NOTES ON PARSHAS TOLDOS

PARSHAS TOLDOS

Toldos = Generations. The continuation of Abraham’s family.
Psukim 25:19 through 28:9.

Seifer Bereishis devotes much attention to sifrei tolados (genealogical records), and in many ways the entire book can be said to be themed as linked generational lists, starting with Tolados Shamayim v’Aretz (generations of heaven and earth, psook 2:4), Tolados Adam (from Adam to Noach and the dor ha mabul), Tolados Bnei Noach (Shem, Cham, Yafet, and the dor ha migdal Bavel), and the Tolados Shem (Shem to Terach, and the focus on Avraham Avinu).


Two themes in Bereishis which you should note:

1. The progression is from the general to the particular – mankind in chapters one through eleven, the Avos (fathers) in 12 through 50.

2. The repeated contrasting of chosen (bechira) versus rejected (dechiya).


YITZHAK & RIVKA

Yitzhak marrieds at age forty.
Rashi tells us his wife was three years old, but per Ibn Ezra Rivka was a teenager - and the term na'arah in the text supports this.

Rav, commenting on a passage in Kiddushin about betrothal, says "It is forbidden for a father to betroth her (his daughter) until she is grown up, and says that she wants to meet her fiancé. From this we might presume that Betuel, Rivka’s father, was ambivalent about marrying off his daughter.

Rashi's commentary conveniently has an angel kill Betuel, whereupon Eliezer hurries off with the prospective bride.

[Okay. Murder and kidnapping. This is inspirational.]


Rivka was childless for several years - not unlike other matriarchs.
Sarah bore Yitzhak when she was ninety years old, Rivkah did not bear children until twenty years after marrying Yitzhak, and Rachel did not bear offspring until after her older sister Leah, her handmaiden, and her older sister’s handmaiden had all got seed from Yaakov.


SLIGHT SIDETRACK - YITZHAK'S MOTHER

Sarah Imaeinu is described as a beautiful woman.
Which serves to explain two incidents where kings seized Sarah while she and Avraham traveled through their land. Both times Avraham claimed that Sarah was his sister, fearing that if he admitted that she was his wife, they would kill him.

In Parshas Lech Lecha (Go out yourself! Psukim 12:1 through 17:27), the Pharoh of Egypt took Sarah into his palace. Hashem prevented Pharoh from getting familiar with Sarah by sending an angel. Each time Pharaoh tried to get close, the angle hit him. Pharaoh got the hint and returned Sarah to Avraham.

In Parshas Vayera (And he showed up! Psukim 18:1 through 22:24) the Torah says that when Avraham and Sarah lived in the Land of Gerar, King Avimelech took Sarah into his palace. This time, instead of an angel, Hashem himself came to Avimelech in a dream and chewed him out him for taking a married woman. Avimelech claimed innocence since he thought that Sarah was Avraham`s sister. Hashem punished Avimelech and his servants by preventing them from relieving themselves and producing children.

The Talmud says that as soon as Avraham prayed on behalf of Avimelech and his household so that they could have children, they became aware that Sarah was already pregnant with Yitzhak, and they were healed.

[If someone prays for mercy on another's behalf, when he too needs mercy, he himself is given mercy first.]

Sarah subsequently gave birth to Yitzhak at the ripe old age of ninety.

[Note that in this parsha we run into the name Avimelech once more - in the second aliya there is a confrontation, in the fourth aliya there is a peace treaty. ]


TWO NATIONS WITHIN

Shnei Goyim B’Vitneich = 'Two gentiles are in your womb' is NOT an accurate translation, as I'm sure you realize.

The two nations that were in Rivka's womb were Ya'akov and Eisav, who through their descendants make up the nations of Klal Yisroel and Edom.
Eisav became a great hunter and a man of the fields. Which highlights an implied difference of intellect and habitus. The sportive type and the bookish type have been at odds ever since - Esav soneh l’Yaakov (Esau hates Jacob).


Why is it that Yitzchak couldn't tell the difference between Ya'akov and Eisav?

Being old and blind he relied on hearing, smell, and touch.
Yakov on the advice of his mother wore a fur pelt. When Yitzhak reached out to touch Ya’akov’s back, he was convinced that it was Esav.

It was only through the deception of Rivka and Ya'akov that Ya'akov was able to steal the birthright from Eisav, and thus found the lineage from Avraham which carried the promise of future greatness for Klal Yisroel.

Rivka effectively engineered the disinheritance of her son Esav. But the Torah makes clear that the boys were twins from the same womb, so there is not even a suspicion of extraneous motives or alternate parentage (i.e. all the offspring of handmaidens who are impregnated, from Hagar to Bilhah and beyond).



TORAH BEFORE TORAH

Shem V’Eiver = The school where Yakov hid for fourteen years after cheating Esav and fooling Yitzhak. But what was this place?

It says in Bereishis, psook 4:26 "U le Shet gam-hu yulad ben va yikra et-shemo Enosh; az hu chal likro be shem Adonai" (and to Seth, to him also there was born a son, and he called his name Enosh; from then men started calling upon the name of the Lord). From this we learn that the name (shem) of the Lord is the means by which we call, hence the term ‘Hashem’, and we read in psook 9:26 that Shem was blessed by his father Noach in the following manner: ""Va yomer baruch Adonai Elohei Shem, vi hi Chenaan eved lamo" (and he said ‘blessed is the Lord the God of Shem, and let it be that Canaan is their servant). Noach had named his son Shem (‘name’) in reference to psook 4:26, because of the power of the name.

Subsequent thereto, Shem founded an academy where he and his great-grandson Eiver transmitted a 'Torah of wisdom', such as Shem and Eiver had themselves learned during the period of the Mabul (flood) and the Migdal (tower) of Bavel. At this academy the patriarchs studied, each in their time.

Yakov Avinu, when he fled from his brother Esav and was faced with the prospect of having to go to Laban's corrupt environment, prepared himself by studying at the academy of Shem V'Ever. At that time he was 63 years old and had learned Torah all of this life in his father Yitzhak Avinu's home.

[Note that 'fourteen years' (a doubling of seven) resonates with other units of seven and groups of years in the Torah. Consider the similarities.]


It is said that Yakov taught the knowledge he had received from Shem and Eiver to Yosef, thus in part causing the jealousy of the other eleven brothers.

Why only to Yosef and not to the others?

Yosef needed knowledge to survive for twenty two years in the alien environment of Egypt, so that he could lay the basis for the rest of the family joining him and living there for 210 years.

When, at the beginning of the next seifer (Shmos), we read that there was a Pharaoh over Egypt ‘who knew not Yosef’, we read in between the lines that the wisdom known to Yosef was likewise not known in Egypt, and hence the Egyptians had come to fear and dislike the Hebrews.