Question: The current weekly portion “Toldot” (Generations) talks about the sale of the birthright. Drawing parallels with the present day [in Israel], can we say that some are choosing Milky pudding?
Answer: Nothing like that. After all, Esau is a first-born egoism, a huge void that needs to fill itself. There is no escape from it. If the egoism hadn’t been born, then universe wouldn’t have been in existence. That is why the birth starts from egoism.
After egoism was born and manifested, a methodology or a program for fulfillment of egoism became necessary. In other words, some sort of a symbol is required, an intention with which it is possible to use, a formula by which this Esau can be properly managed and filled. Otherwise it’s impossible to fulfill and satisfy.
Jacob is such a formula. He is a utility function, a support mechanisms that fulfills the egoism. Generally speaking, Esau is the whole basis of nature.
Question: What is the birthright of Esau for our age and for the modern Israel?
Answer: First of all, “Esau” and “Jacob,” “Israel,” and “people of the world” are completely different systems.
Esau is Esau, he can’t do anything by himself. The only thing he can do is to chase Jacob in order to elicit and force him to perform self-fulfillment. Therefore, Esau initially says, “I will sell my birthright to you. Why do I need it? I can’t gather anything from it.”
Why did Jacob purchase the birthright? In order to implement it.
Today we are heirs, the descendants of Jacob, and his sons that don’t do his work. Instead, we prefer Esau’s soup, as if we are at his level wishing to become like him. As if we want to be like the nations of the world among which we live.
What amazes me is when I see what has been happening to the Jewish people, what has become of them. It would seem that it were impossible—how much they have turned their back and removed themselves from their intended purpose.
Question: What are the consequences of this flight?
Answer: Only one, Esau would require problem solving, in other words, his fulfillment. This means, the plan of the creation will be implemented through Esau.
When Esau forces us and requires us to perform, it’s called “the path of suffering” or in Hebrew “Beito,” in its own time. Constantly, every moment, the program of creation will be executed, but all the time through the driving force.
On the other hand, it is desirable, and ultimately necessary to achieve the program of creation through the work of Jacob, knowingly and voluntarily, of their own freewill.
This means that in the end, the people of Israel, or those that are called as such today, should stand, should realize their mission, their goal, that is necessary to be achieved by all, by Esau, by humanity; and they should carry out their task. They are obliged. There is nowhere to run from it.
It turns out that the current week’s Torah portion describes such a fate, a destiny from which we can’t escape.
What kind of infamy, weakness, and insignificance are we demonstrating by wanting to abandon and push away the role of Jacob from ourselves and disguise ourselves in the hide of Esau’s hunt. This is kind of despicable, pitiful state we’ve come to.
Question: Does it mean that today we’ve confused the roles?
Answer: Yes. This is why all Esau’s attempts aren’t strange, i.e., the entire international community, to bring us back to the correct state towards our work, towards what we have to do for him, for his sake. In general, for the sake of the Creator.
In other words, we must take the birthright and implement it. Although according to the words of the Torah, it may seem that we bought it dishonestly; however everything actually happened this way. It’s not that Jacob “bypassed,” and “lied” to Esau; this is how these two programs of creation “intertwined” with each other and continued forward together. They resemble a twisted double DNA helix, which is the basis of our lives.
This is why, of course, we need to wake up and start implementing our intended purpose.
Question: Did the lentil soup Jacob offered to him for his birthright fulfill Esau? Or did he regret the fact that he “bought into” it?
Answer: This soup partially fulfilled Esau. Otherwise, the world in general wouldn’t have existed. However, in reality it’s just a soup.
Nevertheless, we constantly “feed” the world with this “soup.” Human development, progress, and the eternal pursuit of illusory pleasure, all these generate the Jewish people. If the Jewish people weren’t in their broken state, there would not be any advancement in this world.
In fact, advances in science and technical innovations aren’t necessary for the world. We provide it to the world so that people have something to do. But in fact, it’s a consequence of failing our plan, our mission.
It comes from the female line, from our common mother.
Question: As it turns out, we do only the first part, “feed the world with a soup,” but don’t fulfill the second one, the key part: we don’t buy the birthright with it?
Answer: Yes. Such is today’s Israel.
Basically each weekly Torah portion, if analyzed, at the end, provides us with a negative response about how we implement our mission. Ultimately, all 52 chapters of the year affect us negatively. After all, we don’t abide by any of them.
Question: How are those chapters implemented?
Answer: The easiest way, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” this is the main law of the Torah. Nothing else is necessary!
Question: Is this the birthright?
Answer: This is the fulfillment, the implementation of the birthright. And Esau requires this! He wants to love, and we deny him this opportunity. We don’t give and don’t create the conditions for this, and therefore, we provoke his hatred towards us.
On the other hand, the happy ending of the story is known in advance. The story is like a movie that you watch at the cinema; everything is there on the film, but you’re still somewhere in the middle worrying for the characters. It is only thanks to a happy ending that we exist, otherwise we already would have been destroyed a long time ago.
Question: Is this because we didn’t fulfill our role?
Answer: Yes. It’s not surprising that, again and again throughout the history of the Jews, stand, allegedly negative forces that put pressure upon us, and partly destroy us. Sadly, this is only a consequence of our failure to complete our program.
How many such cases are there in history? In Spain, in England, I saw the ancient synagogues where Jews were rounded up and burned. They didn’t know for what reason at all. Indeed, what was really required of them?
Still everyone is to blame because the Jewish people initially were perceived as a single, connected “bond” of mutual responsibility (Arvut), linked within a single system to be as one man with one heart.
In such conditions each person is responsible for everybody. It turns out that there isn’t a bad or a good person; everyone is equally good and bad.
This is why when someone is killed somewhere because he was Jewish, we have no right to shout that he was in no way to blame. He is to blame because the Jewish people as a whole don’t fulfill their function. Every son of this nation is its representative.
Conversely, if people were to perform their function, they wouldn’t be killed. This would never have taken place.
After all, we are in a system that is quite determinant in which there can be no inconsistencies, spontaneity, and accidents. This is not in nature. This is one enormous, continuous, and ideal system.
Question: It turns out that by not fulfilling the principle of love your neighbor as yourself, we look at the world through the eyes of Esau, and not Jacob’s. And the world pressures us just like Esau. Now what?
Answer: It’s necessary to reach the point where everyone in the nation of Israel will feel guilty.
I listen to the news from around the world and I feel guilty for what is happening. As a result of studying Kabbalah, I started to feel ashamed to look at the people of the world.
The same thing goes for the Jewish people because I have to deliver this to them, but still I can’t. I “give birth” to the system of explanation, dissemination, and training in order for others to hear, to understand. I feel guilty towards the rest of the people.
Question: Why?
Answer: Because millions of children in Africa are dying, because people are suffering from something, from heat or cold, from their problems, conflicts, and strife, from some natural phenomena, whether human, inanimate, plant, or animal. Wars, viruses, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, it’s necessary to understand that all of these are because we don’t fulfill our function, our mission.
We must educate our people so they feel guilty. We must bring people to the truth where it won’t strangle them, won’t lock them in, won’t lead to madness, to suicide, but will cheer them up and will give them a push forward so they will see that they must and at the same time is able to make the correction in the world.
[148313]
From KabTV’s Weekly Torah Portion, 11/14/14
Related Material:
A People Or A Bunch Of Refugees?
The Kabbalists About The Nation Of Israel And The Nations Of The World, Part 12
Israel In The Eyes Of Jacob
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Question: Why doesn’t the Torah start from Abraham or from the gathering at Mount Sinai, but rather begins with Adam, with creation?
