A vort from the Rebbe on this week's parshah, Parshas Toldos. The beginning of the parshah, it speaks about the birth of Yaakov and Esav. Then the pasuk says ויגדלו הנערים, the boys grew up, and ויהי עשיו איש יודע ציד איש שדה. Esav became a man that knew how to hunt, and as Rashi adds, it also means knew how to cheat, איש שדה, a man of the field. And Yaakov was איש תם יושב אוהלים, he was a תם, a תמימותדיקע person, and he sat in the tents, which means in the yeshivah of Shem veEver. Now, in Zohar and in Yalkut Shimoni it says that when the pasuk says ויגדלו הנערים, that they grew up, doesn't only mean they grew up begashmiyut, physically, but also beruchniyut, they grew up to be great people. Now, the fact that we know that Esav did not, was not a tzadik, so how could it say that ויגדלו הנערים, that they grew up beruchniyut is going also on Esav? So you could say, first they grew up, and even Esav was also great beruchniyut, and then later he went off the derech. He had free choice, and he chose the wrong way, and he went off the derech. But the question on the Zohar and on the Yalkut is, how could you teitch that into the pasuk? How could you put that in the pasuk? Even though this is not the simple pshat of the פסוק, פשוטו של מקרא is not like that, but according to this pshat, how does it fit to the words? According to the פשט ויגדלו הנערים that they grew up to be tzadik, great people, even Esav, when you read the pasuk it says ויגדלו הנערים, they grew up, and the Torah describes what happened when they grew up: that Esav was a איש יודע ציד, a person who knew how to hunt, knew how to cheat, a man of the field. So the Torah says that he grew up in a bad way. So how could the Zohar and the Yalkut say that it means that they grew up, even Esav grew up ruchniyut? How does it fit to the words of the פסוק?

So the Rebbe says you could teitch on this פסוק also in a positive way, and then also has a simple peshat, which is a negative way, but there could be a positive way. Because a yid also has to cheat. What does it mean a yid has to cheat? Not chas veshalom normal way of cheating. You have to cheat your yetzer hara. You have to cheat your נפש הבהמית. You have to make it sound like as if you're doing what the נפש הבהמית, the yetzer hara wants, and really, really that's not what you're doing. A person has to eat, and eating food is a gashmiyusdike thing. You have to go to work, you have to sleep, you have to do all kinds of gashmiyusdike things, which the yetzer hara is happy when you do that. That's not serving Hashem, he doesn't want you to serve Hashem, he wants you to get involved in gashmiyut. But a yid has to cheat, and even these things which seemingly are gashmiyut, he has to do it in a way that this is part of avodat Hashem. He has to eat l'shem shamayim, the berachah and bentshn etc. etc. He has to go to work and make money in order to give a lot of tzedakah, in order to give his children a proper Jewish chinuch, etc. etc. So that's basically cheating from the yetzer hara. So that means that even when you're an איש שדה, איש שדה means a man of the field, a man of the outside. See, Yaakov was איש תם יושב אוהלים, he sat inside. In other words, he had nothing to do, so to speak, with the outside world. But there are many people that have to do with the outside world. So Esav had to do with the outside world. He was a איש שדה. He did physical things, but he יודע ציד, he knew how to cheat the yetzer hara and use it all for kedushah. And that's how it comes out the peshat, the Rebbe says, according to the Zohar and according to the Yalkut, that ויגדלו הנערים they grew up, and Esav was also grew up ruchniyut, and he was a איש יודע ציד. When he grew up ruchniyus, he was able to hunt, take out We know all the gashmiyusdike things have kedushah in it, but it's all mixed up. If you do גשמיות לשם שמים, you're taking out, separating the good from the bad. So you have to hunt out the ניצוצות הקדושה, we call them, from the bad. So Eisav grew up ruchniyus, and he was איש יודע ציד, he knew how to hunt, how to hunt out the ניצוצות הקדושה, the kedushah from the gashmiyusdike things. He knew how to cheat the yetzer hara, the nefesh habehamis. He was a איש שדה, he's a man of the field, which means he was in the field. The expression of man of the field means he's not inside, isolated from the velt, but he's outside in the velt, outside there. So he was involved in gashmiyus, but involved in gashmiyus in a way that he cheated it away from the yetzer hara, and it was used for the good.

But obviously, that was only in the beginning. And as the Zohar says, it was because of the chinuch, the education that Avraham Avinu gave him. But then, later on, he changed and he became a rasha kipeshuto. So the simple peshat is that he grew up to be a bad person, but in Zohar, על פי פנימיות and also in Midrash, he grew up lechatchilah in a form of איש יודע ציד איש שדה, a person who was cheating the yetzer hara. But unfortunately, this turned out later to the real cheating, he cheated kipeshuto and he went hunting and he became a איש שדה and he was involved in all kinds of bad things, but that was later. But lechatchilah even Even he was a person that was in a high מדרגה ברוחניות, and