Parashat Toledot 5784
“Stop making sense, stop making sense Stop making sense, making sense” -Talking Heads, Girlfriend is Better (1983)
“Stop making sense, stop making sense Stop making sense, making sense” -Talking Heads, Girlfriend is Better (1983)
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A D’var Torah for Parashat Toledot
By Cantor Robin Anne Joseph (’96)
“Still waters run deep.”
Coined several centuries before Shakespeare’s take-off in Henry VI, Part 2—Smooth runs the water where the brook is deep—this idiom seems to date back to the Latin: Altissima quaeque flumina minimo sono labi—The deepest rivers flow with the smallest sound.
That’s our Isaac—our ancestor with the least to say, but perhaps with the most bubbling underneath the surface. Maybe that’s why, in this week’s Torah portion, Toledot, Isaac is busy digging wells. Let’s unearth this situation together…
What’s bothering Isaac?
A question usually reserved for dissecting a Rashi teaching, I think we could ask the same of Isaac. What is bothering this poor soul to lead him to this seemingly compulsive action of digging not one, not two, but five wells in fairly quick succession? What is going on with all this digging? From my Read More >
Our Torah portion opens with the words ‘Ele toledot (Gen. 25:19) – variously translated as “These are the generations/records/lineage/descendants/begettings of…”; basically, carrying us into the next generation, and, in the case of this week’s portion, continuing the story of Isaac and Rebecca. However, with the announcement of a barren wife (Gen. 25:21), the next generation is put in jeopardy. Ultimately, they will have children, but in looking back, what might they have shared with each other? I was walking in the field in the late afternoon; I was riding on a camel… I looked up and saw her from afar; I fell off my camel… and put on my veil… I heard about her generosity and strength; He brought me into the tent that had been his mother’s… I loved her; I loved him… In my loss she brought me comfort; I had left my home and found comfort in his arms… Almost twenty years later and no children; For almost twenty years we tried and tried… I cannot think of being with anyone else; No handmaid, no second wife, no surrogate for us… I appealed to God – for my wife is barren; I was right by his side – and in time, my own appeal: Oy! What did I ask for?
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Our “Imperfect” Biblical Characters A D’var Torah for Parashat Toledot By Rabbi Irwin Huberman (’10) Rabbi Joseph Ehrenkranz, one of my most influential teachers, once shared a profound insight with me regarding why he believed the Torah is based on truth. “The characters we read about are so flawed,” he said. “While the heroes of many other religions are depicted as perfect, ours are not. There is no reason to describe them this way, unless it is to touch on the truth within each of us.” This week’s Torah portion, Toledot (“This is the story of Isaac”), is a case in point. It recounts the story of a dysfunctional family worthy of a reality television series. After twenty childless years, Rebecca conceives twins. The Torah describes Rebecca’s difficult pregnancy, as her two future sons “struggle inside her.” God describes “two nations in your womb,” and—as often is the case in the Torah— “the elder will serve the younger.” ( Read More > |
“Mom Always Liked You Best!”
A D’var Torah for Parashat Toledot
By Rabbi Irwin Huberman (’10)
During the late 1960s, one of the most popular comedy programs on television was the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour.
The team of Tom and Dick Smothers was a mainstay of CBS’s Sunday night programming, for two distinct reasons.
As public discourse over the Vietnam War heated, the brothers’ comedy would bring the anti-war protest directly into American homes, eventually leading to their cancellation by the network.
However, fifty years later, what endures most about the Smothers Brothers’ comedy was its ability to capture the subtleties of human relationships—in particular between two brothers.
Invariably, as the dialogue between these two siblings would deteriorate, it was Tommy Smothers—always portrayed as the dimmer of the two—who would attempt to trump his brother’s well-reasoned arguments with the accusation, “Well, Mom always liked you best!”
This week, as our Torah portion turns to the relationships within the family of Read More >
We’ll Always Have Parents: 2017
A D’var Torah for Toldot
by Rabbi Rena H. Kieval
In the classic movie Casablanca, the ill-fated lovers played by Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman share these words of comfort: “We’ll always have Paris.” A playful poem by Mary Jo Salter uses that line to make a point. The poem, titled, “We’ll Always Have Parents,” notes that, “We’ll always have them…they’re in our baggage.” The poem calls to mind what a wise and learned person once told me: that no matter how old we are, most of us shape our lives in response to our parents. We may define ourselves in a positive way by who our parents were, and what they taught us, and we may also define ourselves against who our parents were, and what they taught us. Most of us are driven and shaped by mixed legacies. Whatever those legacies are, “we’ll always have parents.”
Parashat Toldot reflects this Read More >
“The Deeds of the Ancestors–A Sign for Their Descendants”
A Dvar Torah for Toledot
by Rabbi Len Levin
Imagine the story of Isaac and Rebekah, Esau and Jacob, updated to our time.
Updating the characters is the easier part. We can imagine Isaac as the child of a super-observant, conflicted family, who bears the scars of his father’s life-endangering ascetic practices and the near-permanent estrangement from a half-brother consequent on a family rift. (The character of Danny Saunders in Chaim Potok’s The Chosen has some of these traits.) He has resolved never to inflict on another the trials he has witnessed and experienced.
Rebekah is a cousin, of mixed Jewish and non-Jewish heritage, possibly from the former Soviet Union. While growing up, she heard fantastic family tales about Jews and Judaism, to which she pledged fierce loyalty, but had no direct Jewish education. She has resolved to be forever faithful to this family Read More >
by Rabbi Isaac Mann
The story of the conflict between Jacob and Esau, which is central to this week’s Torah portion, leaves us with many unanswered questions. Among them is one that is raised by the famous 13th century exegete Nachmanides (Ramban) that has us wondering if the entire episode involving Jacob’s subterfuge could have been avoided.
In his commentary to Gen.27:4, where we are told that Rebekah instructed her son Jacob to dress like Esau in order to fool his father Isaac and snatch from him the patriarchal blessing, Nachmanides asks why couldn’t Rebekah simply reveal to her husband the prophecy that had been given to her when she was still pregnant and in difficult straits. As the Torah mentions in the beginning of Toldot (25:23), she was told by G-d, directly or indirectly (Nachmanides assumes the latter), that the older son will be subservient to the younger. Had she told her husband the prophetic message Read More >
Rabbi Michael Pitkowsky
The negative attitude towards Esau in rabbinic literature is familiar to many and exemplified by the midrash that states “It is a well known teaching [halakhah] that Esau hates Jacob.” (Sifre on Deuteronomy, Beha’alotkha 69) These midrashim were not talking just about Jacob and Esau, these two figures were, in the words of Gerson D. Cohen, “archetypal symbols of Jewry and Rome.” (found in Gerson D. Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought”)
Did the Rabbis have anything positive to say about Esau? As a matter of fact, they did. The following midrashim show that the rabbis were able to find something good even in somebody who was described so negatively such as Esau. We are challenged to look beyond the negativity in order to find the positive in everyone.
“And Rebecca took the choicest garments of her eldest son Esau, which were with her in the house” (27:15)-In which Read More >