Toldot
Be Fruitful and Multiply: What the Words Really Mean
A Rashi-focused class on the difference between 'pru' and 'u'rvu,' tied to the Rebbe's teaching on growth without limit, closing with the custom of saying Tehillim chapters by age.
Rabbi Schapiro on the Parshah: Toldot
Esav wanted to run toward idol worship even in the womb, yet the Midrash says he too "grew up" spiritually as a child. A look at how Yitzchak's own hidden strength to endure hardship became, in Esav, the seed of a different path, one Esav chose to abandon through his own free will.
Parshas Toldos
Sending Yaakov in Esav's clothing wasn't a shortcut around a harder conversation — it set a precedent that Yitzchak's eternal brachos reach every Yid regardless of how he's dressed, meaning regardless of how his machshavah, dibur, and maaseh happen to look on a given day. Built into that same brachah, the shiur notes, is the koach for teshuvah, so that even a Yid dressed in Eisav's levushim can still find his way back.
Parshas Toldos
The Avos are described in Tanya as a merkavah, entirely batel to the Eibershter through every action, which is also why the Midrash pictures them as shepherds rather than farmers — a shepherd's mind stays free for Hashem in a way plowing and planting don't allow. Pirkei DeRabbi Eliezer's answer, that Yitzchak's planting served only as a means toward tzedakah and maaser, becomes a model for how even heavily physical work stays part of avodas Hashem when the kavanah behind it is right.
Parshas Toldos
When Yaakov worries that impersonating Esav could bring him a curse instead of a brachah, Rivka's answer — that she'll take the klalah on herself — isn't really about shifting who bears the risk. It's mesirus nefesh modeled out loud, and it's that living example, more than any explanation, that moves Yaakov to go through with getting the brachos.
Parshas Toldos
Rashi's account of Yitzchak's face being changed to answer rumors about his parentage raises an obvious question: isn't it normal for a son to resemble his father? The answer ties a person's face to their middos — since Avraham embodied chesed and Yitzchak embodied gevurah and yirah, Yitzchak should have resembled Sarah instead, making the resemblance to Avraham a genuine miracle, one the Torah waits to reveal until Parshas Toldos, exactly where Yitzchak's differing middos would have made the rumors loudest.
Parshas Toldos
The wells taken away twice before the third one finally held are read, following the Ramban, as a map of the first two Batei Mikdash and the third that will stand forever — and the shiur explains why this hint belongs to Yitzchak rather than Avraham or Yaakov, since his avodah corresponds to the service performed in the Mikdash itself. Digging for water — human effort followed by water rising on its own — becomes the model for building any Mikdash, personal or physical, where a Yid's own effort is what brings the Shechinah down.
Parshas Toldos
Since the Avos are described as a merkavah, fully batel to the Eibershter through every moment of their lives, Yitzchak taking up plowing and planting looks at first like a step down into gashmiyus that a shepherd's life was built to avoid. The resolution — that the planting served only as a means to give tzedakah and maaser — becomes the model, following maaseh avos siman l'vanim, for how a Yid's own physical labor can stay entirely lishmah.
Parshas Toldos
When the pasuk says the boys 'grew up,' Zohar and Yalkut Shimoni read that as spiritual growth for Esav too, despite his being described moments later as a hunter and a cheater — a reading the shiur works to reconcile with the plain words of the pasuk. The resolution reframes ish yodea tzayid as a Yid's own necessary skill for outwitting the yetzer hara while immersed in the world, a level Esav genuinely reached before he later became a rasha kipeshuto.