Yesterday I looked at my calendar for the first week of November and saw to my dismay that the commentary on Torah I was to give early in the month is THIS COMING Friday, and I had done nothing to prepare for it as yet.
It is a short commentary on the parashah (section of the Torah) Toldat, the portion about Jacob and Esau. That is a really interesting section, complex, especially when one begins to read the commentary of the Rabbis on this passage. What seems a story about a tricky guy, Jacob, expert deceiver, who steals his dim-witted brother's birthright and blessing (two different things--another wrinkle!), turns out to be just the opposite. The physical laborer, "man of the fields," Esau, becomes a regular snake-oil salesman, master of slick speech, a liar and worshipper of idols, while his brother, who "dwells in tents," becomes a learned man, who contends with his brother even in utero to emerge in order to enter the house of prayer and study Torah.
This apparent reversal is what I will focus on in my commentary. The Torah is stylistically so tacit and cryptic, leaving so many things unsaid, that it begs readers to project entire worlds of commentary in the interstices, and so the volume of commentary proliferates.
2 comments:
Hope by this time you feel like you have a good idea going for what you will say.
Yes I do. It is very short, and I would post it, but I think I have pretty much explained it already. Oh well. I guess I can post it.
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