Toldot: Blessings in Disguise
Dear reader,
I was building a model airplane. The parts were so tiny, it took me hours just to assemble the fuselage. As I was setting the wings, another kid muscled his way in. “You’re slow. Let me do that.” He was squirting globs of glue all over my work of art, ramming the wings wherever they seemed to fit. Then there was a crack. My plane was broken.
This week we read about Jacob and Esau. Father Isaac wanted to bless Esau, but their mother, Rebecca, wanted Jacob to be blessed. Jacob was the good twin, and Esau was bad. What was Isaac thinking?
Look at it like this:
The blessing was the Torah, whose purpose is to instruct us how to perform mitzvahs, thus bringing the world into its completed state. Isaac foresaw (rightly) that if the descendants of Jacob would be given the task, it would take a long time. Esau was a wild man. With all his frenetic, chaotic energy, perhaps he could finish the job sooner.
But Rebecca knew that a delicate job requires focus, gentle hands and patience. It has been thousands of years, and our dedication is about to pay off. We’re the children of Jacob. We may not be flashy, but we know how to stay the course.
And you know what? When we finally get the job done, the children of Esau will be there to help us—and nothing will break!
Shais Taub,
on behalf of the Chabad.org Editorial Team
You need to pick a spot and stick with it. You can’t stop boring when you hit a rocky stretch, and you can’t take the work home with you.
Esau was the bad guy, right? So why did his father, the patriarch Isaac, prefer him over his saintly brother Jacob?
After 20 childless years, Rebecca bears twins: Esau and Jacob. Esau prefers hunting; Jacob prefers Torah study. Esau sells his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of red lentil soup. Jacob deceives his father for his blessing, and flees to escape Esau’s wrath.
We are no strangers to loss. We are no strangers to tragedy. But we have and we will survive and strengthen and overcome.
Major events in this period of history include Ehud’s assassination of Eglon; the heroism of the female judge, Deborah; the tragedy of Jephthah’s daughter; Samson’s war against the Philistines; and the Concubine at Givah incident.
Over the next few hours, several more packages arrived with the same message, each from a different store, each one specializing in women’s and girls’ apparel.
You’re in the middle of it all, the traffic rages, the phones won’t leave you in peace, and adrenalin races through every vein. It takes courage to tell the world to stop while you chat with its Maker.
Sanctuary—sacred space—can exist in time, physical space, and interpersonal relationships, as well as within our souls.
Holding the dishes tightly, I began to shuffle very, very slowly into the water. The last time I had swum in the lake had been over twenty years before, and the silt on the bottom had reached halfway up to my knees.
Is freedom of choice possible if G‑d knows everything that will happen?
Coming together is like seeing all the pieces of the puzzle at once . . .
Billed as the world’s largest Jewish museum, it invites visitors to experience the story of the Jewish people as told through the lens of the many generations living in Russian-speaking lands.
Remembering the six holy people brutally murdered in the Chabad House during the Mumbai terrorist attacks: Bentzion Kruman, Yocheved Orpaz, Norma Shvartzblat-Rabinovich, Aryeh Leibish Teitelbaum, Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg.
In Torah, we mirror on earth that which G‑d performs on every plane of reality.
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For it would certainly be absurd to imagine that the Assyrians or the Romans ha...
