Rabbi Noam Raucher, MA.Ed – Executive Director, FJMC International
If you’re a teenage boy trying to figure out what kind of man you want to become, the internet has plenty of answers for you: Be the alpha. Don’t be a beta. Get bigger. Get richer. Be confident. Don’t let anyone disrespect you. Don’t be needy. Become the guy other guys want to be and girls want to be with. There are Chads and sigmas and endless videos explaining which habits make you weak and which ones make you a “high-value man.”
Then Torah gives us Esau and Jacob. In manosphere language, Esau is the obvious alpha. He is hairy, strong, a hunter, “a man of the outdoors.” He knows how to use a weapon. He goes out into the world and comes home carrying something he killed. If Esau had an Instagram account, you can probably imagine it.
Jacob would have a harder time online. The Torah calls him ish tam, a quieter man who stays among the tents. He is smooth-skinned. He thinks before he acts. He seems more comfortable at home. The manosphere would probably call him the beta brother. Their father seems to agree. “Isaac loved Esau,” the Torah tells us, while Rebecca loved Jacob. Isaac particularly appreciates the food Esau brings home from hunting.
Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson noticed this contrast years before anyone was talking about Chads and sigmas. In his essay “John Wayne Meets Jacob,” he compared Esau to the old American masculine ideal represented by characters like John Wayne: physical, independent, instinctive, tough. Today, John Wayne has largely been replaced by influencers with microphones. But the argument is remarkably similar. What does a real man look like? And the Torah gives an interesting answer: neither brother has figured it out.
Esau has qualities worth admiring. He is capable. He is physical. He can act decisively. There is nothing wrong with being strong, competitive, athletic, ambitious, or tough. But Esau also has a problem. He comes home exhausted and hungry and sells his birthright for a meal.
Think about that. The guy who looks powerful cannot control himself long enough to protect something valuable. That complicates the whole alpha thing. What kind of strength are we talking about if a man can bench 250 pounds but cannot manage his anger? What does dominance mean if another person can control you simply by offering you what you desperately want right now?
Jacob has the opposite skills. He can wait. He plans and sees several moves ahead. But Jacob has his own problems. He takes advantage of Esau’s and Isaac’s vulnerability. Later, with his mother’s help, he deceives his aging father to steal his brother’s blessing. Being clever does not automatically make you good either. And this is where the story becomes useful for boys growing into men.
You do not have to choose between Esau and Jacob. Masculinity is not a personality test where you discover which type you are and then spend your life performing it. We call that mask-ulinity. We call it that, because being a man means you can sincerely and honestly love football and poetry. You can lift weights and talk about what is bothering you. You can be competitive without treating every other guy as competition. You can be strong enough to protect someone and secure enough to admit when you need help.
The danger begins when you start believing that only one version of being a man counts. Jacob learns that lesson painfully. When Isaac prepares to bless Esau, Jacob disguises himself as his brother. He wears Esau’s clothes. He brings in the same food Esau would have brought. And he hopes that he will be able to deceive his blind father. But even if Isaac can’t see, he knows who he is talking to.
Isaac touches him and says something extraordinary: “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are the hands of Esau.” His father can hear who this person behind the mask really is. But Jacob still believes he needs Esau’s costume to receive the blessing. That might be one of the oldest stories ever written about boys and masculinity. Because boys still learn to put on costumes.
Researchers Matthew Oransky and Jeanne Marecek found something remarkably similar when they interviewed teenage boys about masculinity and friendship. Twenty-one of the 23 boys said that looking masculine meant hiding feelings and appearing tough or stoic. Most described friendships in which hurt, fear, and vulnerability were carefully kept out of sight because showing them could invite ridicule. Masculinity, the researchers found, required an ongoing performance in front of other boys.
Sometimes the costume is pretending not to care. Sometimes it is acting more sexually experienced than you are. Sometimes it is hiding fear, sadness, loneliness, or affection because you are worried about how other guys will react. And sometimes the costume is the online version of masculinity somebody else is trying to sell you.
The strange thing is that Esau is trapped too. He has become “the hunter,” the son whose father expects strength and game and the smell of the outdoors. Jacob and Esau are both living inside other people’s expectations. That may be the real problem in this week’s Torah reading. There is nothing wrong with being like Esau. There is nothing wrong with being like Jacob. There is something wrong when a boy believes he must become somebody else before he deserves his father’s blessing.
So to the young men trying to figure out masculinity right now: learn from both brothers. Become competent in your emotions and learn how to channel them in healthy ways. Think ahead. Know how to protect someone without needing to dominate them.
And be suspicious of anyone who insists that manhood requires you to cut off part of yourself. You will spend enough of adolescence figuring out who you are. You shouldn’t have to spend it wearing Esau’s clothes.