Video Study Parsha Toldot :Yitzak Loved Essau

[muman613]

Shalom JTF Readers,

It is Wednesday night once again and time to start the Video Study thread again. Tonight I am expecting guests so I may not resume posting till around 12AM this morning (don't worry I will, bezrat Hashem, post more tonight).

This week begins the epic story of the brotherly rivalry between our father Jacob and his evil twin Essau. Even in the womb these two were battling each other for spiritual and physical blessings. Although Yitzak loved Essau because Essau was technically the first-born (bechira) and while he was not spiritually motivated, he had a lot of good traits regarding physicality. He was a hunter capable of bringing back the most delicious animal meats. He pretended to be concerned with issues of purity and holiness (although it was all a rouse to get his father to leave all his positions to him).

The story becomes twisted as Jacobs mother Rivka loves him and knows that he is the one who will inherit the spiritual blessings of the Jewish people (passed from Yitzak, from Abraham). Thus she tells Jacob to 'fool' his father into giving him the blessing. This is kosher because Essau had actually sold the birth-right to Jacob for a bowl of beans.



From Chabad's Parsha in a Nutshell :

http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/3178/jewish/Toldot-in-a-Nutshell.htm

Isaac and Rebecca endure twenty childless years, until 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 digs 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 father’s 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—Machalath, the daughter of Ishmael.

Rabbi Richman has not posted his newest video for this year yet but has posted the 'Temple Talk' program which discusses the portion. I will post one of his previous years shuirs.

One issue which has bothered Bible students for years is why was it necessary for Jacob to 'deceive' his father in order to obtain the blessing? Rabbi Richman attempts to answer this question.

[muman613]

Rabbi Richman just posted his latest video on Toldot.... I will have to watch it later, my friend has arrived.

[muman613]

Well my friend left about 20 minutes ago... Here is the G-dcast on the parsha.

[muman613]

Featured Article: Murder: Going for the Kill

By Rabbi Osher Chaim Levene
http://torah.org/learning/livinglaw/5766/toldos.html


The Mitzvah: The prohibition against murder is one of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17).

Eisav is the personification of a murderer, wielding the instrument of death. “By your sword you shall live” (Genesis 27:40) – rang out his father’s prophetic words. Eisav returned home fatigued to trade a red bowl of lentils for his birthright, having just killed the warrior and king Nimrod. When cheated out of his father’s blessings, he resolved to kill his twin brother Yaakov.

Murder became a way of life for Eisav.

At first glance, the mitzvah against killing seems straightforward enough. Life was given to be lived, to fulfill the specific purpose of man’s existence, to be productive and fruitful within all of his endeavors. It should not be cut short by an assassin who, in effect, robs man of his precious life and represents a deviation from the divine plan that has given him life (See Sefer HaChinuch, mitzvah 34).

Other violations of interpersonal contact impinge negatively on the civilization’s operations, but death destroys it completely. Murder abruptly terminates mankind’s lifeline. And naturally, without a life force, there can be no development, no further vitality or growth because the very notion of existence in this world ceases to be.

What was Eisav’s philosophy that transformed him into a murderer?

A killer sees no further than his egocentric existence, which, in his mind, is paramount and assumes center stage. He ideologically concludes how this somehow confers upon him the G-d-given right to relate to the world as he sees fit. And that he is empowered to pursue his personal agenda, ignoring or trampling over any member of the human race that gets in his way. He presumes that the victim’s life lies in his hands.

Eisav’s father Yitzchak was a man of Gevurah, “power” or Din, “judgment”, someone who willingly surrendered his very “life-force” before G-d. And he knew that this was how his existence had to be. His entire existence was, therefore, just an extension of doing precisely what G-d asked of him. Indeed, his life was a manifestation of G-d’s dictates, insofar as the Torah laws defined him into who he was.

Inheriting a warped sense of Yitzchak’s legacy, Eisav came full circle and arrived at the diametric conclusion! His reasoning went something like this: My starting point is the principle of my very immutable existence. I am who I am and it has to be as I will it. Eisav thus usurped G-d as the one to determine what the “Din, the law” was to be. Taking his raisin d’être as assumed, he embarked to live life in whatever direction this took his fancy. This included killing others.

Because Yitzchak understood and lived life as dictated by G-d, it was as if his “ashes were placed before G-d” at the Akeidah. There he “died” only to experience the “rebirth of a new lease of life”. (The resurrection in the Amidah’s second blessing thus corresponds to Yitzchak, second of the patriarchs). Yitzchak’s “death transferring into life” was countered by Eisav whose viewpoint and outlook – that undermined the function of human existence – was to murder, “transferring life into death”.

Judaism is unequivocal in proclaiming Chaim, “human life” to be the greatest gift that man has. This is the toast we cheer: “L’Chaim, To life!” All commandments thus pale into comparison and can be violated (except the three cardinal sins) in the preservation of life. This makes the violation of human life –or even hastening death– all the more reprehensible.

Human existence is not compulsory as Eisav advocated; no person can ever take their life for granted. The first words uttered every day by a Jew are Modeh Ani, gratitude to G-d for his very existence – for having woken up, to be granted the gift of another day. Human life is so very precious because it is sacred. Life only functions so long as the soul – the divine spark within man – resides within the body, “not” by separating the two through the spilling of blood.

Life is created, lived and is terminated in accordance to the divine will, not our own. The commandment against murder is a timely reminder of the sanctity and value of every human life – something that has been fiercely eroded in our contemporary society of Hollywood action heroes, euthanasia activists and suicide bombers.

[muman613]

A short Shmuz from Rabbi Shafier on the portion:

[muman613]

For those who will invest 1hr 20min to learn some Chassidishe Torah from the esteemed rabbi Avraham Trugman, here is a shuir on the portion of Toldot: