Maidenhead 22 November 2025 / 2 Kislev 5786
Rock Shabbat @ Maidenhead
You may have seen the 2022 film “Elvis” directed by Baz Luhrmann. I remember a scene when young Elvis stands on stage, paralysed by shyness. Then something shifts. He begins to play, the music takes hold, and suddenly the audience is electrified. Rock music emerged in the 1950s from the fusion of different musical genres, and it was met with resistance by parents, clergy and authorities. Critics said rock would corrupt the youth and destroy society’s fabric. There is indeed something unsettling in rock music, something that stirs emotions, something that expresses anger, desire, and rebellion even, but it became popular precisely because it responded to a deep need that people felt, the inner tensions that must be expressed aloud.
Our weekly Torah portion, Parashat Toledot, is a parashah of struggle from the very first line. Rebecca becomes pregnant, and “the children struggled within her”, vayitrotzetzu habanim beqirbah (Genesis 25:22). The first Jewish siblings are already fighting before they take their first breath. Our story does not begin in harmony but in tension and pain.
Yet this Hebrew verb tells us something crucial: ‘vayitrotzetzu’ shares its root with words meaning ‘to break through’, ‘to crush’, and ‘to emerge’. Struggle isn’t simply a conflict. It’s the force that creates space for something new.
Rebecca does something important: she does not pretend everything is fine. She says, “If so, why am I?” and goes to “seek (lidrosh) the Eternal”. That’s her first response to struggle – not denial, but honest questioning – why am I alive, and must I go through this – and the courage to bring that turmoil into dialogue with the Divine. Without the discomfort, there would be no enquiry. Without the conflict, there would be no revelation. Without revelation, no fuel for resilience.
The answer Rebecca receives does not promise an easy life: “Two nations are in your womb… one people shall be stronger than the other, and the elder shall serve the younger” (25:23). In other words, this struggle is not a glitch; it is part of the story. These twins aren’t meant to be identical. Like different notes creating harmony in music, where tension between certain pitches produces emotional depth, their differences are essential to their purposes.
The parashah then unfolds as a series of conflicts: between the twins, between parents who play favourites, between hunger and responsibility, and between truth and disguise. None of the characters behaves perfectly. Jacob buys the birthright from a starving Esau; later, with Rebecca’s help, he deceives his blind father. This is not a children’s tale. It is a brutally honest portrait of a family trying to manage blessings in an imperfect world.
The Torah’s genius lies in refusing to simplify these moments. It doesn’t declare Jacob righteous or Esau wicked. Instead, it shows us that struggle forces decisions that forge character. Jacob, who gained blessing through deception, will himself be deceived. He who wrestled in the womb will wrestle with an angel. The struggle doesn’t just reveal who we are; it creates who we become.
Many of us come into shul on a Friday evening carrying our own struggles that began long before us, family patterns we did not choose, internal twins wrestling inside. This parashah does not offer a neat resolution. Instead, it shows us what Rebecca models: bringing our struggle into conversation with the Divine. Don’t deny the wrestling, but hold it in dialogue with something greater than ourselves.
Our Torah portion encourages us to find the courage not to hide our struggles but to hold them, together, in the light of blessing. In other words, it invites us to find our own resilience.