Musar su Genesi 27:46

But a life that has no reverence of God in it cannot be called life. And a person should be disgusted with and reject a life that is against the will of the Creator, may He be Blessed, as is said of Rebecca: "And Rebecca said to Isaac, 'I am weary of my life because of the daughters of Heth. If Jacob takes a wife of the daughters of Heth, such as these daughters of the land, then of what good is my life to me?' " (Gen. 27:46). Therefore, in a place where there is desecration of God's Name he should not worry about his life and always let his heart be ready to surrender himself for the Sanctification of God's Name in all of the commandments, be they light or of great importance.

Jacob's descendants merited the same advantages in due course. They experienced that the sea was split for their sake, and they witnessed the "great hand" of G–d at work (Exodus 14, 31). Israel merited the “רקיע” when G–d descended to Mount Sinai traversing all seven Heavenly Regions each known as a different רקיע at the time He gave them the Torah, commencing His revelation with the words: "I am the Lord your G–d who has taken you out of Egypt" (Midrash Hagadol Exodus 19, 20 – slightly different wording). Israel's relationship with G–d's throne is alluded to in Jeremiah 17, 12: כסא כבוד מרום מראשון מקם מקדשנו, "O Throne of Glory exalted from of old, our sacred Shrine". The "throne" mentioned is the throne of G–d in His Heaven. The same prophet wrote in Lamentations 2, 1: (after the destruction of the Temple) ‘השליך משמים ארץ תפארת ישראל, "He cast down from Heaven to Earth the majesty of Israel." Our sages in Eicha Rabbah 2,2 commented on this verse: G–d said: "The only reason you have the audacity to annoy Me is the fact that Jacob's features are engraved on My throne; Here I fling it down in your faces!" At that point in time, the letter כ in the ירך of Jacob became dislocated. The three letters in the word ירך, thigh, are the respective first letters of the words ים, רקיע, כסא. The dislocation of Jacob's thigh joint is an allusion to the dislocation of G–d's throne. The numerical value of the word כף in the expression כף ירך יעקב, is 100. It is an allusion to the letter ק which is written smaller in Rebeccah's exclamation קצתי בחיי, in Genesis 27, 46. We had explained previously that that was an allusion to the destruction of the Temple as foreseen by Rebeccah. Allegorically speaking, if one removes the letter ק from Jacob's name, one is left only with יעב, meaning a cloud which blocks out the sun and the daylight. This is the deeper meaning of Jeremiah in Lamentations 2, 1: איכה יעיב באפו א-דני את בת ציון, "How has the Lord shamed (brought dark clouds) the daughter of Zion in His wrath." The prophet refers to the former distinction of Israel having been flung to earth.

Rebeccah concluded that there was no point in living a life that was measured by the yardstick of the undiluted מדת הדין, seeing that hardly anyone could survive if he were to be measured by that attribute alone. This is why she said: קצ-תי בחיי, i.e. what good is my life under such circumstances! (Genesis 27,46) Unless some relief is found for the rest of the world's population this is the end of meaningful life. She referred to the tribe of חת, a Canaanite tribe whose daughters Esau had married. Seeing that the Canaanites were cursed already and that Esau himself was an outgrowth of the סטרא אחרא, she considered the combination as lethal, bound to lead to the oblivion of their offspring. Because of such considerations, the name that should by rights have been קצחי was changed to יצחק, to introduce the element of joy into their lives. The immediate cause for this was Isaac giving tithes which resulted in G–d blessing his efforts, as related in 26,12. It is strange that when Malachi 3,10 describes the blessing that results from tithing, he uses the expression of ארובות השמים, "the windows of heaven." Since the Torah uses the same expression at the onset of the deluge in Genesis 7,11, we wonder why the prophet would use an expression to symbolize blessing when that same expression had symbolized a curse on mankind in its prior usage in the Bible.

The symbolisms expressed by the use of בת-אחות-אם "daughter-sister-mother" relationship between G–d and the Jewish people, or the matriarchs and G–d, which we have described on page 137 and later, may be alluded to in the way the Torah divides the number of years Sarah lived into three distinct periods, i.e. "one hundred years, twenty years and seven years" (Genesis 23,1). Bereshit Rabbah 58,1 explains that Sarah was as beautiful at twenty as she had been at seven years of age, whereas she was as free from sin at a hundred years of age as she had been at twenty. The number seven may allegorically be explained as referring to the seven days of Creation (including the Sabbath) before the original light was withdrawn. This association gives Sarah the אם כל חי, "Mother Superior" image. When the Torah was given to the Jewish people and the serpent's pollutant was neutralised, the world was restored to a state when כתנות אור, garments woven of light, could have been worn. The passage dealing with the creation of light in Genesis 1, 3-5, mentions the word אור, light, five times, an allusion to the five Books of Moses, as pointed out in the Midrash. The Zohar sees in the verse commencing with Hashem Hashem in Exodus 34,6 an allusion to the number twenty, i.e. the Ten Commandments and the ten directives by which the universe was created. These complemented each other. When you spell the two letters Yud as words, i.e. יוד, their combined value is also 20. This idea is reflected in the "twenty years" the Torah here speaks of. Although the universe did not actually revert to the condition it had been in prior to withdrawal of the אור בראשית, the original light, the precondition existed, and, but for the sin of the golden calf, Israel would have achieved that status through Torah study and observance, and the original light would have been revealed to them. At the moment the Torah was revealed, the light appeared to them just as it had been during the seven days of Creation. This is the deeper meaning of Proverbs 7,4: אמור לחכמה אחותי את, "Say to wisdom 'you are my sister.'" Israel, due to the Revelation and Torah study, was on the level we have described as אחות. Afterwards, when the people made the golden calf, they ruined even that level of closeness to G–d with the result that the כ in 23,2 became reduced in size. When the Temple, which was one hundred cubits high, was built, this provided some degree of rehabilitation for the opportunity lost through the golden calf. [The Temple the author refers to must be the one of Herod; Solomon's Temple was only thirty cubits high. Ed.] When Bereshit Rabbah 58,1 on our verse next compares Sarah's innocence at one hundred to her innocence at twenty, this is an allusion to the partial rehabilitation during the period of the second Temple. There were public offerings which achieved atonement for the people. Nonetheless, the people were only on the level of בת, (the lowest of the three levels described on pages 137/138). This is why we find Israel referred to as בת ציון, בת ירושלים in Isaiah, Lamentations and elsewhere. The small letter כ in the word ולבכותה is a clear allusion to the aforegoing. When you remove the letter כ completely, you are left with the word לבתה, "to her daughter," i.e. the word בת, daughter. When the Temple was destroyed, the letter ק was also reduced in size, as pointed out by the Baaal Haturim in his commentray on Genesis 27,46 where Rebeccah expressed disdain for her own life if Jacob, too, were to marry a Canaanite girl. The cause of Rebeccah's desperate outcry, according to Baa l Haturim, was that in her mind's eye she saw the destruction of the hundred-cubit high Temple. When the Temple was destroyed the Jewish people forfeited even the status of בת in their relationship with G–d. For some time after that the most they could achieve in the way of direct communication with G–d was the בת קול, an echo of their former relationship. Nowadays, due to our sins, we do not even experience that form of communication with G–d. This situation will not improve until the Messiah will come, hopefully very soon. At such a time, אור חדש will shine over Zion.