VIDEO: Darka Shel Torah HaYom HaZeh — VAYISHLACH

In this week’s Dvar Torah, Rav Shifren discusses the meaning of the concept that it is a halakha that Eisav hates Yaakov.

©2024 Rabbi Nachum Shifren. All rights reserved.

TRANSCRIPT:

0:01 JDL USA presents Rabbi Nacham Shifren
0:05 public speaker author and good friend of
0:09 the late Rabbi mayor
0:11 Kahana well we are back and um it’s
0:16 great to see
0:18 everybody and uh another week Shabbat is
0:22 gonna be tomorrow
0:23 parl you know I want to tell you guys a
0:26 quick story we’ll kind of segue into our
0:29 our Biblical rendition
0:32 here it was 1973 I don’t know if any of
0:36 you are alive then some of you were
0:38 young young people at the at that time
0:40 who knows I keep getting older and yet I
0:42 still feel like I’m 17 but what that’s
0:44 another story um if you remember it was
0:48 the young Kipper War and the Arabs
0:51 conveniently did a oil B
0:53 boycott on the west basically it was
1:00 let me get this thing out of here there
1:02 we go another popup from our dear
1:05 computer hackers um basically it was it
1:09 was uh you know they couldn’t win the
1:11 war so they put a they put I guess they
1:14 put a tariff you hear a lot of about tariffs
1:16 lately they would they jacked the oil
1:18 price I think it was 100% up uh that put
1:21 the whole West and the United States in
1:23 pretty bad
1:24 shape and Nixon back then had a odd
1:29 day even day you know if your license
1:31 plate ended in a or it began in an even
1:33 number then you’d be Monday W Tuesday
1:36 Wednesday Monday Wednesday Friday if it
1:38 was odd it would be Tuesday Thursday
1:40 something like that it was ridiculous uh
1:43 it was a complete uh you know
1:45 Fiasco and I’ll never forget when I
1:48 tanked up once I um heard this guy
1:50 mumbling under his breath next to me if
1:53 it wasn’t for those damn Jews we
1:55 Couldn’t be going through this right now
1:56 I’m just thinking I don’t get it uh
1:59 Israel’s attack by five Arab
2:01 Nations why are the Jews responsible so
2:05 it doesn’t really matter what the logic
2:07 is or what his premise was uh as faulty
2:11 as it may
2:12 be the point is
2:15 that a proper look at history will tell
2:19 us everything we need to know about who
2:21 we are and what the rest of the world is
2:24 what do I
2:27 mean you know this par of talks about
2:31 the faithful meeting between um Esau and
2:35 his brother
2:36 Jacob Esau of course was uh decided to
2:40 murder his brother and his his mother
2:43 Rifka you know saw this through divine
2:46 intervention and uh told his son to SCU
2:51 back to um where uh his or her her
2:54 father and her her family were anyway
3:00 um when they finally met 20 years later
3:04 Jacob was in trepidation about the
3:07 meeting what would it go be like would
3:09 his brother still want to kill him all
3:11 those kind of things so he sent three
3:14 different uh delegations as it were to
3:19 appease the killer the
3:21 murderer and they gave him camels and
3:24 donkeys and horses and and tribute with
3:28 you know wheat and figs and grapes from”
3:31 from the land of Israel all those nice
3:34 things and um when they finally do
3:38 meat uh Esau puts his arms around him
3:41 gives him a big hug kiss and his eyes
3:43 are moist as if he’s emotionally engaged
3:47 here but what’s interesting our Torah
3:49 tells us something very
3:51 different uh Rashi brings down a um
3:54 comment from the saintly Rabbi and
3:57 author of The Zohar Rabbi shiman bayai
3:59 and he States the
4:06 following it is
4:08 a and it is known that Esau hates Jacob
4:14 true at the moment he was all you know
4:17 fuzzy fuzzy dozy fuzzy wuzzy uh you know
4:21 giving his brother a hug but it was only
4:23 for the moment
4:26 right okay another pop up here let’s get
4:28 rid of that very good only for the
4:31 moment now I have struggled with this
4:34 many rabbis have struggled with it many
4:38 cists have struggled with it when you
4:41 say something
4:42 a goes like this it’s a for me to to
4:49 thank God every time I stick something
4:50 in my mouth for food or drink why
4:53 because he owns the entire world
4:55 everything belongs to him otherwise I’ll
4:57 be stealing from him but when I say a
4:58 blessing for it
5:00 then it’s okay for me to do that’s the
5:02 short part of the of the tal that’s
5:05 called a something that I have to do or
5:08 for example
5:10 um the the uh the observance of the
5:14 Sabbath from Friday to Saturday that’s
5:16 called a right it’s a Jewish law so why
5:19 is it a a Jewish law doesn’t say that in
5:24 the
5:25 Torah but rabash shim bayai says it in
5:30 its Essence now who is asau a lot of you
5:33 already know some of you don’t asau
5:36 represents the Gentile
5:39 Nations now there’s a lot of
5:41 symbolism here there’s a lot of
5:43 tremendous profound thought given to
5:46 this
5:47 concept in the schl she mentions that
5:51 the and of course Rashi the our great
5:54 Torah commentator mentions that the the
5:58 way Yakov worked it in the way tradition
6:02 has it for the Jewish people in a
6:04 situation like this you have three
6:06 things it’s called prayer it’s called Uh
6:11 getting ready for war if worse comes to
6:13 worse and then it’s called giving
6:16 tribute right we see that
6:19 Yakov Jacob gave tribute he gave all
6:21 kinds of goodies to asov to appeases
6:24 hatred and
6:27 um then he then he um prayed that
6:31 everything should be well and the last
6:33 moment he was the in the third of those
6:35 three delegations he was in the last
6:38 protecting Joseph and his uh and his
6:43 mother Rachel which is Jacob’s wife and
6:47 he said if he me if he messes with us
6:49 I’ll go to war against him I’ll kill him
6:51 but that’s not what he really wanted to
6:53 do it’s uh only because he had to do it
6:56 he had to prepare for it so the question
6:58 again arises
7:01 what is it with this this dualism
7:04 between the Jewish people and the
7:06 non-Jewish people what what’s exactly
7:08 going on here you know God knew that
7:11 when we went into Exile he knew that
7:12 this would happen he knew that all the
7:14 trials and tribulations would
7:18 happen some of the Torah Scholars have
7:21 have posited
7:23 that the Exile strengthened the Jewish
7:27 people the remnant of the Jewish people
7:29 those that were not murdered or raped or
7:32 burned alive at the
7:35 stake in other
7:38 words we have a statement in
7:41 the Bible that says when the pharaoh of
7:44 Egypt when he Enslaved the the Jewish
7:47 people and made life miserable for them
7:49 it
7:52 says the more he tortured them and and
7:55 and harassed them the greater they
7:58 became it’s a very strange
8:01 thing um in a way the Torah is showing
8:05 us it’s it’s it’s mirroring for us our
8:09 Survival how we did it and the technique
8:12 that was
8:13 used basically we’re talking about a
8:16 situation where if you look at Jewish
8:19 law and if you look at all the responses
8:21 and the tremendous amounts of
8:24 things mentioned regarding food and
8:28 cooking and bread and bakeries and
8:32 which Bakery should I buy from who
8:34 should from whom should I buy all these
8:37 things are designed to to ensure our
8:40 survival some of the to our commentators
8:44 state that were it not for the
8:48 tremendous you know dichotomy between
8:51 the Jew and the Gentile that we would be
8:54 intermarried after one one generation
8:56 there’s no no way the Jewish people
8:58 could survive without the Torah
9:00 telling us what to do which in essence
9:03 as a fence to put around us I know that
9:06 sounds very
9:07 strange uh sometimes it takes many many
9:10 years of thought of learning of
9:12 knowledge of of World experience of
9:14 seeing how things are to really
9:17 understand the profundity of a Jew
9:19 living in a non-Jewish
9:22 world where we’re the smallest people in
9:24 the world and yet we’ve survived the
9:26 Greeks are no longer oh they’re still
9:28 Greeks but take a careful look at at
9:31 Greece take a careful look at Rome and
9:34 compare that to the mighty
9:36 Caesar where the Roman Empire went from
9:39 the one one uh one end of the continent
9:43 to the other and
9:44 Beyond same with
9:47 Greece and yet we are still I
9:51 think the only nation in the world that
9:53 still has their ancient beliefs and
9:56 we’re true to them so this idea of asau
10:01 hates
10:02 Jacob um you know it’s funny we uh each
10:05 one of us you me our family each one of
10:10 us has relationships outside our family
10:12 wonderful
10:13 relationships I have so many non-Jewish
10:16 friends it’s
10:17 ridiculous does that mean that everybody
10:19 hates
10:21 me no but you know
10:26 what as they say hit happens if you get
10:31 my drift sometimes your you’re you’re
10:35 you’re queuing up for your your coveted
10:38 gas allotment and people are waiting in
10:41 line the half mile around the gas
10:43 station and stuff happens people get get
10:46 angry and they let their anger bubble
10:48 over and you hear what they say and see
10:51 what they mean and then you understand
10:53 this idea be behind RAB Shifren
10:56 bayai
10:59 the Jews in Spain the Jews in uh in
11:03 England in
11:05 France they look backed over their heads
11:08 over their shoulders and saw flooding of
11:11 Jewish blood all over the
11:13 landscape they were well to do they were
11:16 in great shape they had great neighbors
11:19 and yet we look back and see what
11:21 happened is this a message of hatred
11:24 that we should be spreading
11:26 no but we need to know what the history
11:29 taught us and live and learn and
11:34 understand that in essence we’re
11:36 basically alone without the without
11:40 other other than with the AL almighty
11:42 God the one that took us out of Egypt
11:45 and the created the world in six days so
11:47 that’s a message of this of this V Torah
11:51 today in in uh finalizing here I would
11:54 bring to the one more time from the
11:56 schla a kados who was a great makal and
11:59 many many cabalists learned from him
12:02 including my mentor Rabbi shenir Alman
12:05 GNE
12:06 inat he mentions something very
12:09 interesting he
12:10 says that the Jewish people are people
12:14 of
12:15 you
12:18 know we’re not you know not like
12:23 other people carrying bows and arrows
12:26 and shooting and murdering and killing
12:28 we our nature is to be yev o dwellers in
12:33 tense meaning using our minds using our
12:36 our spirit using our emotional
12:39 attributes to make life
12:42 worthwhile and having said that we can
12:45 go one step further and say it’s not
12:47 ours to uh conquer and this and that the
12:49 other I will say
12:52 this it says in the Torah also in
12:56 Ecclesiastes there’s a Time For Peace
12:58 and a time for war
13:00 and you have to know when is when when
13:03 each one is is happening right and we
13:06 also have to be prepared and and do our
13:08 due diligence in all matters of life
13:11 including our our cleaning to the Torah
13:14 understanding it learning it being
13:16 faithful to it and all those things
13:18 having been said are our real Shield our
13:22 real defense when it comes down to it
13:25 and in that spirit I want to wish
13:26 everybody a Shabbat Shalom this is a very
13:29 acious time in the history of of
13:31 humanity we’re seeing an upheaval in the
13:33 Middle East that can only be called
13:35 something
13:36 miraculous and I think that when this
13:38 whole thing is over we’re going to see a
13:41 a larger Israel much larger and secure
13:46 with the help of God and where there’s
13:49 where there are men of good will it will
13:51 be secured safe prosperous and the
13:55 Jewish people should know nothing but
13:56 goodness and
13:59 peace God bless everybody Shabbat
14:03 shalom
14:07 Authority Jewish Defence League

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