TOLDOT —

The sweet scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies wafts through the kitchen. Your mouth waters and your tummy rumbles as you pull the hot tray out of the oven. The cookies look moist and delicious as the chocolate bubbles and melts. The recipe tells you to let the cookies cool for thirty minutes before eating them. But how can you wait thirty whole minutes when the cookies are calling your name right now?! You try to pick up just one cookie, but it crumbles and you burn your finger. You put the crumbs in your mouth and burn your tongue as well. So much for the perfect chocolate chip cookie… The chocolate 3chip cookie incident, with which many of us are all too familiar, teaches us that we can’t always get what we want right when we want it. Often, we will appreciate the cookie even more if we wait until it cools. So too there are many things and experiences in life that are well worth waiting for.

In this week’s Torah reading, Toldot, Esau came in from the field starving and begged Jacob for some lentil stew. Jacob agreed to give Esau the stew, but only after Esau promised to sell his younger twin brother Jacob his birthright. Esau traded the significant material benefits of his inheritance for one meager meal of stew because he thought with his stomach and acted on his animal instincts. If Esau had been more thoughtful and patient, he most likely would have made a different decision despite his growling belly.

The story of Esau and the lentil stew teaches us the importance of delayed gratification. While it may not feel good to put a few dollars of your allowance in your piggy bank each week, it feels great when you have finally saved enough money to buy a new bike. It might be painful to run sprints each morning or do endless sets of soccer drills, but it feels glorious when you cross the finish line or score the winning goal.

TALK TO YOUR KIDS about appreciating the benefits of delayed gratification.

CONNECT TO THEIR LIVES:

  • Have you ever let your stomach make a decision for you, which you later regretted?
  • Have you ever acted on an impulse, instead of thinking through a decision more carefully?
  • Can you think of a time when you didn’t get what you wanted right when you wanted it?
  • Have you ever worked really hard to achieve a goal? How did it feel when you  accomplished the goal?
  • What are the benefits of delayed gratification?

By Yael Hammerman

Values & Ethics—Through a Jewish Lens is created by Fred and Joyce Claar to bring the wisdom of Judaism into family discussions.