Almost Eden

BS"D Parashat Toldot 5769

It does not happen often that the parasha extends its arms (as it were) to draw you in to feel as one with it. But it happened to me today - twice.

I witnessed a Ya'akov (a.k.a. Jacob) and Eisav (a.k.a. Esau) situation; and later in the day, I felt as if I were together with our father Yitzchak in the parasha.

While walking home this morning after shacharit prayers at the Kotel, I saw two groups of people - one consisted of about 30 boys from Chorev Yeshiva High School who had just returned from a week in Poland where they saw the killing camps of Treblinka, Auschwitz and all the rest of the gehenoms (hell) in that wretched land. They were singing and dancing together with their parents, and one could not but feel their happiness at being back in Eretz HaKodesh (The Holy Land).

Fifty meters from them was a group of around 50 gentile (non-Jewish) adults, one of many such groups that visit the the Holy site daily. They were staring in silence at the boys and at the other Jews davening (praying) by the Kotel. This group consisted of men and women from eastern European countries like Poland, Ukraine and Russia.

On one side stood the descendants of Ya'akov - the victims - and on the other side stood the descendants of Eisav - the perpetrators.

Follow up:

As I was taking in this Kafkaesque scene, I became aware of its magnitude. We all know what the foreign group's grandparents did to the grandparents of those Holy boys. Not just 65 years ago, but in our long, bleak history of being in the galut of the Christians. And now these goyim (non-Jews) are here, at the foot of the Temple Mount, to personally witness one stage in the redemption of Am Yisrael.

Later in the afternoon, my wife and I drove southward to the border with Azza (Gaza Strip) to become energized by the smiles of our grandchildren who live there. We passed a channel in the desert with the identifying sign "Nachal G’rar" - the G’rar Wadi. It is here, as our parasha relates, that our father Yitzchak (a.k.a. Issac) and mother Rivka (a.k.a. Rebecca) encamped and were blessed with great wealth. I was overwhelmed by the idea of the never-ending chain of our Jewish heritage when two Jews from the galut of New York could be standing in the same place that Yitzchak and Rivka had lived 4000 years earlier.

In a broader sense, all of us are contemporaries of the personalities in this week's and last week's parshiot. Last week's parasha Chayay Sarah ends with the death of Yishmael (Ishmael), and this week's parasha Toldot begins with the birth of Ya'akov and Eisav. (Editor's note: the accounts in Torah are not always presented in chronological order. Ya'akov and Eisav were born before Yishmael died.)

These three personalities and their descendants are the major "players" in history - we Jews, the Christians of the western world, and the adherents of Islam. The three met in their lifetimes. Yishmael was about 80 years old when Avraham died, and he came together with Yitzchak to bury their father, as is recorded in parashat Chayay Sarah. Yitzchak must certainly have brought his two sons, Ya'akov and Eisav, to their grandfather's funeral. So they had to have been acquainted with their Uncle Yishmael.

Yishmael (Islamic), is the "pereh adam" (wild man, savage and uncontrollable) as stated in the Torah.

Eisav (Christian), the cool, conniving, devious murderer, who unlike his uncle Yishmael, would never blow himself up in a school or supermarket, but waits patiently for his father's demise before intending to kill his brother Ya'akov (as stated in the parasha).

And Ya'akov (Jewish) who, because of HaShem's intervention, survives the machinations of the previous two and their descendants who try to destroy him.

World history was planned by The Creator to follow the natural instincts of these three descendants of Avraham Avinu (a.k.a. Father Abraham), with the rest of humanity waiting in the wings for their time to come on stage.

History has shown that Yishmael and Eisav contrived to make parallel, but different, assaults on Ya'akov.

Yishmael the "pereh adam", strives to destroy the teachings of Ya'akov by undoing the world order which Ya'akov, through the Torah, seeks to create.

Eisav takes the devious, round-about path of creating a world in which there is no place for Ya'akov.

Yishmael's Goals and Tactics

Not every Moslem is a terrorist, but almost every terrorist is a Moslem. They have destroyed the comfortable order of world travel, whereby every person is suspect. The suspicion has spread from the airport to the train station, and even to the local supermarket and bet knesset. They crash into the financial centers of nations and kill thousands. They destroy hotels and hospitals in India, and the more deaths they cause the better.

Bali, Yemen, the underground in London, Chizbala (a.k.a. Hizballah, Hezbollah, etc.) and Chamas (a.k.a. Hamas).

Their wish is to return the world to the dark ages of ignorance and intolerance towards not only the stranger but even towards their own people - including their wives and daughters. Murder for them is not a dastardly crime. It is a "holy" means to achieve the will of Allah.

For Yishmael, death is superior to life. They fill the midrassas (Islamic schools) with millions of children who will be trained to be human bombs, making the kamikazes homicide attacks look like child's play.

All of these efforts are a negation of what Ya'akov stands for. If they destroy the world order, they will have achieved victory over the Torah and the children of Ya'akov.

Eisav's Goals and Tactics

Eisav, compatible with his personality, seeks to uproot Ya'akov from our land (Israel) in a much more elegant manner. Eisav schemes to murder Ya'akov while smiling at his brother in wait of their father's death.

While complimenting us on our democratic process and how advanced we are in all fields of academia, Eisav whispers in our ears that there will be no more construction in Yehuda and Shomron (a.k.a. Judea and Samaria)e are to deliver the Golan to the Syrians, to return to the borders of 1967, and to not react when hundreds of rockets are fired at your people. Moreover, we are to mark every product of Shomron and Yehuda as such, so that the world should know not to purchase those products. Investment in Israeli projects should be divested, an academic boycott declared on Israeli schools of higher learning, Israeli military officers arrested when they step foot in the United Kingdom, and the key to Jonathan Pollard's cell thrown away in order to teach the uppity Jews to stay in their place. The list goes on and on ad nauseam.

Ya'akov's Goals

Yishmael has set his task to destroy all good by destroying world order, as has Eisav to destroy his brother Ya'akov. What is the task of Ya'akov?

We were put in the world for the purpose of insuring that man would not forget that God is the Creator.

Were it not for Ya'akov and his children, the concept of God would be long forgotten. Christianity would become diluted into atheism and Islam into avoda zara (idolatry).

Where is all of this leading in the eyes of Chazal (our Sages, of Blessed memory)?

1. Yishmael will cause three wars: one on the sea, one on land and the third in the area of Yerushalayim.
2. Yishmael will be defeated by the combined armies of Eisav, who in turn will be attacked by a nation from the end of the world (perhaps China).
3. And at the end of days, the Jewish nation will be victorious over all our enemies, and the Holy Land will remain forever in our possession.

This is all written in the Zohar, at the end of Parashat Va'ayra in Shemot (the Book of Exodus) and explained by the Malbim in his commentary to the Book of Yechezkel chapter 32, verse 17.

In the light of current events, I would not issue a life-insurance policy to any Jewish community in the galut. HaShem provided them with a 60-year window of opportunity to return home. So, from now on, what happens to the Jews of the galut is totally their own responsibility.

We in Eretz Yisrael will be like Noach in the ark. We will witness difficult days and the dangers will abound, but HaShem will bless His people in His holy land as Yitzchak blessed Ya'akov.

Shabbat Shalom

Nachman Kahana
Copyright © 2008 Nachman Kahana

Edited and links added for clarity, by Tehillah Hessler