What Adam's Sin Has to Do with Ya'akov's Blessings
One of the most troubling episodes in Parashat Toledot is the account of how Ya'akov obtained the blessings that Yitzchak had intended to give Esav. At Rivkah's insistence, Ya'akov disguised himself as his brother and deliberately deceived his own father. This raises two very difficult questions. First, why did the blessings seemingly have to be obtained through deception? And second, how could Rivkah, one of our holy Matriarchs, instruct her son to do something that appears to be morally wrong?
Considerable time was spent examining the explanations offered by our classical mefarshim. Although many of them provide important insights into these questions, none seemed to bring the entire episode together into one coherent understanding. However, two extraordinary passages in the Agra d'Kalla (Toledot 53-54) offer an approach that addresses both questions within a single, unified framework.
Therefore, over the next two issues of The Shoemaker Report, we're going to do something a little different. Instead of developing our usual study supported by various sources, we want to invite you to encounter the Agra d'Kalla's own words, follow his teaching phrase by phrase, and allow his argument to unfold as he presents it – with explanatory comments as we go along. This week we'll address our first question, and next week we'll turn to the second.
The Agra d'Kalla begins his explanation with Yitzchak's words to Esav after Ya'akov had already received the blessings. When Esav returned from hunting and discovered what had happened, Yitzchak told him (Bereshit 27:35): בָּא אָחִיךָ בְּמִרְמָה וַיִּקַּח בִּרְכָתֶךָ (Your brother came through deception and took your blessing). It is the word בְּמִרְמָה [through deception] that becomes the starting point for the Agra d'Kalla's explanation.
על פי דברי הזהר (בראשית דף לה ע״ב) הוצרכו הברכות לבא אל יעקב במרמה, דהנה יעקב שופריה דאדם הראשון ותיקונו, ועשו בחינת ס״ם נח״ש כמתורגם ״נחשירכין״ (According to the words of the Zohar [Bereshit 35b], it was necessary for the blessings to come to Ya'akov through deception, for behold, Ya'akov possessed the beauty of Adam ha-Rishon and was his tikkun, whereas Esav was an aspect of Samech-Mem, the Nachash, as alluded to by the Targum's expression nachshirchin) – The reference to Ya'akov's beauty draws upon Chazal's teaching (Bava Metzia 84a): שׁוּפְרֵיהּ דְּיַעֲקֹב אָבִינוּ מֵעֵין שׁוּפְרֵיהּ דְּאָדָם הָרִאשׁוֹן (The beauty of Ya'akov Avinu was a reflection of the beauty of Adam ha-Rishon). Further, the concept of tikkun goes beyond the comparison of their beauty, referring to Ya'akov's role in rectifying the spiritual damage caused by Adam's sin. The Samech-Mem is the spiritual adversary associated with the serpent in the Zohar. The unusual Aramaic expression נחשירכין appears in Targum Onkelos on Bereshit 25:27, where it describes Esav as a hunter. The Shelah ha-Kadosh (Toledot, Torah Ohr), quoting the Tziyuni, explains that the expression alludes to a tradition that Esav had the image of a Nachash on his thigh, reflected in the mystical reading נחש ירכן.
והנה הנחש הביא הקללות על ידי ערמה, והנחש היה ערום (בראשית ג א), על כן הוצרך יעקב תיקונו דאדם ליקח הברכות במרמה (And behold, the Nachash brought the curses through cunning, as it is written [Bereshit 3:1]: "And the Nachash was cunning." Therefore, Ya'akov, who was Adam's tikkun, had to obtain the blessings through deception) – The Zohar itself makes an important clarification (Bereshit 35b): ויעקב דידיה נטיל בכלא (And Ya'akov took what was rightfully his in every respect). In other words, Ya'akov was not taking blessings that rightfully belonged to Esav. The question was not whether Ya'akov was entitled to the blessings, but why he had to obtain them through deception.
ועל פי זה תבין ותשכיל ותדע הנה על ידי חטא האדם עץ הדעת טוב ורע, נתערבו טוב ורע כנודע, ויעקב שופריה דאדם עליו מוטל להפריד הטוב מן הרע (And according to this, you will understand, gain insight, and know that through Adam's sin involving the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, good and evil became intermingled, as is known, and Ya'akov, who possessed the beauty of Adam, was charged with separating the good from the evil) – The intermingling described here is not merely a confusion between right and wrong. According to Kabbalistic teaching, Adam's sin caused sparks of kedushah to become trapped within the forces of evil, which derive their spiritual vitality from the kedushah caught within them. Ya'akov's task was therefore to separate these holy sparks from the evil in which they had become entangled, thereby advancing the rectification of the damage caused by Adam's sin.
ועל כן תבין במרמ״ה, בגימטריא טו״ב ר״ע, שעל ידי קבלתו הברכות יכול להפריד הטוב מן הרע, וישאר הרע בלא מציאות והאלילים כליל יחלוף (And therefore, you will understand that the numerical value of במרמה [through deception] equals that of טוב רע [good, evil], for through his receiving the blessings, Ya'akov was able to separate the good from the evil, so that evil would be left without existence, "and the idols shall utterly disappear" [Yeshayahu 2:18]) – The gematria is exact: בְּמִרְמָה equals 287, while טוֹב equals 17 and רַע equals 270, totaling 287. Thus, the very word Yitzchak used to describe how Ya'akov obtained the blessings points back to the intermingling of good and evil caused by Adam's sin. The concluding quotation from Yeshayahu points toward the ultimate culmination of this tikkun: the cessation of evil altogether. The Agra d'Kalla is not suggesting that evil ceased to exist when Ya'akov received the blessings, but that obtaining them enabled him to begin the work of separating good from evil, a process that will ultimately deprive evil of its very existence.
We can now begin to appreciate the larger picture emerging from the Agra d'Kalla's explanation. The Nachash brought curses into the world through deceit, and Ya'akov, as the tikkun of Adam ha-Rishon, had to reverse that damage by obtaining the blessings through deceit. Receiving those blessings enabled Ya'akov to undertake the separation of good from evil, a process that will ultimately lead to the complete elimination of evil from creation itself.
But while this explains why the blessings had to be obtained through deceit, it leaves our second question unanswered. How could Rivkah instruct her son to deceive his own father? In next week's report, we'll turn to the Agra d'Kalla's explanation of Rivkah's extraordinary role in this episode, where we'll discover that there was much more taking place than the Torah's straightforward narrative suggests.
