Musar su Genesi 25:32

The scoffers of that generation maintained that Sarah had been impregnated by Avimelech and that Isaac was the issue. They claimed that, had Abraham been Isaac's father, it would have been impossible for Isaac to have fathered a son such as Esau who pursued married women to commit adultery with them under the noses of their husbands. Isaac's extraordinary success as well as the fact that he was sanctified on Mount Moriah and not allowed to leave the holy soil of ארץ ישראל, all served to show that he was indeed a true son of Abraham. Of Esau the Torah reports in Genesis 36 6: וילך עשו אל ארץ, "Esau went to a land." He had to leave ארץ ישראל because that land "vomits" people who behave in a grossly incestuous manner. Isaac was the model of refinement in every respect. The reason G–d blessed him in such an extraordinary fashion was to demonstrate the fact to one and all that sexually pure conduct unlocks all the bounty of the land of Israel to those who dwell in it.

I have already hinted that Jacob, who referred to himself as possessing כל, "all," in Genesis 33,11, is similarly described by that term in our grace prayer. What is meant is his remaining totally alive, seeing all his children continued to live according to their father's tenets. Jacob was also called איש, and our sages relate that whereas Jacob did not die, Esau did die (Taanit 8). Esau had said of himself in Genesis 25,32 that he was headed for death. Jacob's ability to remain "alive," חי, began with Sarah, who was not attached to the קליפה, and through whose son, ביצחק, one side of such pollutants was already removed, i.e. מיצחק, hence the description of his blessing as מכל. The terms בכל-מכל-כל, refer to elimination of the pollutants in ever-increasing measure. Abraham therefore is at the bottom of such a chain whereas Jacob is at the top, and thus was called חי.

All three patriarchs were refined through the experience of some degree of exile. Jacob together with his sons, of course, descended into exile in Egypt, where they were in real exile, having had to leave their homeland. Jacob actually should have been brought to Egypt in chains, as our sages state in Shabbat 89b. The 400-year exile started with the birth of Isaac, though Isaac did not actually leave the Holy Land. He is however, always referred to as being גר, a stranger, in that land. Even though the patriarchs were not physically enslaved, the status of being sojourners sufficed to consider them as being in exile. Even Abraham, who was looked up to as a prince among the local population, and who had been "crowned" king in the עמק השוה, as we have mentioned earlier, suffered thirty years of mental exile during the years between the ברית בין הבתרים and the birth of Isaac. Jacob was especially pursued by the קליפה, for Samael had managed to injure Jacob's ירך, thigh, hip joint. As a result, Jacob was in need of greater refinement than his father or grandfather, which manifested itself in a more serious form of exile. Although Esau was a son of Isaac, and honored his father, [which indicated Isaac's affinity to that קליפה of his, Ed.], the fact that Esau lived a life designed to lead to physical as well as spiritual death (as we know from his own admission in Genesis 25,32 when he sold the birthright, and again when he wished for his father to die prematurely, Genesis 27,41) meant that Isaac had rid himself of that קליפה and therefore only needed a minimal amount of exile experience. Abraham died before Esau had become wicked, and thus had no affinity to Esau's קליפה. Abraham also expelled Ishmael from his home when G–d commanded him to pay heed to what his wife Sarah had told him, namely to expel the servant woman and her son. As a result of his keeping away from both these קליפות Abraham did not have to experience actual exile. He did not even have to feel as a stranger. All that was needed to refine him was the anxiety experienced between the promise of the birth of an heir and the fulfillment of that promise, which meant the onset of the 400 years of his descendants being regarded as strangers or of their being actual slaves.