Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hello, my friends, and welcome back to this week's episode of the Practical Parsha Podcast. This is Rabbi Shlomo Cohen, and I hope you are well.
[00:00:07] For this week we continue with Parshas Toldos.
[00:00:11] I'm so happy to be with you. And actually this week was a stressful week.
[00:00:17] And just for me personally, I'll let you in on a little bit of, uh, a secret here.
[00:00:24] Sometimes when we all get stressed out, everybody does. So we have to deal with that stress.
[00:00:31] So there's different things we do. We could have, uh, a hobby. I personally like to go running. Helps get the stress out. But this week it just wasn't getting out of my body. For whatever reasons, it's been busy.
[00:00:45] And my wife, she mentioned to me there's this Dr. Sarno, uh, this famous doctor. He has these techniques about getting the stress out of your body.
[00:00:56] And one of the things he says is, obviously you have to speak to your subconsciousness, tell your subconscious mind to stop hurting you. That's just one thing. But either way, I don't want to get into that right now. But another thing he says, Dr. Sarno, is that you keep doing your routine. So even though my back's been hurting me from this stress, I've decided to keep doing what I usually do. And even though at first yesterday I'm like, there's no way I'm doing a podcast tonight, just not possible, I thank God I've been feeling better today and I want to keep to my routine.
[00:01:32] And how can I miss a week of, uh, the parsha with you with the Practical Parsha podcast family, especially with these parshios. The Torah portions are jam packed. I don't want to miss one. So here we are.
[00:01:46] And before we begin, as always, if you have any questions, comments, or just would like to reach out to say hello, feel free to send me email at Rabbi Shlomokon kohnmail.com this week's Parshas Parshas told us. And just to give a quick overview of the weekly parsha. The parsha begins with the barrenness that Rebekah, the wife of Yitzchak Rivkah.
[00:02:12] She and Yitzchak, they're married, but they're not having any children.
[00:02:16] And the Torah tells us how they Davenport and Hashem answers their prayers.
[00:02:23] But Rivkah notices that this pregnancy is not any normal pregnancy. Rather, there's this kicking inside of her when she's passing a study hall, right? A, uh, Torah study hall. And the same time, when she passes the house of Idol worship. So she doesn't know what to make of what's going on inside of her.
[00:02:43] She goes to shame the prophet, and he tells her that you have twins inside of you, that there are going to be two nations that are born from you.
[00:02:53] One will rule over the other. They won't be at the same time, you know, ruling the world. One will be up, the other will be down. And Rivkah Rebekah gives birth to two boys.
[00:03:07] The firstborn is Esav, and the younger one is called Yaakov because he's grabbing onto the heel of Esav.
[00:03:16] And the Torah describes to us the different personalities of Yaakov and Esav as they're growing up.
[00:03:23] Esav is a hunter. He's more of a ruffian.
[00:03:27] And Yaakov Jacob is a Ishtam. He's someone who is straightforward, honest, and is studying the Torah. The Parsha goes on to detail for us how Yaakov Jacob steals, quote, unquote, the blessings, the brachos from Esav. Now, the firstborn was the one who would receive, um, you know, the rights, the rights of the firstborn. And in fact, Yitzchak Isaac wanted to give these blessings to, you know, this firstborn rite of serving in the Beis Hamigda, serving in the temple to Esav.
[00:04:07] But Yaakov, when Esav comes in, he's hungry, and Esav does not have appreciation for what the brachos represent. And he sells the firstborn right to Yaakov. The other major storyline in this week's Parsha is when Yitzchak, he's getting older, and he wants to give the blessings, the special blessings to Esav. Now, the commentaries discuss that. We know ESAV was wicked, but he put on a good show for his father. He was able to put on this, you know, deception that his father, Yitzchak thought he was worthy of receiving the blessings. Rivkah, who was the mother of both Yaakov and Esav, she saw Esav's true intentions and who he really was, and she would not let it. That Yitzchak, her husband, gives the blessings to her son Esav, who was wicked. And she tells Yaakov, who was a, uh, Tzadik, who was righteous, she gives him instructions. She gives him orders to dress up in a special coat where she's gonna. He's gonna be hairy like his brother Esav, and to speak like Esav, in order to make a deception, in order to steal the brachos, quote, unquote, from esav.
[00:05:28] And to get those blessings. And the parsha gives this story of how Yaakov, I want to say, quote unquote, because there's a lot of deep meaning to this. And we're going to get into it a little bit in the podcast, how he deceives his father to get the blessing. And the parasha tells us how Yaakov gets the blessings. Yitzhak realizes what happens. Esav comes back very angry, very upset, realizing what he lost.
[00:05:56] And actually just to add into this a little bit is that Esav really didn't deserve the brachos as well, because he sold the firstborn. Right? But either way, the commentaries discuss here about what is going on, this deception of how Yitzchak was tricked. And that's something we're going to get into a little bit today. And the parsha concludes with Esav making a commitment in his heart to try to kill Yaakov and Yaakov leaving his parents house.
[00:06:23] Now, the first idea I want to share with you today takes us to the beginning of the Parsha.
[00:06:30] The Parsha tells us that when the boys, when Yaakov and Esav, when they're growing up, it describes their personalities.
[00:06:38] Esav was a rough person. He was doing the wrong thing.
[00:06:43] But Yaakov was Yaakov, Ishtam, Yeshev, Aholem. Yaakov was a straight person who sat in tents.
[00:06:50] So what does that mean? Yoshev? Aholem? Uh, Ishtam. What does it mean? He's Ishtam. He's a. What does it mean he's a Ishtam? That he's a straight person. Tom could also mean simple. So Rashi explains for us that Tom means that Yaakov was the type of person, he was very honest in everything he did. And it was hard for him to be dishonest. He wasn't, you know, it was one of his weak points.
[00:07:16] He was very straight. He was very. Did everything correct. So for him to be dishonest, it was a challenge.
[00:07:22] And I saw it brought down. The Rebbe of Lublin says, he says that a person, we learn from this, I guess this idea from this Rashi and from Yaakov Avinu, that a person has to be able to master all of his traits.
[00:07:39] Each person were born with different attributes.
[00:07:43] Some things are easier for one person and ah, hard for another. Something else is hard for one person and easy for another person. Everyone's different. We have our strong points and we have our weak points.
[00:07:53] And what's our job?
[00:07:55] Our job is to become the master of all of them. So the things that are easy for us, okay, it's easy for us to become a master in, to control those emotions, to control those traits.
[00:08:06] But the trick is the challenge of this, our lives, is to get control of even the things that are hard, for us to be able to use all our character traits in the proper way, the positive character traits, the negative character traits. And we see from Yaakov, we know that he was Ishtam, he was somebody who was totally honest. He did everything by the book, everything correct. But yet we see in this week's Parsha what happens. He has to, uh, for reasons that we're going to explain in this podcast, is that he has to go and deceive his father to get the brachos, to get the blessings away from Esav. And he uses, you know, it's hard, I don't mean it, it's hard to say it about our forefathers, but he uses trickery to a certain degree.
[00:08:54] He's able to use his cunningness in the proper way and in the proper situation, and he's able to do that. And we see also with Yaakov Inu in the later parshios, later on in the Torah portions in the coming weeks when he deals with Lavan.
[00:09:10] When he deals with Lavan, his father in law, he also uses.
[00:09:15] Lavan was a wicked person, a trickster, and he has to use tricks back to deal with him and keep him in line. So we see that Yaakovinu, even though he is someone, he represents truth emes the Yaakov is ultimate truth.
[00:09:28] We still see that he was able to use all of his traits in the proper situation. It's something we need to remember that when it comes to serving Hashem, we have to get in control of all the things, all of our, uh, traits, the good ones, the bad ones. And we have to know how to use them in the right situation. Because any trait, if used in the wrong situation, can be bad. For example, if someone is a merciful person, some people are more merciful than others. They're more empathetic than others. But if you have that mercy that Rahmanes, that empathy in the wrong situation, it could end up with you being a cruel person. It could end up being cruelty. Right? Uh, if a parent allows himself to not get his child vaccinated, you know, to give him a shot or to do some type of procedure because the child's crying and he feels bad for the child, that's child abuse. A parent is doing something cruel for his child. You can't just, you know, we can't let our emotions, you know, control us. So we see that there's this concept that every emotion, every trait has its place and its time, and we have to become the masters of it all. We see that from Yaakovinu. The second idea I want to share with you today is hopefully going to give us a little insight into this whole story of Yaakov and Rivkah Rebekah stealing the brachos, stealing the blessings from Esav.
[00:10:54] Right? So as I explained earlier, Yitzchak was under the impression that Esav was a righteous person.
[00:11:02] But Rivkah, you know, his mother, she knew the truth. She knew that he was not what he said he was or what he portrayed to be.
[00:11:11] And Yaakov was the truly righteous person. He was the one who really deserved the blessings.
[00:11:16] And the parsha speaks out in detail how Rivkah, uh, commands Yaakov to dress up in this coat and to go get the brachos.
[00:11:26] And, you know, it's very interesting because if you think about it for a second, you know, if I'm giving someone a bracha, and, uh, there's another party here that's trying to do this trickery to steal the brachas. I mean, how do you steal brachos? Right? You would think that this blessing, that if someone's doing something wrong to receive this blessing, it's not going to work, right? How could Yitzchak is giving a bracha to the wrong person who's coming in? How do you steal blessings? How do you steal a bracha? It's hard for us to understand.
[00:11:58] And furthermore, another question that's asked by Rav Hirsch, he says, what was the mindset? What was the logic of Rivkah, of Rebekah, right? She was telling Yaakov, dress up and go to your father.
[00:12:13] It was going to become very clear after Esav came back or by the end of this whole story, that Yaakov had come in and taken the brachos from Esav and that Rivkah was behind it. What was her logic in setting up this whole system with this whole deceit, Right? It was going to become known when, you know, once Esav walked in the door, once Yitzhak recognized it. So what was going on over here? So you have these two questions that have to be dealt with.
[00:12:44] And Rav Hirsch brings down an explanation. It gives us a little insight. He explains that he brings down from different sources that Yitzchak had, had it made up in his mind for years that he was going to bless Esav.
[00:12:59] And he had this vision that the two brothers would both serve Hashem together.
[00:13:05] Esav would be the materialism, would be the material aspect of, you know, the support, the material support, the finances. And Yaakov, Jacob would be the spiritual powerhouse. So there's two powerhouses. Esav, is the financials, the money. He's that powerhouse. And Yaakov is the spiritual powerhouse. And Rivkah, uh, was stalling Yitzchak to not give the brachos to Esav. And during this time, she was trying to get Yitzchak to realize who Esav, uh, really was. And the Torah clearly spells out for us the different bad things that he had done. He married these Hittite, these women that were not proper for him. He did these, you know, improper things, but he was just hiding it from his father. And Rivkah was trying to get Yitzchak to realize this.
[00:13:55] So what did she do?
[00:13:56] She took these goatskins, she put it on Yaakov's arms and neck.
[00:14:02] And she created a situation where she wanted to show Yitzchak how easy he could be tricked.
[00:14:12] And once he was shown that he could be tricked so easy about which son he was giving the brachos to, so he could also. He would come to the realization that he could be tricked about who his son really was. And that's what happened. We see that when Yitzchak comes to the realization that he gave the brachos to Yaakov, he has a tremendous fear, overtakes HM him, because he comes to the point that Rivkah wanted to make. She wasn't trying to hide it from him forever. She was trying to help him come to this realization that. That Esav was pulling the wool over his eyes. And from the fact that she was able to show him that I was able, that Yaakov. You just gave the brachos to Yaakov and you didn't even know it. How easy was it for you to be tricked and not realize that Esav was not the proper son that you think he is? What Yitzchak didn't see fully that Rivkah did was that Yitzchak thought that the spirituality and the materialism could exist separately, that you could have two brothers, one with the spirituality and another with the materialism. But Rivkah realized that materialism, that Gashmius finances without the spirituality is nothing. It's empty, and it leads to evil.
[00:15:40] She had this realization that it had to be together. Yitzchak didn't realize that. She realized that. And that's where that is this the lesson of the Parasha, one of this, you know, how it had to come out in this deceitful manner. There's different other ways of looking at this story and other explanations of why it had to come out this way. But I think the lesson that brings out for us is that, you know, number one is we have to realize how easy for us to see things the way we, you know, to see things in the proper way, to not be fooled by our own rationalizations, to not let other people pull the wool over, uh, our eyes, to see things straight and to hopefully, you know, get the message clearly, to not let people manipulate us and to manipulate our emotions so that we make the wrong decision.
[00:16:31] Additionally, I think we see this powerful lesson here about how Rukhnius and Gashmius must go together, that we can't just. Everything we do in Yiddishkeit, all our essence, every action, every breath we take is all goes together. The spirituality with the physicality. We cannot have one moment of one without the other or one just by itself, meaning the physical must go together with the spiritual. And really, just to tie this idea up a little bit more, reversh brings down from the midrash that this whole episode with Rivkah, uh, deceiving Yitzchak was not that she necessarily loved Yaakov more than she loved Esav, but it was necessary for her to show her how her. How Esav was deceiving Yitzchak this whole time, how he was pulling the wool over his eyes.
[00:17:31] And that came out through the deception of sending Yaakov to Yitzchak by sending him for the blessings with the clothes on and with the disguise and bringing the food that Esav was supposed to bring and how Yaakov brings it instead.
[00:17:48] He needed. Yitzchak needed to come to this point, to realize that he could be deceived, that he could be tricked.
[00:17:54] And he realized it at that moment.
[00:17:58] And really, just again, uh, just to talking about deception, obviously talking about others. But I think more importantly than others, deceiving us is us deceiving ourselves, to become blinded by our own rationalizations and biases and things that pull us because we could think we are one thing, but really we're something else, to really be true with ourselves. And I think this is a very powerful idea, this story and these lessons that we could take out from this week's Parsha.
[00:18:33] The last idea I want to share with you. For this week's Parsha takes us to the episode after Esav comes back into the house.
[00:18:41] You know, after Yaakov, Jacob receives these blessings, and he asks his father to bless him. And Yitzchak says, what do you mean, I just blessed you?
[00:18:52] And everything becomes clear at that moment to Yitzchak, to Esav.
[00:18:58] He realizes that the blessings have been given out.
[00:19:02] He's not going to get them anymore, those special blessings.
[00:19:05] And the Torah tells us, kishama Esav esdivre ave vayitzak uh, tzoaka gedolu umara ad me oyed vayoimir la aviv barcheini gam o uh ani avi. When Esav heard his father's words, he cried out an exceedingly great and bitter cry and said to his father, bless me too, father. That he begged his father, please bless me. He cried out. He was in pain.
[00:19:30] And the midrash brings down that because Yaakov caused pain to Esav, therefore the descendants of Yaakov, the Jewish people, had to feel pain themselves, had to feel this anxiety, this threat of annihilation from the descendant of Esav, which is Haman, until they are ultimately saved. But they had to feel that pain, that anxiety, feel that threat.
[00:20:03] That was a sort of a measure for measure. It was a punishment to Yaakov for the pain that he caused his brother Esav by stealing the brachos. Now, this is actually a fascinating midrash, this commentary that. This idea that because he stole the blessings, that Yaakov stole the blessings from Esav and caused his brother pain.
[00:20:25] So his descendants, Yaakov's descendants, the Jewish people, had to face the threat of annihilation as a punishment for that.
[00:20:35] Think about this for a second.
[00:20:38] Esav was not worthy of the brachos. Yaakov was doing this for the right reason. Right? We know that he really, the Esav sold the right of the firstborn to Yaakov, to Jacob. And we know that he was not on the level. And we know that Yaakov was listening to the command of his mother. He was doing exactly what he was supposed to be doing, but yet at the same time, he's still getting punished for causing his brother pain.
[00:21:06] What's going on? And reproving Grozovsky brings down that we see from this and the fact that he was doing everything right, but yet he still caused pain. We see how careful. That's number one, that we see how careful we need to be when causing pain to other people.
[00:21:23] And really just to bring this idea out a little bit more. It's, you know, we live in a world, in situations where sometimes we have to do things, we have to act, and the act that we're going to do is going to cause someone pain.
[00:21:43] For example, if someone is working as an employer or a boss and they have to terminate an employee, they can't have the employee there. It's ruining the environment of the workspace.
[00:21:57] The company is going to go out of business, and everyone will be out of a job. So they have to terminate this employee.
[00:22:03] Right. But they're going to cause them pain. All right? Or saying no to somebody in a shidduch, uh, in a prospective marriage match, you can't just say yes to somebody because you don't want to make them feel bad, because ultimately you're doing them a bigger disservice by just saying yes because you don't want to make them feel bad. You got to say no. And sometimes they're going to feel pain.
[00:22:22] So how do you reconcile? What do you do? We see Yaakov, he did everything right, but he still got punished. The descendants still got punished. And Rab, David Leibowitz, he explains this idea to give us an insight.
[00:22:33] He says that you're right, Yaakov Avinu had to do this. It was the right thing for him to do. He had to take the brachos from Esav, and that was going to cause him pain and to give him aggravation. But yet at the same time, it should have pained him that he had to do this. It should have given Yaakov aggravation that Esav was going to feel painful. And I think this is empathy. We learn how, even though if we're in a situation where we have to, you know, lay the law down or quote, unquote, uh, cause someone pain, and that's the right thing to do, we should still feel bad about it. We should still be empathetic about it.
[00:23:14] To not, you know, to be callous with other. With someone else's, you know, emotions and feelings.
[00:23:21] And that's something we see from this week's Parasha. I think it's a very important lesson for us in all our dealings. We shouldn't just not care. We have to be very sensitive to other people's feelings, even if we're totally in the right and they're in the wrong, doesn't make a difference. And that's something we see from the story of Yaakov and Esav, that even though Yaakov did what he was supposed to do, did it in the right way. He still, you know, his descendants were still held accountable for the act that he did. And, uh, years later, they had to go through that experience of almost being annihilated to make up for that, to fix that sin. And I think it's something we should learn in our daily lives to always have that sensitivity and always have that empathy to do it in the right way. Because that even though we have to do it, we should be sensitive to do it in the right way and feel that pain. So with that, I'm going to finish for today's podcast. I hope you enjoyed, have any questions, comments, or would like to reach out, feel free to send me an email at Rabbi Shlomo Kon K o h n at gmail com. Have a great day.
