Parshat Toldot 5769: Image and Identity

"It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else and still unknown to himself."[1]

Inside the wrapping

A relationship with our own identity sounds easy. As one who is struggling with this, and has been for years, I can assure you though, that this is not the case. To me at least, my relationship with my own identity has been the most challenging relationship of all. The reason for its complexity is the difficulty we often experience in confronting our deeper selves in truth, and the ease with which we confuse our identities and images. Most of us have several images; but we have only one identity. What is your image, and what is your identity?

Image is how others experience you. Identity is how you experience yourself when there are no others present and when you, totally alone with yourself, are brutally honest. Not everyone knows their identities. Too often we live our lives in one or more of our images. If you are fortunate enough to have a truly honest intimate relationship, then your spouse may experience your identity too. Sometimes though, even spouses only experience images of their partners for years, and are shocked when they happen upon their true identity.

There is nothing wrong with image in itself. Image is a form of communication and amplification of who we are. It is like the wrapping around a gift. The wrapping is not the gift. The wrapping on its own has little or no value. Yet, without it the gift loses impact. So, provided we have a sound identity, image helps others access who we are more quickly. It helps them experience our presence above the din of everything else around them.

It is natural that we burnish our images a little. Image, a superficial veneer, projects us a little better than our reality, and that is OK. The problem is when our different images are not aligned with one another or, worse, when our images conflict with our identities. When people at work would not recognize us at home or vice-versa, or when friends at synagogue would not recognize us on vacation, our images may not be aligned. It is more serious though when, to satisfy the expectations of others, we compromise who we really are. Then, our images are out of synch with our identities: that is confusing to others and damaging to ourselves.

Choices and Decisions

It is hard to make decisions on important issues when we live in multiple images or when our images and our identities are not aligned. It is easier to make choices from a place of identity than from the perspectives of one or more of our images.

Businesses and organizations also have identities from which position they should make their decisions. Businesses and organizations also have both images and identities. A company's brand is its image; its values and its culture is its identity. When companies' images do not authentically portray their identity, they should make choices based on their identities rather than on their images.

In 1982 the Board of Johnson and Johnson recalled 31 million bottles of Tylenol after seven people died from consuming tampered-with, cyanide-laced packages of Extra-Strength capsules in a localized episode. The board did not expect Tylenol to recover, but they knew that their identity was tied to saving lives not poisoning people. They put their corporate values before the survival of a brand and as such committed a kind of corporate messirut neffesh. Mesirut Neffesh is the willingness if necessary, to sacrifice our concrete images to preserve our spiritual identities. (J&J's mesirut nefesh happened to pay off well both ethically and economically for them, but records show that they did not anticipate this).

Eisav's image; Yaacov's identity

Our understanding of image and identity clarifies the polarity of the two focal characters in the parsha: Yaacov and Eisav. Eisav is all about image, deceiving even his father with his brilliant PR, seducing women, manipulating leaders. Yaacov, Ish tam yosheiv ohalim (a straightforward man who dwelt in sanctuaries), is all identity.

This understanding also offers fresh insight into that perplexing piece of our Parsha where Rivkah sets Yaacov up to mislead his father into believing that he is Eisav. Her intention is that Yaacov get theBeracha of the first born, the rights to which he secured many years before (see 25:33).

Yaacov questions the plan. He has no difficulty assuming theidentity of the bechor (first born): after all, he knows he is destined to be Yitchak's spiritual heir, he was conceived first, and he paid Eisav for the exclusive rights to the bechor identity.  However, he doubts he can assume Eisav's image. If my father touches my outer surface (my "wrapping"), he will see through the charade: "After all, Eisav my brother is a hairy man and I am smooth skinned. My father might touch me and I will be like a traitor in his eyes" (27:11-12).

Rivkah, make-up artist and image manager, disguises Yaacov. In feel and in fragrance (Yitzchak was blind so visual image was unnecessary) he assumed Eisav's image.

Then, in 27:19, Yaacov seems to tell his father a brazen lie: "I am Eisav your first born." The Zohar[2] (quoted by Rashi) paraphrases Yaacov's words in the oddest way. It suggests that Yaacov really said: "I am the one who has brought you your meal, while it is Eisav who is your bechor." Firstly, where is that in the words of Yaacov's greeting to his father or even in the Ta'amim (punctuation)? Secondly, that is not the way Yitzchak understood Yaacov, nor was it Yaacov's intention that his father should hear it that way. So what does the Zohar gain with its linguistic contortionism suggesting that Yaacov did not really lie?

As always, the more outrageous a comment of Chazal appears to be, the more enlightening and deep is its insight. The Zohar's teaches us that Yaacov was fully mindful of the falseness of the image he was projecting: that of his twin brother, Eisav. He knew that he was using the smooth tongue of deceitful marketing to promote this false image. Yaacov however wanted to be certain within himself that not for a moment would he be taken in by his own PR, and that he would never buy in to the falseness of this image. Yaacov tried to protect his identity throughout the image-charade. The double meaning of his words were not directed at his father but at himself. He was saying one thing to his father to whom he was communicating image, and another thing to himself, to whom he was affirming identity. He reminded himself, not his father, that despite his packaging and the way he may appear, feel and smell, he was still Yaacov, not Eisav.

It was the integrity of his identity that gave him away in the end, not a flaw in his disguise: Yitzchak, identifying the gentleness of Yaacov's tone, declares: "Hakol, Kol Yaacov (- 27:22 the tone of voice is the tone of Yaacov"). Voice, and tonality are expressions of the deepest identity. Together with the eyes they are the give-away signs when image and identity are out of synch. You may have the hands, the skin, the image of Eisav, says Yitzchak to his son, but your inner voice is that of Yaacov.  Yaacov made no attempt to disguise his voice or his style of speech. Compromising his image was bad enough. Had he modified his speech to support his Eisav-image he would have compromised his very identity. This, he was not prepared to do.

What a lesson in the integrity of retaining identity even when image needs to be compromised! In many communities orthodox Jews adapt their images to that of the West so as not to overly accentuate the barriers between Jews and the people with whom they engage for business and day-to-day life. Before the war, Yeshiva bochurim(students) in Lithuania would dress fashionably, differentiating themselves by their elegance rather than by their uniform. Reb Eliya Lopian told my father that even Reb Yisroel Salanter used to dress like a businessman of those times unlike the practice of other Rabonnim to dress differently. (Different dress-style for Rabbonim was not unique to us. It was expected by both Jewish and non-Jewish society that Clergy wear different clothing. The clergy of all religions dressed differently from their flocks, each according to their own customs.) What is more important than how Benei Torahdressed was the quality of their speech and the delicacy of their voices. Raised voices were seldom heard, and nivul peh (foul language) was unheard of. Image, within Halachik frameworks, may adapt to fashion. Identity may not. We should hermetically seal our personal and national identities from possible contamination even as we adapt our images to our environments. Sad would be the day that our image is Torah but our identities and deeper values are not. Continuously we must check in with ourselves: Are our voices still the voice of Yaacov?

Journey to identity

My own journey on this path may be helpful to you in yours. When I began to meditate daily on the simple question: "Who am I?" I found it impossibly difficult to answer with a single response. I had too many answers. It was then that I realized how confused my own boundaries between image and identity had become. I was raised in Jewish public life from infancy. As such, growing up as children, image and identity were one and the same. I was what people saw. I had to be....and I wanted to be. But that took no account of the deep, subconscious feelings of identity possibly still dormant at such an early age.

Little by little the inevitable ever-magnifying focus on image buried my identity deeper and deeper beneath the surface until it was virtually out of my conscious reach. Out of touch with my deep identity, I tried on a spectrum of different images for size. They all fitted some of the time: none of them all of the time. A little like a chameleon, I customized my images to the expectations of the people I was interacting with at any given time. Like a chameleon they did not change who I really was and they all conformed to my broad overarching value system. So at times I confused them with the real thing. I became more removed from my identity, seeking nourishment from image rather than from self.

I discovered later that there is no nourishment in image, only in identity. My identity was now buried deep below veneers of image.  I became almost paralyzed over any decision that could not satisfy my entire portfolio of images, and hardly any could. I could not commit to a choice that served one image but not others. Eventually I had to go deeper into myself than I had ever done before. I had to really confront the question: "Who am I?" Who am I, not to anyone else. Who am I, to myself?

I won't give you my answer, because then it would just become another image! I will tell you though, that after all this journeying, image and identity more easily align. As in my childhood, but coming at it from such a different angle, image and identity are once again... almost... One.