ואחרי כן יצא אחיו וידו אחזת בעקב עשו ויקרא שמו יעקב ... (כה-כו)
As twins, Yaakov and Esav shared the same DNA, the same nature, and yet, they emerged radically different people. One became a patriarch of our people and the other a great villain of Jewish history, the progenitor of Edom, the exile in which we remain until this very day. Sharing the same “nature,” they bring contrasting attitudes toward their “nurture.” Esav is satisfied with who he is from the start while Yaakov feels entering the world is just the first of many steps and journeys to come. Indeed, while Esav is spiritually stagnant, Yaakov spends his life struggling, and thereby growing. He overcomes his shy nature to assert himself, first by obtaining the birthright and then collecting on it by going entirely against his nature and tricking his father into giving him a blessing. The shy, passive yeshiva bochur who is characterized as sitting, learning diligently in the tent, emerges the strong, dynamic, assertive patriarch and leader who is among the greatest role models of our people.
Born identical twins, Jack Yufe and Oskar Stohr shared the same DNA, the same nature, and yet, they emerged radically different people. Born in Trinidad in 1933, they were six months old when their parents divorced. Oskar went to Germany with his mother, while Jack stayed with his Romanian father. Oskar grew up as the Nazis rose to power, greeted the school principal with “Heil Hitler,” and later joined the Hitler Youth movement. Jack, meanwhile, always thought of himself as Jewish, but didn’t feel its significance until he was 15 years old and was sent to Venezuela to live with his aunt. A survivor of the Dachau concentration camp, she was the only person from his father’s side to make it out alive. After the war, Jack’s aunt encouraged him to move to Israel and so at 16, he made aliyah and joined the Israeli Navy, ultimately becoming an officer.
In 1954, Jack went to Germany to meet his identical twin. They were 21 when they met for the first time as adults. Psychologist Nancy Segal tells the story of that encounter in her book, “Indivisible by Two: Lives of Extraordinary Twins.” Jack and Oskar examined one another as if they were looking at an alien, even though the other’s appearance should have been entirely familiar to them. Their cultural differences were as immediately apparent as their physical similarities. Casting a wary eye at Jack’s Israeli luggage tags, Oskar removed them and told his long-lost brother to tell others he was coming from America, not from Israel. Suffice it to say that first reunion did not go well. Two brothers - one raised a proud Jew who served in the Israeli Navy and the other raised a German Catholic who had risen in the Nazi Youth movement and been taught to hate Jews. Because of the language barrier they couldn’t communicate much. At the end of the visit, they shook hands like strangers and Jack set off to San Diego where he lived the remainder of his life.
In 1979, Jack read about a study being done on twins and the great debate between nature and nurture. He asked if he and his brother could participate in the study and thought after 25 years it might provide another opportunity for them to see one another and develop a relationship. They met at the Minneapolis airport and to their amazement discovered they were wearing the exact same thing: a white sports jacket, similar shirt and wire-rimmed glasses. During the study, they learned that they had so much in common. Both were stubborn and arrogant, both fiercely competitive. Both read books from back to front, both sneezed incredibly loudly, they walked in a similar fashion, and they both wore rubber bands around their wrists.
And yet, with all that “nature” gave them in common, “nurture” had made them different. Very different. In fact, too different for them to ever really become close brothers. They could never agree on issues about the State of Israel and her enemies, or who was responsible for World War II and the Nazi atrocities. Oskar’s repeated reference to German soldiers as “we” infuriated Jack. In an interview later, Jack described that they tried to like each other and enjoy each other’s company but there was always something in the background that they could not tolerate about one another. Jack died in 2015 at 82 years old. Oskar passed away in 1997. Jack and Oskar did not leave legacies based on the “natures” they shared in common like sneezing loudly or by the way they walked. Because of how they were nurtured, Jack left a legacy of having been an officer in the Israeli Navy while Oskar left a life-long legacy of having been an enthusiastic member of the Nazi youth.