 Parshat To'l'dot
Explanations of this week's ParshaPix - Upper-right is LECHEM (bread) and N'ZID ADASHIM, lentil soup, prepared by Yaakov (as mourner's food for his father Yitzchak - Tradition tells us that this episode occurred on the day Avraham Avinu died). Implication in the pasuk is that the lentil soup was on the liquidy side, since when Eisav got the bread and soup, he ate and drank. MF added an interesting possibility. HAL'I'TEINI NA... NA generally means, please. That is how Onkeles reads it. Yet, does it fit with Eisav's personality in general, and his state of tiredness and gruffness in this episode, that he would say please? Perhaps NA means only partially cooked, as it means in the context of the prohibition of eating the Korban Pesach other than fully roasted. This idea fits nicely. Yaakov was in the process of cooking the N'ZID ADASHIM and Eisav impatiently demands that he be fed this partially cooked red stuff. The handshake represents the deal made between Yitzchak and Avimelech and Pichol. The earth-mover (steam-shovel?) is the various diggings of the wells. The successful well was called REHOVOT, as in streets as it the street signs at the bottom-right. Upper-left is a cloud giving rain and some stalks of wheat, representing the Bracha to Yaakov - V'YITEIN L'CHA... May G-d give you from the rain and bountiful produce of the land. The two goats are the ones that Rivka commanded Yaakov to get so that she could prepare Yitzchak's favorite dishes and so that Yaakov can disguise himself in case his father wanted to feel him (which he did). Note that the goat comes back, so to say, to haunt Yaakov when the Brothers dipped Yosef's multi-colored coat intothe blood of a goat, in order to deceive Yaakov. It is also no coincidence that the main sacrifice for communal sin is a goat. And the two goats of Yom Kippur are tied in as well. The sword is Eisav's livelihood. The little monkey is the small KUF in Rivka's exclamation, Katzti B'chayai. The stars represent the repetition of G-d's promise to Avraham, that his descendants will be as lofty and as countless as the starts in the sky. Which leaves the symbol in the lower-left corner, which is the astrological symbol for Genimi, the twins. As in Yaakov and Eisav. [The To'l'dot Homepage] |
