B"H
Cheshvan 28, 5766 * November 30, 2005
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T H E P A R S H A H I N A N U T S H E L L
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TORAH PORTION: Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9)
Torah Reading for Week of November 27 - December 3, 2005
On the Web: http://chabad.org/Article.asp?AID=3178
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Isaac marries Rebecca. After twenty childless years their prayers are answered and Rebecca conceives. She experiences a difficult pregnancy as the "children struggle inside her"; G-d tells her that "there are two nations in your womb", and that the younger will prevail over the elder.
Esau emerges first; Jacob is born clutching Esau's heel. Esau grows up to be "a cunning hunter, a man of the field"; Jacob is "a wholesome man", a dweller in the tents of learning. Isaac favors Esau; Rebecca loves Jacob. Returning exhausted and hungry from the hunt one day, Esau sells his birthright (his rights as the firstborn) to Jacob for a pot of red lentil stew.
In Gerar, in the land of the Philistines, Isaac presents Rebecca as his sister, out of fear that he will be killed by someone coveting her beauty. He farms the land, reopens the wells dug by his father Abraham, and bores a series of his own wells: over the first two there is strife with the Philistines, but the waters of the third well are enjoyed in tranquility.
Esau marries two Hittite women. Isaac grows old and blind, and expresses his desire to bless Esau before he dies. While Esau goes off to hunt for his father's favorite food, Rebecca dresses Jacob in Esau's clothes, covers his arms and neck with goatskins to simulate the feel of his hairier brother, prepares a similar dish, and sends Jacob to his father. Jacob receives his fathers' blessings for "the dew of the heaven and the fat of the land" and mastery over his brother. When Esau returns and the deception is revealed, all Isaac can do for his weeping son is to predict that he will live by his sword, and that when Jacob falters, the younger brother will forfeit his supremacy over the elder.
Jacob leaves home for Charan to flee Esau's wrath and to find a wife in the family of his mother's brother, Laban. Esau marries a third wife -- Machlat, the daughter of Ishmael.
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FROM THE WORDS OF OUR SAGES ON THE PARSHAH:
- Isaac was forty years old when he took Rebecca to wife (25:20)
For three years, from the Binding of Isaac at age 37 to his
marriage at age 40, Isaac was in the Garden of Eden.
(Asarah Maamarot)
Marriage is a time of increased enmeshment in the physical. Thus the Zohar refers to marriage as a person's second birth: first, the soul enters into the body and assumes a physical existence, then, at a later point in life, it further "descends" into the physical state by marrying.
Therein lies the lesson to be derived from the fact that, prior to his marriage, Isaac spent three years in the Garden of Eden, abandoning the physical state for a wholly spiritual existence. In order to ensure the success of the most physical phase of a person's life, it must be prefaced by a period of spiritual preparation. Although the primary objective of our mission in life is the development and sanctification of the physical world, one must enter that world fortified with the spiritual vision of the divine purpose and with the spiritual resources with which to carry it out. (The Lubavitcher Rebbe)
- The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau (27:22)
"The voice is the voice of Jacob" -- no prayer is effective unless the descendants of Jacob have a part in it. "The hands are the hands of Esau" -- no war is successful unless the descendants of Esau have a part in it. (The Talmud)
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