Parshas Toldos: The Pleading Room - Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman

What’s said in this shiur

The opening of this shiur, in Rabbi Yaakov Yosef Reinman’s own words — taken from the captions, so names and Hebrew terms may be approximate.

Welcome. This week we're going to do Parshas Toldos. So the Parshah starts that Isaac and Rebecca don't have any children. She goes to Shem, then she has twins, Jacob and Esau, and then they grow up in different paths, and at the end Rebecca is partial to Jacob, Isaac is partial to Esau, and at the end Esau sells the birthright to Jacob. That's the first part of the Parshah. Then we have, there was a famine, and they went down to Philistine, to Gerar, to Avimelech king of Philistine, and there's a story where he told people that Rebecca is his wife and Avimelech had designs on her and then he had a dream, and then Isaac stayed there for a long time, he dug a well, and they made a compact, and that's the whole story. After that we come to the blessings. So during this whole story of Isaac in Gerar, where are the boys? Where are Jacob and Esau? So I looked around in the commentaries, nobody addresses it, only the Ramban. The Ramban says that maybe the people in Gerar thought that these boys were Isaac’s children from another wife, and this is not his wife, this is his sister. Okay, this is what the Ramban says. But the whole first part of the Parshah has to do with the interaction with Jacob and Esau, and he grabs him by the heel and then he sells him the birthright, and then at the end they have, and in the middle they're totally absent from the middle of the Parshah. And I would think maybe they did something that was of Interest. I mean these two, you know, constantly in conflict, nothing here. So I think, I just want to suggest, that maybe, you know the Torah does not always follow chronological order. And there's a reason for it. It’s not just chaos,

Jump to a moment

1. 0:00Welcome. This week we're going to do Parshas Toldos. So the Parshah starts that Isaac and…
2. 2:53haphazard, there's a reason for not following chronological order. I think that the story of Gerar…
3. 6:23in one corner, he's standing in the other, they're both praying. And it says vaye’etar, that…
4. 9:39to relate to God. So the Torah tolerates a certain amount of anthropomorphisms for people who…
5. 13:02know if they are men or women, you don't know if they are tall or short,…
6. 16:31not even a trace of anything which resembles anthropomorphism. That's what I think Rashi is saying,…
7. 19:32People called it Beer Sheva, Beera Dishva, so Jacob left from Beera Dishva. It was not…
8. 23:05the right thing to do. Rebecca had a prophecy that he should do this, that he…
9. 26:26playing Esau. But he wanted to protect himself. He didn't want to become Esau. So he…
10. 30:12gave us, al charbecha tichye. So if you're going to come with Hakol kol Yaakov, I’m…

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