Alienation at the Doorway to Paradise - We examine the actual impact of גבורה מדת הדין ויצחק אבינו, which is really what our פרשה is coming to address even if on the surface it appears that it was just about the manipulation of יצחק ומדת הדין and seems to leave us in doubt about the outcome and with millennia-long problems of resolving the very issues that יצחק was apparently unable to resolve with מדת הדין which is of course very difficult: if this is the פרשה of יצחק and אלה תולדות יצחק, to say that it leaves with failure and doesn’t teach of מדת הדין is difficult.
We find instead an absolute revolution of מדת הדין changing it from blindness to ראה changing the sense that לבושין need to be penetrated – into understanding the nature of discrimination of דין coming to the אמת of יעקב, the one capable of integrating, the one who is therefore holistic, איש תם, becomes תתן אמת ליעקב where דין provides only the wherewithal. It is because of that עשיו is specifically given a place, because of that our תפלות demand that there be רע, because of that we have יום הכיפורים of שוכן איתם בתוך טומאותם, because of that we haveשעיר להש"ם שעיר לעזאזל , because of that living with יצר הרע all the elements that appear to be compromised דין are in fact the essence of מדת הדין in the world
A new understanding of Rivkah’s achievement for a family deeply challenged by דין, a family in existential crisis, from her own למה זה אנוכי (in Ramban and Zohar) and הנה אנוכי הולך למות and Yitzhak’s own apathetic blindness and לא ידעתי יום מותי. The brief spurt in Yitzhak’s life achievements ultimately brings him back to the Akedah, and he withdraws, just as עשו himself is devastated by that fact that גם באותו זקן פגע מדת הדין. There is a basic misapprehension of דין as needing to achieve the אמת, but the דין אמת לאמיתו is only in terms of לבושין not through blindness to לבוש! Thus Rivka not only softens דין she indeed changes it to discrimination, not determination, and her most important reason for not telling Yitzhak about her נביאות is in fact her fear that he will listen—and cut עשו out! She wants him in, she is אם יעקב ועשו-למה אשכל שניכם ביום אחד, she is the שני גויים רבי ואנטונינוס, she is the one who makes the שני גדיי עזים which to Zohar means the need for שעיר לעזאזל ושעיר לה'.
The discovery of Place as true מקום, the nature of love as an emergent entity of Place, רצוף אהבה, the אמ"ת יעקב being the Wholeness that incorporates both elements of the possibilities and Yaakov’s own understanding that he needs to wait until the end and not be tempted with solutions that lock out, and indeed he keeps Nimrod and his clothes going, the true תיקון אדם בגן עדן as his שופריה.

BW: The traditional reading of the parasha is that Yitzchak loves Esav, Rivka loves Ya’akov, and all her manipulation is motivated by an attempt to protect her favored son. This shiur turns all that on its head. We discover that Rivka is – from beginning to end – the “mother of Esav and Ya’akov.” It is she who recognizes that the two brothers and their respective berachas require each other. Rather than pre-empting their millennia-long struggle, she establishes the context for it. In doing so, she restructures the purpose of Din, and achieves a tikkun of Gan Eden. She demonstrates that Middat HaDin is the gateway to truth, but not truth itself, in the same way that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is the gateway to the Tree of Life.
This allows the search for true place – not an internal “secret garden” that becomes an escape into withdrawal and alienation, but the opening to the real Gan Eden in which a moment of significance in one’s life becomes an instant of connection that expands, and gives meaning to everything else. Thus, not only do we become zoche to Olam Habah, but we achieve its kinyan as well. (BW)

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