooftops on protestors below, and burned a small tent encampment on Tahrir Square, leaving ten dead and hundreds wounded. The prime minister on Saturday morning denied the use of military force and, in an ominous return to the days of military dictatorship, blamed third parties for the violence.

None of this was apparent to us either on Friday, when we flew from Abu Simbel, close to the Sudanese border, to Cairo, or on Saturday, when we boarded a plane for New York.  Indeed, our visit to Egypt was remarkably peaceful.  Tahrir Square boasted only a few demonstrators when we visited the nearby National Museum, with its spectacular (if poorly displayed) collection of antiquities. We saw, near the museum, the shell of the building that housed Mubarak’s political party, torched in the February demonstrations that had toppled him from power.  There were no demonstrations when we passed by.  The elections seemed to have sucked the wind from the protests.

It was an exciting time to be in Egypt, when the second round of the country’s first free and fair elections were being held.  In Aswan, we saw the stadium in which the province’s votes were being counted, and the cars of the representatives from the various political parties who had come to oversee the counting.  It was the first election, our guide told us, in which he’d ever voted.  In the past there was no point in doing so since the outcome was preordained.  This time, people waited in line for hours to vote, and even so, only about 50% of eligible voters turned out.  The elections under Mubarak and his predecessors claimed a 90% turn out, but in fact there were never ever any lines for those elections. 

In Cairo, we passed a long line of men and a separate, shorter line of women waiting to buy propane gas, used for cooking.  These people, too poor to afford the jacked up prices charged by companies that make home deliveries, waited for hours in line.  The Muslim Brotherhood, our guide told us, buys propane gas and delivers it to people’s homes, taking a very small profit, but either that service had not reached the people waiting in line or even the small additional profit made the service too costly for them.  In addition to its propane gas service, the Muslim Brotherhood operates low- cost medical clinics, and on Thursdays, the day before the Muslim day of rest, it delivers gratis food to the poorest families, so they too can enjoy a festive meal on Friday.  In the first and second round of voting, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party has won about 40% of the vote.

Our affable, supremely competent guide, is no fan of the Brotherhood and didn’t vote for its party, but he believes it will be moderate in the social changes it exacts.  He believes the party’s statement that it will not forbid the consumption of alcohol at home or in hotels, although it does plan to close liquor stores.  Islam in Egypt, he told us, is moderate.  But the second most popular party, the fundamentalist Islamic Al Nour, won 20% of the vote, and it remains to be seen whether the Brotherhood will form a coalition with Al Nour or with the liberal parties.  One of our lecturers, a professor of sociology at the American University of Cairo, is not as optimistic as our guide that the Islamicist parties will enact moderate policies and that they will not curtail the hard-won rights of women.

Because of the political unrest, our children tried several times to dissuade us from traveling to Egypt.  But one needn’t travel to Egypt to find violence.   On our way home from the airport, our taxi was forced to make a detour about 200 yards from our apartment house, because fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were blocking the street.  Yesterday’s Times reported the reason. A woman entered an elevator, where a man, dressed as an exterminator, doused her with a flammable material and set her ablaze.  The woman burned to death.  We worry about the wrong things.

Anchises at the High Dam

We awoke yesterday to find ourselves at Aswan.  After breakfast on board, we visited Philae, the High Dam, and the Unfinished Obelisk.   Philae, an island in the Nile, was the site of an ancient temple complex, which was dismantled and relocated to a nearby island to prevent its being flooded by the Aswan Dam, completed in 1970.   The Unfinished Obelisk is the largest of the known ancient Egyptian obelisks, one third larger than any other.  Carved directly out bedrock, it would have been about 137 feet tall and weigh almost 1,200 tons. 

After lunch, we spent the afternoon sailing on a felucca, sail boats that have plied the Nile since antiquity and are still built to the traditional design.  We loafed again, but after our hectic sightseeing in Cairo and Alexandria, we felt glad to do as little as possible, while still staying awake.

We enjoyed a farewell dinner on board.  Why was it a farewell dinner, when there'll be another dinner tomorrow?  Because some of our party are continuing on an extension tour of Lake Nasser.  But it was also a farewell to loafing.

Today we're to drive through the Great Western Desert to Abu Simbel, where we'll explore the Ramses II and Queen Nefertari Temples.  Like Philae, these were part of a massive relocation project to save them from the waters of the High Dam.

After lunch, we're to fly back to Cairo.

[written while still in New York, based on the offical itinerary.  I look forward to reporting some of my observations when we return.

2010-2011 Anchises-an Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved

Anchises Floating up the Nile

Yesterday, after a presentation about ongoing discoveries and digs in Egypt, we explored the West Bank Valley of the Kings and various royal tombs.  How refreshing it was to visit a West Bank that is not in Palestine.

The afternoon was spent lounging on deck as we progressed up the Nile towards Edfu and watched the countryside and those who live and work there slide by.  We had nothing to do but do nothing, to steal Mark Twain’s description of a long ocean voyage.

Today we’re to visit the Horus Temple at Edfu, one of the largest in Egypt, and the Kom Ombo Temple, the latter built during the second century before the common era.  In the afternoon, we’re going to loaf again on board, as our royal barge takes us further up the Nile, this time to Aswan.

[written while still in New York, based on the official itinerary.  I look forward to reporting some of my observations when we return.]

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man’s Journal All Rights Reserved

Anchises in Luxor and Karnak

Last Saturday, we took the train to Cairo, boarding it in the morning and arriving in time for lunch.  We spent the afternoon at the Egyptian Museum, which included a visit to the mummy room, after an introduction by an Egyptologist. 

Yesterday, we visited various sites in historic Cairo, including the Ibn Toulum Mosque and the Khan el-Khalili Bazaar, the hanging church, St. Sergius church, and the Ben Ezra synagogue, representatives of four great religions: Judaism, Chrisianity, Islam, and Shopping.

Today, we’re to fly to Luxor, from which we will take a train to the Karnak and Luxor temples, the first of which is the largest temple complex ever built.  We will then board our floating hotel, the MS Royal Viking, for our cruise up the Nile.  That afternoon, we’ll hear a presentation about the Opet Festival, an ancient Egyptian annual celebration, in which the statues of the Theban gods – Amun, Khonsu, and Mut – were escorted from the temple of Amun in Karnak to the temple of Luxor, about two miles away.  We’ll also hear about the ongoing restoration work at Luxor.   

[written while still in New York, based on the official itinerary.  I look forward to reporting some of my observations when we return.]

2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Anchises in Alexandria

Yesterday we drove along a desert road to the ancient Anba Bishoi Monastery, about 100 kms. northwest of Cairo.  It's a collection of five chapels, the principal one of which is named for St. Bishoi, who was born in 320 of the current era.  The monastery was sacked several times by marauding Berbers, and each time rebuilt. Although the defensive tower dates from the fifth century, most of what we saw dates from the fourteenth. 

From there we drove to Alexandria, where we visited the Eastern Harbor, the site of the Pharos lighthouse, one of the wonders of the ancient world, and the new Bibliotheca Alexandrina.

Today we’re to explore Alexandria, visiting some of the great historic sites, including the second century catacombs of Kom-es Shouqafa, which were tunneled into the bedrock by a rich Alexandrine family who followed the ancient Egyptian religion, and the Roman theater.  We’re also scheduled to visit the Alexandria National Museum, located in a restored palace and one of the country’s premier institutions.  After lunch, we’ll continue exploring the city, ending our sightseeing at the Montazah Gardens, the site of two palaces built by the Mohamed Ali family, who ruled Egypt from the mid-19^th century until the revolution that brought Nasser to power in 1952.

Back at our hotel, we’ll hear a lecture about the Underwater City of Cleopatra.  By that time I'll be ready to collapse from stimulus overload.

[written while still in New York, based on the official itinerary.  I look forward to reporting some of my observations when we return.]

Anchises in Cairo

Aeneas reached Carthage, where he fell in love with Dido, before continuing to Italy and founding Rome.  His father Anchises, whom he rescued from the burning city of Troy and who accompanied Aeneas on the first part of his travels, died peacefully in Sicily, never having reached the north coast of Africa with his son.  I’m now filling that gap, since my wife and I are in Egypt on a two-week tour organized by Road Scholar (formerly Elder Hostel).  We left on Sunday night and plan to return to New York in middle of the month. 

We arrived in Cairo on Monday afternoon and, after being taken to our hotel by the Road Scholar representative, ate dinner with some of the twelve or so participants.   Yesterday, after breakfast, we drove out to see the Great Pyramids of Giza, the Sphinx, and the Solar Boat.  Today, we're to visit Dahshur, a necropolis of the Old Kingdom, and Memphis, as well as the Imhotep Museum in Saqqara, north of Dahshur, which displays archaeological finds from the site.  We'll be on our own this afternoon, but in the evening we're to hear a presentation by a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, who will speak about "Islam Today."

A confession: actually, I’m writing this from New York.  We haven’t yet embarked for Egypt.  But from time to time I’ll be posting our itinerary as it now appears in the schedule, as if we had actually taken part in it, although of course right now those activities are in the future.   No doubt the schedule will be changed here and there, so my posts may not be entirely accurate.  After we return, I hope to present some reflections on our experience.


2010-2011 Anchises-An Old Man's Journal All Rights Reserved

Toledot

Each week, a member of our minyan offers a brief commentary on the Torah portion of the week.  My turn arrived two Saturdays ago. The portion was Toledot, an exceedingly rich text whose central drama is Jacob’s supplanting his older twin Esau as the bearer of Abraham's and Isaac’s legacy.  As I read through the portion, I was struck by how suffused it is with pairs, doubles, opposites, mirror images, and echoes, appropriate for a story not only about twins but also about duplicity.  

For example, Rebecca tells her son Jacob to bring her two kids, which she will cook into a stew for his father Isaac, now blind, in order to receive the blessing which Isaac has meant for Esau.  Why two kids?  Surely one would be enough for an old man or even for a family of four.  In a hot climate without refrigeration, an uneaten goat stew would soon spoil.  But the pair represents the doubleness that we see throughout the story. 

We need not look far to find other examples.  Rebecca gives Jacob stew and bread, another pair, to give to his father – an echo of the bread and stew that Jacob gave Esau in exchange for Esau’s birthright.  To fool Isaac into thinking that Jacob is Esau, Rebecca covers Jacob’s hands and the back of his neck in the hairy skin of the goats she’s killed – Jacob is smooth-skinned whereas Esau is hairy – and dresses him in Esau’s clothing.  So we have the pair formed by Esau's clothes and the goat skin, which in turn covers two parts of Jacob's body, his hands and the back of his neck.

Jacob brings the food to his father.  Isaac asks him which son he is.  Jacob says he’s Esau.  Isaac asks him to approach so that he can feel him and he asks “are you really my son Esau?”  Jacob does not answer but draws close.  Isaac feels him and says, “The voice is the voice of Jacob but the hands are the hands of Esau.”  And he asks again, “are you really my son Esau?” And once more Jacob says he’s Esau.  So here we have three pairs: the pairing of “the voice of Jacob and the hands of Esau,” Isaac’s two identical requests for confirmation – “are you really my son Esau” - and Jacob’s two lies about his identity. 

Isaac asks Jacob to kiss him and as Jacob complies, Isaac smells Esau’s clothes, commenting that Esau’s scent is “that of a field blessed by the Eternal.” So Isaac employs two senses to confirm his understanding that Jacob is Esau, touch and smell, but he ignores two others.  He ignores the evidence of his hearing – “the voice of Jacob”  – as well as the evidence provided by taste.  Surely goat stew does not taste like stew made from game, which is what he asked Esau to give him and which is what he was expecting.  So we have two pairs here, those senses that support the deception and those senses that contradict it.  Isaac then blesses Jacob, and the blessing itself, a poem, is structured as a collection of couplets.

The question arises as to whether Jacob really deceived Isaac.  Perhaps Isaac deceived himself, willing himself to believe Jacob’s grotesque disguise.  But if it was Isaac who was the deceiver, it may not have been himself that he deceived but his family.  In other words, he may have been conscious of Jacob’s ruse and pretended to be fooled by it.  In either of these cases, he acted as he did because in his heart he believed that Jacob was the appropriate bearer of his and Abraham’s legacy.  That Isaac chooses not to believe the evidence of two senses, hearing and taste, that he refuses to rescind his blessing after Esau presents him with clear evidence of Jacob’s duplicity, and that indeed he later blesses Jacob a second time all support the notion that Jacob did not deceive his father.   Thus the story provides two plausible interpretations, one in which Jacob deceives Isaac and the other in which Isaac either deceives himself or deceives the rest of his family

The story does not criticize Jacob for his immoral behavior, but its pairs, doubles, opposites, and echoes provide a subterranean comment on the duplicity and ambiguity at its heart.

In this post, I’ve given only a few of the pairings that I presented in my d’var Torah.  The more I looked for them the more I found, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are even more to be discovered.  But in preparing my commentary, I found more than these pairs; I also learned the pleasure of close textual analysis, of which this was my first attempt.  This old dog is learning new tricks.

A Walk in Prospect Park

In addition to the fading glory of the foliage, the oceans of fallen leaves underfoot, the joggers, and the runners, this is what I saw and heard last Sunday morning during my daily walk in Prospect Park.

I saw a father blowing bubbles towards his child, perhaps 20 months old, who toddled towards him trying to catch a bubble, while his mother watched.  I saw a beautifully combed and brushed brown and white Springer spaniel. I heard a father saying to his child, “See all those runners?  Where do you think they’re going?” I didn’t catch what the child said but the father laughed.  The question was a good one, for the runners weren’t going anywhere. I saw ten ducks swimming in the dog-paddle pond, across which a barrier had been thrown to keep dogs from venturing onto the ice that often forms in winter. I saw four guys throwing a football to one another and four guys line skating in close formation.  I saw several phalanxes of racing cyclists.  I saw a dog playing fetch with his master on the Long Meadow.  This was after nine, when dogs are not supposed to run free. 

A woman smiled at me (was she thinking, “isn’t he cute?”).  She was standing next to a man. A tall, well-turned out couple in their forties, watching the dog playing fetch, they looked the essence of “U.”   I smiled back and said “good morning,” which they repeated to me.

I saw the homeless man I wrote about in Monday’s post.  He was sitting on a rock outside the Endale Arch.  He was talking to a woman with a dog, so I heard him speak for the first time.  He has a West Indian accent.  (The next day I saw him hunched up against the wall, all but his head buried in blankets.  He looked at me.  I called out “good morning” and he replied “good morning, sir.)

I saw a special bench on the path that runs parallel, more or less, to the East Drive.  What makes it special is that for a long time several photographs of a twenty-something young man had been affixed to it along with the dates of his birth and death and a note to the effect that he had died of cancer.  A bouquet of flowers, replenished from time to time, was placed next to the photograph.  But the bench had neither photographs, nor note, nor flowers.  And I thought of the tragedy of the young man’s early death.

And of course I thought how lucky I’ve been to have lived so long (yesterday I turned 80).  For many old people the notion of “golden years” is bitterly ironic, if they are beleaguered by straitened incomes or poor health or the loss of a beloved spouse.  My old age, though, has been truly golden so far, if enjoyment of life is the chief criterion.  Let’s see what happens next, now that I’ve joined the ranks of the octogenarians.  Whatever comes next, though, I won’t have any grounds for complaint.  I've had a good run.

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