Toldos

Express Yourself before It’s Too Late

Author: Rabbi Moshe Pruzansky

WHEN YAAKOV WAS impersonating Eisav in order to receive Yitzchak’s blessings, he politely asked his father to “please stand up.” The verse states that when Yitzchak heard this,he immediately became suspicious of his son’s true identity (27:22). Rashi explains that when Yaakov spoke respectfully and said “please,” this aroused Yitzchak’s suspicion. After all, Eisav always simply said, “Stand up” when he wanted his father to rise.

How can this be? The Zohar states that (for whatever reason)Eisav mastered the mitzvah of kibbud av to the greatest degree in history (Chelek Alef 146). In fact, even great Tannaim attest that as hard as they tried to excel in this area, their actions of honoring  their father never rivaled the incredible actions performed by Eisav (Bereishis Rabbah 65:12,13). If so, how could it be that the very same man who performed legendary acts of love and respect for his father never expressed it verbally, so much so that Yitzchak was surprised to even hear the word “please” from him? Is it possible for someone to love and respect another through actions, and yet to never artic- ulate his love through the art of speech?

Almost everyone remembers where they were on September 11, 2001, when they heard the tragic news: The Twin Towers, in a brazen act of terror, had been hit by airplanes. The victims whose offices were directly impacted by the plane perished immediately. Those below the impact did their best to escape the towers before they collapsed. Those on the floors above the collision, however, had nowhere to run. With no hope of escape, they were forced to wait inside the building until the very end. Many people took advantage of those final moments to call their loved ones and say goodbye. Frank was one such man. He called his wife repeatedly, desperate to speak with her during his final moments. Unfortunately, she had left her phone at home that day while she was doing carpool. With no other choice, he left her a voicemail message, sharing his innermost feelings, the things he had always meant to say but never did. She only heard the message when she arrived home. By that time, the tower had already collapsed and it was too late.

It is abundantly clear from this episode in our parshah that while Eisav clearly valued actions of kibbud av, he apparently attributed very little importance to the need to express kibbud av verbally. No matter how you look at it, this fact is unavoidable. This phenom- enon is actually quite common until this very day.  Often, we too  put tremendous value on acting with love and respect toward the people who are important to us, but tend to give very little value to frequently communicating our love, respect, and appreciation. Often we don’t even realize that we are falling short in this area… until it’s too late.

PEOPLE HAVE AN uncanny knack of procrastinating the conversations that are most important to them. Whether to our spouse, child, or parent, there are things that we all want and need to say, and yet we continue to wait for the “right time.” The only problem is that, apparently, the “right time” doesn’t seem to come up all that often.

If even Eisav, the man who honored his father to the greatest de- gree in history, didn’t put enough stress on articulating his feelings of love and respect, how much more so should we suspect ourselves of following his example? We too have so many people who we love dearly on the inside but to whom we never actually express it out- wardly, except, perhaps, through the occasional birthday or anniver- sary card. We expect that the important people in our lives know how much we value them because of the many acts of love that we do for them — so we dismiss the idea of actually articulating our true feelings. Yet, we all know that if we had been on the upper floors of the World Trade Center on that fateful day, we would have many phone calls we would want to make and many things that we would desperately want to say. Expressive and constant communication is the secret to every vibrant and fulfilling relationship. May we all con- sider today the “right time.”