From the weekly shiur of Rabbi Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto, shlit’a, delivered at the yeshiva of Shuva Israel — Parashat Toldot.
The table was set in the home of the Dor family, and the rabbi began not with the Torah portion but with a ledger. Twenty-five years, he said, counting them out. Before the yeshivas, before the thousands of students, there was a man named Mordechai who walked with him through a wilderness that had not yet been sown. “You followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” He used the verse the way a mason uses a plumb line — to check whether the wall is still true.
This is how a shiur by Rabbi Pinto tends to open: with an accounting of debt. Not money. Obligation.
There was also a dream. On a visit to the mikveh of the Pele Yoetz, on the Friday night, he dreamed that the Pele Yoetz appeared and asked him to come back and teach there. He did not claim to know what it meant. “We are still at the threshold of things that are not simple for the people of Israel,” he said. He did not elaborate, and he did not need to.
Then he turned to the parashah, and to a problem that has bothered commentators for a thousand years.
Isaac our forefather has no children. This is Isaac, one of the three legs of the Throne of Glory, a perfect burnt offering, a man of whom the tradition says his ashes were heaped on the altar even while he lived. And he is childless. The verse is blunt: “And Isaac entreated the L-rd for his wife, because she was barren.”
Note the grammar, because everything depends on it. Isaac prays, and the verse says: “And the L-rd granted his entreaty.” His. Not hers. Rebecca is praying too — both righteous, both in pain. Yet the Torah records only that his prayer was answered.
The Gemara notices. What it says in response sounds like technical bookkeeping and turns out to be a door.
The prayer of a righteous man who is the son of a righteous man, the Gemara says, is not like that of a righteous man who is the son of a wicked man. Isaac was Abraham’s son. Rebecca was the daughter of Bethuel and sister of Laban. Both righteous; only one with a lineage to point to.
But that only sharpens the question: if Rebecca’s prayer was worth less because of her family, the Torah is telling a story about luck, not about prayer. So the rabbi pressed further, and brought the Yalkut, which tells a stranger and far more disturbing story.
When Eliezer brought Rebecca from the house of Bethuel, she rode a camel toward the tents of Abraham. On that road she saw a man walking in the field — Isaac, who had gone out, the sages say, to establish the afternoon prayer. The sight of him, a face carrying a light she had never seen on a human being, struck her so violently that she fell from the camel.
She fell, the Midrash says, onto a tree. And the fall cost her her virginity — the blood that would later be the evidence of her purity spilled there in the dust, beside a tree, in the middle of nowhere.
And at that exact moment, the Holy One, blessed be He, turned to the angel Gabriel and said: guard this blood. Keep it. Do not let it disappear.
Years pass. Rebecca comes to Isaac’s house. They marry. And then one day he asks her a question no bride should have to answer: where is the blood? Why is there no sign that you were a virgin?
And the Midrash says something remarkable: Isaac suspected Eliezer. Abraham’s own servant, the man sent to bring her, the man who had conducted the entire match. Isaac looked at the absence of evidence and concluded that the evidence had been destroyed — by Eliezer, on the road, in secret.
The rabbi paused here — the pivot of the entire shiur — and made it clear the accusation was not a small thing. This was suspicion cast on a righteous woman and a faithful servant, by a man who loved them both.
So Rebecca answered. Not with rage, not with a defense of her character — with directions. She told him where the tree was. Isaac sent men to search, and they found the blood still there, exactly where she said. Gabriel had kept it.
Now the Gemara’s law, laid alongside the story like two halves of a join.
There is a rule about a woman whose husband suspects her of infidelity — the sotah — but who is innocent. Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael disagree about what her silence earns. Rabbi Akiva says: if she had no children, she will now be blessed with children. Rabbi Ishmael objects with flat practicality: then every childless woman would seclude herself with a stranger and collect her reward. No — the blessing is narrower. Sickly children become healthy ones; plain children become beautiful.
The rabbi did not resolve the dispute. He did something better: Rebecca had lived the exact case. Suspected by her husband, in her own home, of a sin she had not committed — and she had said nothing except the truth, quietly, and waited.
And years later, when she and Isaac stood together and prayed for a child, the verse credits the prayer to him. Not because she prayed less. Because her prayer was, in the rabbi’s phrase, not whole — and a prayer that is not whole from the heart does not carry its full weight.
Why not whole? Because Rebecca had seen something. When she fell from that camel and looked at Isaac’s face, the tradition says she saw in a flash of prophetic sight the shape of her future: two sons, and one of them — Esau — a wicked man. She had been terrified ever since. So when she prayed for children, part of her held back. She did not want to be the mother of a wicked son.
The rabbi brought proof, from a story about a king.
Hezekiah, the Gemara says, was worthy of being the Messiah — a righteous man of the house of David, holy in his generation. And he refused to marry. Isaiah came and told him he would die, because he had not fulfilled the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. Hezekiah answered: I know. I saw through the holy spirit that a son would be born to me — Manasseh, who would bring an idol into the Temple. I will not bring that into the world.
Isaiah’s response is the sharpest line in the shiur. Concerning things too wonderful for you — that is not your business. You are commanded. Marry. What will be born is not yours to calculate.
So Hezekiah asked the prophet for his daughter, married her, and a son was born. The Gemara does not pretend the son was righteous. It says the commandment was fulfilled, and the calculation was never Hezekiah’s to make.
“The righteous person,” the rabbi said, “would rather have no children than wicked children.” The verse in Isaiah — sing, O barren one who has not borne — is read by the sages not as consolation but as congratulations. That, too, is a kind of song.
From there the shiur widened, and became something other than a commentary.
There is no clock in heaven, the rabbi said. This is not a metaphor; it is a technical fact about how reward works. A person is humiliated, stays silent, and expects the accounts to settle by evening. They may not settle for a year. The Holy One keeps the payment for further down the road, at a moment when it will be the thing that saves you.
“Many times we want the result quickly,” he said. “But the Holy One saves the result for another time, another place, another period — a period when you will truly need that thing.”
And the mechanism is not what people think. When someone rises against you — harasses you, humiliates you, will not let you be — the instinct is to ask how to silence them. Wrong question. The person in front of you is not the problem. The problem is an accusation you created, an angel of a transgression that entered that person and now comes toward you wearing their face. Fight the person and you accomplish nothing; silence him and the angel simply moves elsewhere and returns from another direction.
King David understood. When Shimei ben Gera cursed him from the hillside and Abishai offered to take his head, David forbade it. “G-d sent him to curse me,” he said. The problem was not between him and Shimei. It was between him and G-d.
Which leaves one useful course of action, and the rabbi stated it plainly: think about what you did. Find the person you hurt, the obligation you left unpaid, and go and appease them. Do that, and the one tormenting you will leave you alone — not because you frightened him, but because you removed the accusation he was carrying.
Then he turned to prayer, and to the small comedy of getting exactly what you asked for.
A man walks in the desert. The heat is punishing. He raises his eyes: Master of the Universe, if only I had a donkey, everything would be easier. A king passes by, a king who dotes on his donkey — and that donkey has just broken its leg. The king calls the man over. Take it on your back, he says, and carry it to the city.
“He asked for a donkey,” the rabbi said, with the timing of a man who has told this story many times and still enjoys it. “He did not ask for a donkey to ride.”
Prayers must be precise — not vague, not muttered, not recited by rote with the mind elsewhere, but said with the lips, with intention, with a clear understanding of what is being asked. Then he softened it into the largest promise in the shiur: no prayer goes unanswered. Not one. A man may pray twenty years and see nothing, and then a single prayer breaks through and twenty years of accumulated petition come down at once. “Put my tears in Your bottle.” They were not lost. They were being kept.
The last movement was about livelihood, and it had the room leaning forward.
Isaac sends Esau out to hunt. And the rabbi asked the obvious question nobody asks: Isaac is a saint, blind, dying — why does he need food before he can bless? And why instruct a son who has hunted his whole life on how to take a bow and a knife?
The answer came from the Hafla’ah, on the four elements: inanimate, vegetative, living, speaking. A fallen soul returns into the world to be rectified — into the ground, a plant, an animal — and waits there for decades, sometimes centuries, until someone eats of it and says a blessing. Say the blessing and the soul is raised; eat without one and it turns and accuses you. It is not the food that is the point. It is the elevation.
And Isaac, who understood this, was not sending Esau to hunt. He was testing him. When Jacob came in his brother’s garments and said, “The L-rd called before me” — the animals came to me, I did not have to chase them — Isaac heard the whole thing at once. The sparks come willingly to a whole heart, and only to a whole heart. They flee from a man divided against himself.
“Where do problems of livelihood begin?” the rabbi asked. “In your head.” Yes, no, maybe, this way, that way — and heaven makes the matter heavy, because a divided man cannot carry an undivided blessing.
Thirty-three years, he said, he has watched this. The people who walked with G-d in simplicity — not cleverly, not with arguments, but innocently — were put through trials, passed them, and were then given without limit. The ones who came with questions got questions back.
He closed by blessing the family whose table he sat at, and Rabbi Mordechai, and all the righteous ones, and asked that everyone’s heart’s desire be fulfilled for good. Renew our days as of old, he said. Build the righteous generation.
Then the shiur ended, and the room sat with it a moment longer than it needed to — always the sign that something landed.
Listen to Episode 34
The full shiur is available on the Shuva Israel podcast.
📄 Read the full transcript
[00:00] Thank G-d, this is a very great joy. We are sitting in the home of Dor the righteous, a special righteous generation. We remember Dor as a small child. We are happy to see his righteous father, Rabbi Mordechai. Rabbi Mordechai has been one of the foundations of Shuva Israel for more than 25 years. He is one of the people who sacrificed themselves to build, establish, and illuminate the world with the great light of Shuva Israel. All the yeshivas, all the thousands of students, all the kindness, all the great things of Shuva Israel.
[00:36] Rabbi Mordechai was one of the first who walked with us. “You followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown,” in the Cause of all causes and the Reason of all reasons. The Holy One, blessed be He, has placed us together today here at one table. Rabbi Mordechai and the righteous generation that we rejoice in with great joy. He is an exalted soul, a special soul. He is together with his partner, the righteous Sagi. May the Holy One, blessed be He, protect them, bless them, and bestow upon them great abundance.
[01:08] We remember that we traveled to the Pele Yoetz, the mikveh of the Pele Yoetz, and on Friday night—we didn’t know—we dreamed on Friday night that the Pele Yoetz was telling us to return to give classes at the Pele Yoetz. We don’t know what this dream means, but here, the Pele Yoetz is being mentioned. That is joy, and these are great signs from heaven. Signs of a great rectification, signs of great light. And we are still at the threshold of things that are not simple for the people of Israel, and with great signs and good signs, we are heading towards sublime and great things.
[01:45] Perhaps it is possible to explain and say regarding the weekly Torah portion, Parashat Toldot: The holy Torah tells us that our forefather Isaac had no children. Our forefather Isaac, who was the great righteous one—there are three legs to the Throne of Glory: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Isaac, who is a perfect burnt offering; Isaac, who was a supreme saint; Isaac, of whom it is said as if his ashes are placed upon the altar—our forefather Isaac has no children, and our forefather Isaac… “And Isaac entreated the L-rd for his wife because she was barren.” Our forefather Isaac stands and prays for his wife, for Rebecca, that she may be blessed with children because she is barren. And the holy Torah says, “And the L-rd granted his entreaty.”
[02:30] The Holy One, blessed be He, accepted his prayer. And from here, the Gemara learns and says that the prayer of a righteous person who is the son of a wicked person is not the same as the prayer of a righteous person who is the son of a righteous person. Our forefather Isaac was a righteous person, the son of a righteous person. Isaac and his father Abraham were righteous, as was Rebecca, but her father Laban and Bethuel were wicked. Thus, the prayer of a righteous person from a righteous line differs from that of a righteous person from a wicked line. The L-rd granted his prayer, not hers. The Holy One, blessed be He, heard the prayer of Isaac and not the prayer of Rebecca.
[03:10] A strong question must be asked: Both of them are praying, both of them are righteous, both of them are pious, both of them are having difficulty bearing children. A person in distress who has no children—that is a very great sorrow. The Gemara says that one who has no children is like a dead person. A person who has no children, that is a pain that is extremely difficult. So what is the Torah emphasizing and telling us here: “And the L-rd granted his prayer”—to him and not to her? Why specifically “and He granted his prayer”—to him, specifically to him and not to her? What is the point that the Torah is emphasizing here?
[03:46] So perhaps it is possible to explain and say, and bring a Yalkut, that the Yalkut says something frightening. The Yalkut says something that is terrifying. The Yalkut says that when Abraham our forefather sent Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, to find a match for Isaac our forefather, Eliezer went, brought Rebecca, put her on the camel, and brought her towards the house of Abraham our forefather. From afar, Rebecca sees Isaac our forefather, who had gone out to meditate in the field. Isaac our forefather went out to meditate in the field to establish the Mincha prayer. When Isaac our forefather approached, she saw the light and his face radiating with light and holiness. She fell off the camel.
[04:30] And when she fell off the camel, our holy sages say that she was struck by a tree, and her virginity was lost. She was struck by a tree, her virginity was lost, and at that very moment, the Midrash says, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to the angel Gabriel, “Go and guard this virginity so that it remains intact and is kept as proof and a sign.”
[04:53] Rebecca arrives at Isaac’s home. Isaac our forefather marries her. Years pass. The moment Isaac our forefather married Rebecca, he came and said to her, “I have a difficult question to ask you.” She says to him, “What is the question?” The Midrash says, he says to her, “Where is your virginity blood? Why are you not a virgin?” The Midrash says that Isaac our forefather began to suspect Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, that when he went to bring Rebecca from Bethuel’s house to him for the wedding, that heaven forbid, he did something inappropriate, and that is why there was no virginity blood. Isaac our forefather suspected Eliezer, Abraham’s servant.
[05:34] And then the Holy One, blessed be He, said to Gabriel the angel, “The virginity blood that I told you fell from her from the tree, that she was struck by a tree, go and place it and awaken it.” Rebecca stood up at that time and said to Isaac our forefather, “Heaven forbid, I did not do anything. And only when I saw you coming, when you went out to meditate in the field, I was struck by a tree, and virginity blood came out.” What did Isaac our forefather do? Isaac our forefather asked her, “Where was this tree?” She told him more or less where it was. Isaac our forefather went and sent to search there and brought it. They found the blood there where Rebecca had been and where the blood had fallen. And then Isaac our forefather understood and believed what Rebecca had told him, and there was a great thing there, just as the holy Torah says.
[06:25] The Gemara says that a woman who has no children and is secluded with another man, and her husband suspects her of having committed adultery while she did not, then the Gemara says there is a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael. Rabbi Akiva says if she has no children, she will be blessed with children. Rabbi Ishmael challenges this and says, if that is the case, then every woman who has no children should just go and seclude herself with someone else and be blessed with children? Rather, no, says Rabbi Ishmael: if she gives birth to sick children, she will start giving birth to healthy children. If she gives birth to ugly children, she will start giving birth to beautiful children. That is what the Gemara says—a dispute between Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Ishmael.
[07:11] But in any case, what do we find here? That Rebecca was a woman whose husband suspected her of secluding herself with another man, and because he suspected her of secluding herself with another man—and as the holy Torah says regarding a sotah, a sotah whose husband suspects her of straying, but she did not stray: if she did not stray, the Holy One, blessed be He, blesses her with children. If she did not stray, the Holy One, blessed be He, gives her beautiful children, wise children, healthy children, good children.
[07:41] And then our matriarch Rebecca, after our patriarch Isaac suspected her, and after our patriarch Isaac had negative thoughts regarding Rebecca that she, heaven forbid, had sinned with Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, and that same blood that the angel Gabriel guarded, and that same blood that the angel Gabriel placed as a remembrance, that same blood stood as testimony. And therefore Isaac entreated the L-rd for his wife because she was barren, and the L-rd was entreated, the L-rd was entreated. The Holy One, blessed be He, was entreated—what was He entreated for? For the fact that Rebecca was like a woman whose husband suspected her, and therefore the prayer was Isaac’s, and through this power, Rebecca was remembered, conceived. This is what our holy sages say.
[08:29] In the same vein, we also see this in the shadow of our patriarch Abraham. Our patriarch Abraham, our matriarch Sarah was barren for many years and did not bear children, and our matriarch Sarah was in distress. And after they took Sarah to the house of Abimelech, to the house of Pharaoh, “and the L-rd remembered Sarah as He had spoken.” Why? Because the scoffers of the generation would talk. They would say, heaven forbid, that she had strayed or had not strayed. And the Holy One, blessed be He, then remembered Sarah, and Sarah gave birth, and Sarah had a son, our patriarch Isaac.
[09:03] We see here some extremely important foundations: A person who is suspected of something bad, even though they didn’t do that bad thing, and people are just slandering them and suspecting them for no reason, and the person stays silent and says nothing, and accepts everything with love, and accepts where the Holy One, blessed be He, has placed them, and accepts the disgrace and the shame, and remains faithful to the Holy One, blessed be He, and faithful to values, and faithful to the Torah, and faithful to tradition, and faithful to the service of G-d, and does not, heaven forbid, deny or break or ruin things, but rather remains faithful—what does he merit? If he has no children, he is blessed with children. If he has no livelihood, the Holy One, blessed be He, gives him livelihood. If he lacks heavenly assistance, the Holy One, blessed be He, gives him heavenly assistance.
[09:58] How great is the virtue of people who are insulted and others insult them, yet they do not take offense? How great is the virtue that a person hears their own disgrace and stays silent and does not speak? By what merit was Rebecca blessed with children? By the merit that Isaac suspected her. Our forefather Isaac suspected her, and she remained silent; by that merit, she was blessed with our forefather Isaac. Sarah, by the merit that our forefather Abraham was mocked by the generation, people suspected her, they suspected her, she remained silent and merited a son like our forefather Isaac.
[10:32] This matter carries immense weight: A person who is suspected of something and remains silent, a person who is humiliated and remains silent, a person who hears disgrace that has nothing to do with them and remains silent, and people speak lashon hara (evil speech) about them and they remain silent, and they accept the judgment of the Holy One, blessed be He, with love, and bad things are done to them and they remain silent and accept the judgment of the Holy One, blessed be He, with love—what reward does the Holy One, blessed be He, give to such a person?
[11:05] And let us look at Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, whom they suspected. Isaac our forefather suspected Eliezer, the servant of Abraham. Isaac our forefather said, “When you were sent to bring Rebecca, heaven forbid, she had no signs of virginity, it must be from you.” What did Isaac merit? What did Eliezer merit? What is written about Isaac our forefather? That after the binding of Isaac, he was in the Garden of Eden for three years. Who ascended alive to the Garden of Eden, body and soul? Abraham’s servant, Eliezer. And why did he merit such an ascent? By virtue of the fact that he was suspected, and he accepted the suspicion and remained silent. He said, “Heaven forbid,” and took Isaac our forefather to the place where she fell onto the tree, and there was the blood of virginity, and the angel Gabriel guarded the blood. And through this, Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, merited to ascend to the Garden of Eden alive, body and soul, meriting from the privileges that only ten people in the entire universe have merited to receive. Eliezer, the servant of Abraham, merited this.
[12:12] How much does a person need to work on themselves? Yes, they hurt you, they shame you, you want to show that you are right, you want to show that you are innocent, you want to show that you didn’t do anything, and you stand there arguing and cursing and talking and trying to justify yourself. It doesn’t always help, and in heaven, it certainly doesn’t help. A person who hears their insult and does not reply, the G-d of Abraham is their help. The G-d of Abraham our father is the help of a person who is insulted and reviled, and they remain silent.
[12:43] And one must know that in heaven, there is no clock, there is no clock. It can take a day for G-d to repay you with good, a week, a month, a year. A person does not know the calculations of the Holy One, blessed be He. Many times we want the result quickly, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves the result for another time, another place, and another period—a period when you will truly need that thing. We want everything quickly, but there are things whose reward is extremely great, and sometimes a challenge awaits us further down the road where we will need that reward. That is where we need the reward, not everything in cash right this moment. Sometimes, further along the path, there are other things for which you will need that reward, not now. So the mitzvah needs to stand with us then, not now. Therefore, the Holy One, blessed be He, the Cause of all causes and the Reason for all reasons, knows everything, and He knows where to pay the reward and where to wait with the reward.
[13:43] And if you are being shamed right now, and if you are being humiliated right now, and if you are being hurt right now, know how to take that humiliation and that shame and keep it. Those who hear their shame and do not respond, the G-d of Abraham is their help. The G-d of our father Abraham, who helped our father Abraham through all the difficult things, He is there to help the one who is hurt and does not retaliate. He is there to help the one to whom bad things are done, and he remains silent.
[14:11] How many times in life have we seen this—people who were hurt, who were shamed, how the Holy One, blessed be He, waits and rewards the person with good? But if you are hurt and you retaliate, and you speak badly afterwards, and you become bitter, and you get angry, then you ruin it. The greatness of a person is to accept the shame and the disgrace and say, “This is an atonement for sins, this is an atonement for sins, this is an atonement for sins. I accept it as an atonement for sins, and I take it as…” A person who falls on the road and gets hurt and cuts their leg, what will they do? Will they take a stick and hit the road? The road doesn’t feel the blow, it has nothing to do with it. It’s the same thing with a person who has been hurt by someone, a person who has been distressed by someone, a person who received a blow—that was just the reason. These are things from the Holy One, blessed be He.
[15:02] If someone now embarrassed you, it is the Holy One, blessed be He, who placed them there to embarrass you. It is the Holy One, blessed be He, who placed them here right now to hurt you, and you need to accept it with love, and you don’t know what and how it will stand for you. Just like King David, when Shimei ben Gera cursed him, King David told all his soldiers and his guards, “Do not do anything to him. G-d sent him to hurt me, G-d sent him to embarrass me. Do not do anything to him; he is only a messenger of G-d. This is a problem between me and G-d, it is not a problem between me and him.”
[15:36] People take problems as being problems caused by other people. Did someone just do something to you? Don’t look for the person who did it to you. There is something greater above that caused you to receive that blow. People need to know, according to Kabbalah, many times there is someone who starts harming a person, persecuting them, causing them grief, humiliating them, and the person thinks, “How do I silence him?” And the person thinks, “What do I do so that this person stops, leaves me alone, lets me be? What do I do?”
[16:09] You need to know, if someone gets up and starts causing problems for someone, it’s a sign that you committed some transgression, and the evil angel of the transgression you committed has entered someone else, and this other person is now coming and harming you. It won’t help you to fight with him, it won’t help you to curse him, it won’t help you to silence him. Think about what you did wrong. Think about what you did badly, repent for it, and that person will leave you alone. That, that person will let you be, because even if you silence him, the angel will move to another place, and from there another trouble will come to you.
[16:43] Think about what you did wrong. Think about what you did that makes the Holy One, blessed be He, angry. Think about what you did that created an accusation. A person who commits a sin creates an accusation. A person who performs a commandment creates a good angel: “For He will command His angels for you to guard you in all your ways.” These are the commandments that a person performs, which accompany the person and protect him. And heaven forbid, the bad deeds that a person does are bad angels that go and enter into people who come and harm the person.
[17:15] Therefore, a person, if there is someone who is harming you, if there is someone who is causing you distress, you should do a soul-searching account of whom you have hurt, whom you have distressed, what you did wrong, and go and appease them. And that person who is harming you will leave you alone. It’s not about the argument right now that that person is bothering you; it’s about a bad angel that you created, and it is chasing you, and until you silence it, the problem you have will not stop. Silence it, and the problem will stop.
[17:46] The same goes for Rebecca: Rebecca was humiliated, she was ashamed. She was righteous, she was holy. Isaac our forefather stands and says to her, “Where is your virgin blood? Where is the virgin blood? You came here at age three, where is the virgin blood?” Isaac is rightfully asking her: “Did you sin with Eliezer, Abraham’s servant, the Eliezer who brought you here with him?” But the Cause of all causes and the Reason of all reasons, the Holy One, blessed be He, already at that very moment when it happened, the Holy One, blessed be He, says to Gabriel the angel, “Keep this blood so that this blood does not disappear.”
[18:21] Years passed. The blood was on the tree, it was lost. The Holy One, blessed be He, says to Michael, Gabriel the angel, “Keep this blood.” Gabriel keeps it. Rebecca gives an answer. Isaac goes and finds it. Isaac finds it and removes the suspicion from Rebecca, and because of the suspicion he had of her, she was blessed with children. As Rabbi Akiva says, if she has no children, she is blessed with children. Not like Rabbi Ishmael who says that if there were sick children, they would be born healthy, but rather like Rabbi Akiva who says she is blessed with children, and she was indeed blessed with children. And Eliezer, who was suspected but did nothing wrong, merits entering the Garden of Eden alive.
[19:04] A person who is suspected of something and remains silent, a person who is wronged, who is suspected of something he did not do, and he remains silent, the Holy One, blessed be He, rewards him with tremendous things. The Holy One, blessed be He, gives him things that are impossible to imagine or describe. We have said many times that a person’s greatest enemy is not his friends, it is not his enemies. A person is his own greatest enemy. If you know how to conduct yourself, if you know how to speak, if you know how to think, if you know how to walk in the right path, the Holy One, blessed be He, will not withhold good from those who walk uprightly. No evil comes from G-d. You are the one bringing down the evil. No evil comes from G-d. From the Holy One, blessed be He, evil never comes. From the Holy One, blessed be He, only good things come, and no evil comes.
[19:54] Perhaps it is possible to explain and say more about Rebecca: It is written that Isaac and Rebecca prayed for children, “and Isaac entreated the L-rd for his wife because she was barren, and the L-rd granted his entreaty.” Isaac cries, prays to the Holy One, blessed be He, because the Gemara says that he prayed to the Holy One, blessed be He, for his wife who had no children. The L-rd grants his entreaty, answers him, and Rebecca conceives. Why is it not written that Rebecca also prayed? Why does the holy Torah not emphasize that Rebecca also, like the first question?
[20:31] So perhaps it can be explained and said the same thing as we said before: When Eliezer brought Rebecca on the camel, Eliezer goes with Rebecca on the camel, brings her to the house of Abraham our forefather, and on the way, Rebecca sees Isaac our forefather, and Isaac went out to meditate in the field. Our sages say he went out to establish the Mincha prayer, and when she saw him, she was greatly startled. She was greatly startled when she saw Isaac our forefather. So many of the commentators ask: What does it mean that she was greatly startled? Isaac was holy. She saw the face of a holy man and was greatly startled by the face of a holy man.
[21:10] But there are commentators who come and offer a different foundation: When Rebecca saw Isaac, what did she see? She saw with the Holy Spirit, she saw with her holiness that Isaac our forefather is—he is her husband, this is her husband, and Isaac our forefather is destined to marry her, and two sons are destined to be born from her. Which two sons? Jacob and Esau. And then what did Rebecca do? Rebecca was terrified that a wicked son like Esau was destined to be born to her. She was terrified with a very great terror.
[21:42] And where do we find such an instance? The Gemara tells of King Hezekiah. King Hezekiah, the Gemara says he was worthy of being the King Messiah. King Hezekiah was a great righteous man and was holy, and he was the son of the son of David, a descendant of the royal dynasty of King David, and he was worthy of being the King Messiah. And the Gemara tells and says that King Hezekiah did not marry a woman. Isaiah the prophet came to him and said to him, “You will not die”—Isaiah the prophet said to him, “You are about to die.” King Hezekiah asked him, “Why must I die?” He said to him, “Because you did not engage in procreation, you did not marry, and because you did not marry, you will die.” King Hezekiah said to Isaiah the prophet, “How can I marry? After all, I saw through the Holy Spirit that a wicked son would be born to me, that is Manasseh, who brought an idol into the Temple, brought idol worship into the Temple,” and said, “That is why I did not marry.” Isaiah the prophet said to him, “Regarding things too wonderful for you, these are great matters. What are you demanding? A person is commanded to be fruitful and multiply. Get married! What will be? That is not your problem, you need to fulfill the commandment.” And then King Hezekiah said to Isaiah the prophet, “You are a great prophet. Do you have a son, a daughter?” He said to him, “Yes.” He said to him, “Bring her to me, and I will marry her. Your merit and the merit of my ancestors will stand so that G-d will help.” And then a son was born to him, and so on, what the Gemara, the Torah tells.
[23:14] But what do we find here? That the righteous prefer not to have children than to have wicked children. “Sing, O barren one who has not borne.” Our holy sages say, “Sing, O barren one”—the barren one will be in song and joy. She did not bear, she did not bear children who commit sins and cause grief to the Holy One, blessed be He. The righteous person does not desire a wicked child, but rather wants a righteous child.
[23:40] The same thing can be clarified and said about Rebecca: When she saw that a wicked son was destined to be born to her, then Rebecca was greatly terrified. And when Isaac and Rebecca stood and prayed for children, Rebecca did not press as much as Isaac pressed. Why? Because Rebecca knew that she had a wicked son who was destined to be born, and she did not want to have a wicked son, and therefore she did not stand and press. And that is why the L-rd granted his prayer—the L-rd answered Isaac and not Rebecca, because Rebecca’s prayer was an imperfect prayer from the heart, and a prayer that is not perfect from the heart does not have the greatest power.
[24:18] A person must also be careful with their prayers, what a person prays for. The Midrash tells a story and says there was a certain man who was walking on a path in the desert, and it was difficult and hot for him. There was great heat in the desert, and he stood and said, “Holy One, blessed be He, it’s a pity I don’t have a donkey. If I had a donkey, it would be easier.” The king, who loved his donkey very much, passed by, and the king’s donkey had broken its leg. The king called that man and said to him, “Pick up the donkey on your back and take it to the city.” That man asked for a donkey, but he didn’t ask for a donkey to ride on. He asked for a donkey, and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him a donkey. But how did He give him the donkey? To carry it on his back!
[25:01] Also regarding a prayer that a person prays, a person needs to have intention in the prayer and say the prayer properly, and say the prayer properly with the mouth, with the lips, to move the lips and say with the lips exactly how one needs to pray and what one needs to ask for, and exactly what he wants from the Holy One, blessed be He. And not vague prayers, and not prayers that one doesn’t understand, but rather to delve into the depth of the prayers and to deepen one’s understanding of the prayers. And when a person delves into the depth of the prayers, then the Holy One, blessed be He, hears every prayer. The Holy One, blessed be He, hears the prayers; there is no prayer that goes unanswered. It doesn’t matter what, and it doesn’t matter how much. Every prayer that a person prays is powerful, for no prayer goes unanswered. The Holy One, blessed be He, hears every prayer. The Holy One, blessed be He, hears all the prayers of the people of Israel, even if one doesn’t see the results today.
[25:56] Many times in life, a person prays and doesn’t see results, and prays again and doesn’t see results, and prays for years and doesn’t see results. And suddenly one prayer breaks through, and all the prayers he prayed for 20 years descend upon the person in a single moment—an abundance with no beginning and no end. Why? You prayed for 20 years, you didn’t see results, but no prayer goes unanswered. All the prayers ascended before the Holy One, blessed be He, and were kept. “Put my tears in Your bottle,” and in one moment the Holy One, blessed be He, brings down all the blessing upon a person, brings down all the salvation, brings down all the heavenly assistance. The Holy One, blessed be He, gives a person a blessing without measure because all the prayers that he prays, the Holy One, blessed be He, has kept them, accumulated them, gathered them, and taken them. And the Holy One, blessed be He, brings down upon a person a blessing that has neither beginning nor end.
[26:51] Therefore, each one of us should be diligent. These are not simple times for the people of Israel. We are in a time where, on one hand, everyone is happy, everyone has everything, nothing is missing; on the other hand, everyone is worried, everyone—no one has peace of mind. Everyone doesn’t know, everyone doesn’t know what will be with them, how it will be with them, what will happen in every matter. There is everything and there is nothing. There is joy and there is sadness. There is satisfaction and there is a lack of satisfaction. All of life is in great confusion. These are not the lives that used to be; these are not the things that used to be. In the past, people were happy, people were content with little. Whoever had a little was happy with it, and whoever had a little bit more was even happier with that. Today, whatever a person has, they do not feel satisfaction in any matter.
[27:41] The thoughts and the world and where the world is heading, and the conduct of the world and the way of the world—it is a path that is not simple at all. And in order to survive with sanity in the new world we are in, a person must be very strongly attached to the holy Torah, but to be attached to a Torah of truth, to a true Torah. If a person is not attached to a Torah of truth, they lose the entire essence of their life. A person gets into fears, a person—there is nothing to be afraid of, yet they are afraid. A person gets into anxieties; there is nothing to be anxious about, yet they are anxious. A person gets into worries, a person gets into thoughts, a person gets into places that have neither a beginning nor an end.
[28:22] Everyone should sit for a moment with themselves and think: Everything you were afraid of in life, nothing ever came of it for you. What you didn’t fear is what happened to you. Everyone should think about all the things you were afraid of. You worried about it, and you were afraid of it, and you had anxiety about it—how many worries are there? Nothing happened from any worry; from the things we didn’t worry about, that’s where problems happened. A person needs to be wise and know how to organize their life correctly and be attached to the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life is the holy Torah. The Tree of Life is a tree, it is the holy Torah, it is the holy Torah, because they are our life and the length of our days.
[29:00] If a person leaves the Torah for one moment, the Rambam says that the moment a person removes themselves for one moment from the Torah, removes themselves for one moment from holiness, at that very moment all the bad things open up to them. Now you are attached to G-d, G-d protects you. You stop for one moment being attached to G-d, then you returned five minutes later to being attached to G-d, but in those five minutes, a problem had already entered, a problem entered. You opened the window, a mosquito got in. This mosquito is buzzing around; maybe it will bite you in a day or in a week, but this mosquito is in the house. You distracted your mind from the Holy One, blessed be He, for one moment, the window opened, a mosquito got in. It will bite you today, in a week, in two weeks; it is inside the house.
[29:48] A person needs to be attached to G-d all the time. Being attached to G-d means even when you go to work, you are working, but you are attached to G-d. You are thinking, “I will do commandments, I will do good deeds.” You pray Shacharit, pray Mincha, pray Arvit, go to Torah classes. Make yourself a rabbi, and make yourself a rabbi from whom you consume Torah and suckle holiness. You are around the Torah, around the commandments, around the holiness, around the good deeds. You don’t give the door to a mosquito, you don’t open the window for a mosquito to enter, you don’t open the window for a mosquito to enter.
[30:24] We will continue and say another great foundation that by virtue of this foundation, the Holy One, blessed be He, will give us all abundance, blessing, livelihood, and salvation, and will humble our hearts to serve You in truth, to serve G-d, truly to serve G-d, the Cause of all causes and the Reason of all reasons. To serve G-d in truth, to serve G-d with humility, with simplicity, with fear of heaven, to be lovers of G-d, to be lovers of G-d, to be true lovers of G-d. To be lovers of G-d like our grandfathers whom we were privileged to see: Baba Sali, Rabbi Moshe Pinto, Baba Meir. How were they servants of G-d? How were they servants of G-d? How did they see G-d in everything? How did they serve G-d with immense love, with immense love, with immense love?
[31:12] In this week’s Torah portion, we find our forefather Isaac telling his son Esau, “Take your sword, your spear, and sharpen the knife, take the bow, the bow and arrow. Take all your tools and go, hunt some game for me, and bring me game to eat, and after I eat, I will bless you with a great blessing.” And he tells him, “Leave your clothes at home, just take your hunting gear and go hunt some game for me to bring me the food that my soul loves.”
[31:42] First of all, we must ask a question: Our forefather Isaac was a supreme saint, he was blind, he was a righteous man. Can’t you give a blessing without eating? After all, great righteous people should possess the trait of modesty. What does it mean: “Go hunt game that my soul loves, what I love, and when I take the food that I love, I will bless you”? It doesn’t befit a person who is a perfect offering to the Holy One, blessed be He, to say such things. It’s not, it’s not appropriate. And furthermore, his son Esau—for Esau was wicked. Esau committed several extremely severe sins that day: incest, bloodshed, idolatry; he committed extremely severe sins. What, what, what is he? What is he going and taking and asking to take? What, what is he asking to go and take? Is he asking to go and say a blessing over food, about things like that? What? And what does he need to tell his son how to take the sword, the knife, the bow and arrow? And does Esau not know how to take a bow and arrow? Esau was a man of the field his whole life. He was a man who hunted, hunted. He spent his whole life hunting, that’s all he did his whole life. That was his life—hunting. Why is Isaac our forefather giving him advice on how to hunt? Isaac our forefather didn’t know anything; Isaac our forefather was innocent, he was a perfect offering, he didn’t know anything. Why is he sending him and telling him and saying to him, “Take your gear”? What does tzayada mean? What is the meaning of “take your gear”?
[33:12] Isaac our forefather sends Esau, and Esau goes. Rebecca immediately goes to Jacob and tells him, “Your father wants to give the blessings.” And what are these blessings? These are the most important blessings. These are the blessings that the Holy One, blessed be He, and G-d blessed Abraham with: “everything from everything.” All of these are the blessings that passed from son to son to son, which are the most immense blessings. There is a dispute: To whom did Jacob our forefather pass on the blessings? One opinion says he passed them on to the tribe of Levi. Another opinion says he passed them on to the tribe of Joseph. One opinion says he passed them on to all twelve tribes, each according to their strength, and together this became the entire people of Israel, one extremely great power. But the blessing of Abraham is the strongest blessing. Abraham blessed Isaac, and now whom does Isaac want to bless? Esau the wicked!
[34:08] And what to tell him? “May G-d give you, at the end of the Sabbath, of the dew of heaven, and the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine. Let peoples serve you, and nations bow down to you. Be lord over your brothers; may your mother’s sons bow down to you. Cursed be everyone who curses you, and blessed be everyone who blesses you.” What kind of blessings to give to Esau, to Esau? To give these blessings to Esau? And what about Jacob, who is a simple man, a dweller in tents, sitting in the tent of Torah, sitting and studying Torah, sitting in humility, sitting in simplicity, sitting in modesty, sitting in holiness, in purity—not to give him anything? To give this to the murderer, to the adulterer, to him to give these blessings? “May G-d give you”—the Gemara says, “May He give you the Mishna, the Gemara, and the Chumash; may He give you the entire Torah.” What will he do with the Torah? “May He give you a livelihood.” What will you do? What will he do with all of this? And what about Jacob, the simple man, the dweller in tents?
[35:06] And then Rebecca goes, because Rebecca already knows through the Holy Spirit that this son will be wicked, and this son Esau is not good. Jacob our forefather is the righteous son and the good son, so she sends Jacob. She says to Jacob, “Please, take the precious garments of Esau.” There is a Midrash; the Midrash says what was on Esau’s garments: These were Nimrod’s garments. They were garments of the highest order, the very highest. On these garments, all the animals were depicted, all of them—a lion, animals, all the animals were depicted on the garments, and they were depicted with such a realistic drawing, a drawing from heaven, such that when they would go out wearing these garments, the lion would come on its own, there was no need to fight with it. The sheep would come on its own, the deer would come on its own. These garments would attract all the animals to them because it looked real, and it had an extremely strong power of attraction to come to Esau if he were wearing the garments. And Isaac our forefather tells him, “Go without the garments, go with the bow and arrow and go to the field.”
[36:11] What, what was the point of going to the field to hunt game? What was the point of doing these things? There’s a holy book called the Hafla’ah. The author of the Hafla’ah was a supreme saint, one of the greatest of the Jewish people, and the author of the Hafla’ah says as follows: There are four elements: the world is built on four elements: Inanimate is the earth; living is the trees and the fruits and the things that grow in the ground—vegetative, excuse me, vegetative is the trees that grow in the ground; living is the animals that eat; and speaking is the human being who speaks. And these are the four stages: inanimate (earth), vegetative (trees), living (which are the animals that eat the fruits), and speaking (which is the human).
[36:59] And these are the four stages that a person advances through, that the soul advances through. Heaven forbid, a person who committed sins, did bad deeds, returns in reincarnation as inanimate: he is found in the ground as inanimate, the soul is found in the ground. It waits for years, tens of years. A person who lived 200, 500, 700 years ago and committed sins, he waits inside the ground. His soul waits inside the ground until some wheat grows, or some apple grows, or something grows, and a Jew cuts it and recites the blessing, “Creator of the fruit of the tree.” He has rectified that soul which has been inside the ground for years. And if a person ate and did not recite a blessing, then that soul begins to accuse the person: he ruined it. It needs to return for another 100 years, another 200 years to rectify it. That is why many times a person does not know. A person says, “I want remedies, I want remedies, I have problems, I have no livelihood, I have no children.” A blessing you did not recite caused some soul to go around for another 200, 300 years, and it is accusing you. You are looking to go to a righteous person’s grave to pray and have everything work out; you are looking to give charity and have everything work out; you are looking to do one thing and have everything work out—but there are souls you did not bless and did not rectify, and they are accusing you! They are standing and accusing you. And if you had prayed “Blessed,” they would have been happy, they would have given you good things.
[38:31] A person sits at a meal, recites the blessing Borei Pri Ha’etz (“Creator of the fruit of the tree”), and suddenly they gain something, and everything is good for them. They don’t know why. Because you rectified some soul within this fruit. Because you rectified some soul within this Hamotzi Lechem Min Ha’aretz (“Who brings forth bread from the earth”). And if it is not a fruit that you are eating, but an animal that eats the grass, and after it ate the grass, they slaughtered it according to Halakha (Jewish law) and brought it home, and they ate this meat at a Shabbat meal or used it for a Seudat Mitzvah (a celebratory meal for a commandment)—this is a Seudat Mitzvah, a table before the L-rd. It elevates the soul to the highest place.
[39:16] Regarding this, the Gemara says: “When two sit and eat without words of Torah between them, it is as if they ate sacrifices of the dead.” What are sacrifices of the dead? There are souls of the dead there that you haven’t rectified, and that is sacrifices of the dead. What does Isaac do? And regarding this, our holy rabbis ask: Why is it easy for animals to eat, and why do they have an easy livelihood? And the Gemara says you have never seen a beast or an animal that works at a bank to bring in a livelihood or works at some job; they have food laid out for them as much as they want. So the animals that eat grass from the ground, the grass mainly wants to get out of the ground quickly because the reincarnation of the inanimate is the most difficult reincarnation. They want to be on a living thing, to come out into an animal. They are on an animal, with an animal, so it’s already easier for them, it’s easier for them. It is easier for them to rectify from there than when they are in the inanimate.
[40:18] Isaac our forefather wants to bless Esau, and he knows that this is a most holy blessing. He knows that this is a most exalted blessing, and he says to Esau, “Take your gear and go.” Isaac our forefather is testing Esau on how he obtains the animals. When Jacob comes to Isaac, to our forefather Jacob, and says to him, “May the L-rd call before me,” “I just walked in the forest, the animals came to me on their own. May the L-rd call—I didn’t have to fight and struggle like Esau. The animals didn’t want to be caught and ran away, but for our forefather Jacob, the L-rd called, the animals came right to me because the animals wanted me to rectify them.”
[40:58] And then our forefather Isaac says to Jacob, “Come closer to me, I want to check who you are,” because that is the true way. Because if a matter comes for true rectification, there is no need to chase after it much. If a matter does not come for true rectification and goes through all sorts of detours, then it requires struggle and a hard fight. And from here, we learn a great principle: A person whose heart is pure, and all that he has is charity, commandments, and good deeds, but with a whole heart, then the L-rd will call before him; G-d gives him everything easily. A person who has complexes in his head, and yes and no and maybe, then he needs weapons of war and to go searching, and maybe he will attain it and maybe he won’t. These sparks do not want to come to a person. But when a person is wholehearted and wants things and is in a state of completeness, like Jacob who went to bring his father food and says to his father, “The L-rd called before me; it came by itself, the rectification came by itself.” So Jacob—Isaac our forefather immediately blesses him: “And may G-d give you of the dew of heaven and the fat of the earth.” He understands that this is the complete rectification.
[42:07] If so, where do problems of livelihood begin? In your head. When you start thinking, “Yes, no, maybe I’ll do this, maybe I’ll do that,” then G-d makes the livelihood difficult. Where do problems of any matter in life begin? That is when you are not at peace with yourself. When you have found your heart faithful before You, you receive everything with ease, pleasantly, comfortably, well, in a good way. And when you start asking difficult questions, then things are difficult, and you have to go with hunting tools to fight, to run, to take risks, and to bring your livelihood.
[42:41] But a person who is pure—we see people whose lives are in purity, in purity, innocence with G-d, walking with G-d, innocently, innocently, innocently. We have been seeing this for 33 years. All the people we saw who were innocent with G-d, without questions, the Holy One, blessed be He, put them through trials, they passed the trials, and the Holy One, blessed be He, gave them blessings without questions. When a person starts asking questions, then the Holy One, blessed be He, also starts challenging him, because those souls, those sparks that are in the money, in this business, in this business, do not want to come to him. They come to him, that’s the problem: he is not whole, he has questions about everything, everything is difficult for him, everything is uncomfortable for him, everything is gossip, everything is arguments. So the Holy One, blessed be He, makes it heavy for him, makes it heavy for him, because he is not—he is not flowing, he is not going with the things that one needs to go with.
[43:40] Jacob our forefather, “The L-rd will call before me”—he was in holiness, it came to him. Esau would catch game, would run away; catch game, would run away. Why? Because Esau was completely full of sins, and the sins—the sparks did not want to come through him.
[43:55] We bless everyone in the merit of the holy forefathers. May the Holy One, blessed be He, bestow upon us all great abundance. And upon Rabbi Mordechai, who is beloved and dear to us, may the Holy One, blessed be He, bring him joy. We have so, so, so much love for you, so much love for you. Renew our days as of old, and build the righteous generation. May the L-rd bless you, may He grant you salvation and blessing. In the merit of the holy forefathers, may you succeed, rise and elevate, and merit satisfaction and great salvation. Rabbi Hananya the righteous, we love you with a great love. All the righteous ones, may the Holy One, blessed be He, give you joy, blessing; may everyone have their heart’s desires fulfilled for the good, and may you rise and succeed and merit, righteous ones, all the good. Amen.
