There is a powerful verse in the book of Deuteronomy: Lo ba-shamayim hi, the Torah is not in the heavens. I have always loved this phrase because, for me, it expresses with perfect clarity what makes the Torah so unique and what defines our relationship with it. The Torah is not a distant, celestial document filled with saintly, flawless heroes. It is not hagiography. It is grounded here, in the messy marketplace of life. If we look closely at our forefathers and foremothers, we do not see idealised spiritual giants but deeply compromised human beings. Abraham almost sacrifices his son. Sarah sends Hagar and Ishmael into the wilderness, seemingly to die. King David arranges for Uriah, his own loyal soldier, to be killed so he can take Bathsheba.
And then we come to our “man of the hour,” Jacob. Last week, we read that Jacob stole his brother’s birthright. He runs away, pushed by Rebecca and driven by fear of Esau’s revenge. What are we to do with all of this? Are these really the ancestors we want to hold up as our role models?
It is fascinating to see how the three great monotheistic religions have traditionally grappled with these unsettling stories. Christianity articulated a theology of supersession, the idea that the Jews failed to listen to their prophets and thus fell out of favour with God, necessitating a new covenant: the New Testament. Within our own tradition, the Rabbis and prophets often idealised the biblical characters. Despite acknowledging their shortcomings, most of our Rabbinic commentators insisted that we cannot judge our ancestors by the same standards as ordinary people; they were, after all, acting within a divine plan. Even where the texts recognise ethically problematic actions, rabbinic interpretation, for the most part, tends to justify them.
A classic example is how rabbinic tradition treats Jacob and Esau. In the Torah, Esau, whose birthright has been taken from him, is the one who ultimately embraces Jacob, kisses him, forgives him, and even offers him gifts. Yet the prophetic and rabbinic traditions cast Esau into the role of the ancestor of oppressive nations, a symbol of enmity toward Israel. Jacob becomes the chosen one, the line through whom the Jewish people will emerge.
But I want to suggest that all these theological moves, whether supersessionist or rabbinic apologetics, miss the deeper point of the Torah’s teaching. The Torah, in essence, is not trying to idolise our biblical ancestors. Instead, it presents our forefathers and foremothers as complex, imperfect people who struggled with jealousy, favouritism, anger, disappointment, arrogance, fear, and many other failings. And yet they were also capable of extraordinary compassion, kindness, courage, and forgiveness.
Lo ba-shamayim hi. The Torah is not in the heavens. It is down here with us, telling the truth about what it means to be human.
For over two thousand years, our people have returned to these narratives again and again, not because we enjoy repetitive storytelling but because we recognise that these stories speak directly to us. On some deep level, we know that the Torah is not just describing Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, or David. It is describing us. The Torah is a relentlessly honest portrait of the human condition.
Who is Jacob, after all? We should care because we bear his name. Jacob deceives his brother, steals his birthright, and flees. He dreams of ladders and angels. He falls in love. He is tricked by Laban into marrying Leah before Rachel, the woman he truly loves. On his return to Canaan, he wrestles with a divine being, survives, and receives a new name: Israel. And yet, even after this transformation, the Torah continues to alternate between calling him Jacob and Israel, suggesting that his transformation is never fully complete.
We relate to Jacob not only because he was destined to be the father of the Jewish people, but because we recognise ourselves in him. Like him, we contain competing impulses, unresolved struggles, moments of clarity and moments of profound confusion. Like him, we move through life oscillating between moments of altruism and a deep authenticity, and our more compromised, fearful selves.
That is why Lo ba-shamayim hi is such a powerful lens for reading the Torah. These narratives endure not because they depict perfect heroes but because they reveal human beings in all their complexity. The Torah invites us into an honest engagement with who we are, who we have been, and who we might yet become.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi George Mordecai