Vayishlah

In the Blindspot-light
By Rabbi Steven J. Rubenstein

Each year I cringe when the postcard arrives in the mail reminding
me that my appointment with the optometrist is due. A couple of years
ago my eye doctor welcomed me to the club of those whose eyesight would
gradually diminish with age. I know from experience that reading the
fine print of the Talmud had become increasingly difficult with each
passing month, but I tried to ignore the fact that the letters of the
Torah were becoming a bit fuzzier around the crowns when I read from
the scroll on Shabbat.

How our ancestor Isaac would have benefited from a yearly eye check-up if it had been available to him! In this week’s portion Toldot, we are told, ‘Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see.’ To see what?

Right before this comment, the Torah tells us that both Isaac and
his wife Rebecca were disappointed when their son Esau Read More >

Covenantal Language
By Dr. Jerome Chanes

In commemoration of the Yahrzeit of my dad, Manuel Simcha ben R. Ya`akov
Avraham Chanes, z”l; and in honor of Ora Horn Prouser and David Greenstein

Parashat Toldot is one of the classic ‘transition’ narratives
of our Scripture in which ‘covenantal’ language’language, used in key
settings in the Chumash, that expresses the transmittal of the Covenant from generation to generation’is central.

The core of the narrative, as outlined in Chapter 27 of Sefer B’reshit,
is the story of the transmittal of the Covenantal blessing from Isaac
to Jacob. The narrative, deceptively simple, is about clear and keen
perception’Rebecca’s’and, more to the point, lack of
perception’Isaac’s. It is immediately obvious that the blindness of our
patriarch Isaac is at bottom a metaphor for his lack of perception.

As is often the case in Biblical narrative, the philology of the
text tells us all we need to know about the message. In Chapter 27 (and
I thank Rabbi David Silber for suggesting Read More >