Voice Vitality
Adapted by Channie Koplowitz Stein
In Parshat Toldos we read one of the seminal events in the shaping of our people. Rivkah, the mother of Yaakov and Esau, overhears Yitzchak telling Esau to prepare and bring him the special dish he loves so that, with a full heart, he will bless Esau. Rivkah, having a better grasp of the realities of her sons, and having received the prophecy that the elder, Esau, will serve the younger, convinces a very reluctant Yaakov to enter Yaakov’s room, serve him the delicacies she herself would prepare, and receive the blessing in Esau’s stead. To remove Yaakov’s final objection, Rivkah covers Yaakov’s arms with goat fur so that, if Yitzchak should touch him, Yaakov would seem hairy like his brother Esau.
The scheme progresses according to plan. Yitzchak indeed is somewhat suspicious and asks his son to approach him so that he may feel him and verify the identity of this son. When Yitzchak feels Yaakov’s fur-covered arms, Yitzchak pronounces one of the most famous statements in the Torah: “Hakol kol Yaakov vehayadayim yedei Esau/ The voice is the voice of Yaakov, but the hands are the hands of Esau.” The most common understanding of this statement appears in a medrash about Bilaam, the prophet from Midian. The nations came to him to ask if they would be able to defeat the Israelites. Bilaam’s advice was to go to the synagogues and see if there are children raising their voices in prayer and Torah there. If so, the nations will be fighting a lost cause, for Hashem has promised, “As long as the voice of Yaakov is heard, the hands of Esau are powerless against him.”
Nevertheless, the simple reading of the verse seems to imply that the voice of Yaakov and the hands of Esau coexist simultaneously, writes Rabbi Schorr in Halekach Vehalebuv. If we look carefully at the spelling of the Hebrew words, hakol kol, we will note that the first “kol/voice” is written incompletely, the “o” is vocalized, but written without the letter “vov.” Rabbi Schorr quoting the Gra, extrapolates that when the voice of Yaakov is incomplete and weak, albeit it is there, the hands of Esau can remain strong. One will also note that there are two hands of Esau, Esau being the generic term for Jew haters. When the two hands unite, one representing Ishmael and the other Esau, they are indeed powerful.
We also see a doubling of the word kol/voice, continues Rabbi Schorr. The first, incomplete voice represents prayer while the second voice represents Torah learning. When our prayer is weak and lacking, our Torah learning will also be lacking. Many people minimize the power of tefillah, but prayer without the proper focus, is like trying to ring a bell that is missing a clapper. When both tefillah and Torah are strong, Esau has no hold over Yaakov, for tefillah is a primary aspect of our relationship with Hakodosh Boruch Hu, adds the Modzitzer Rebbe, the Divrei Yisroel. We tend to focus on the importance of a young man’s learning, especially in shidduchim, but a young man’s sincerity can perhaps be better gauged by observing his dedication and devotion to prayer.
In Chalon Lateivah, Rav Noach Chefetz z”l explain homiletically how the two imperatives of Torah and tefillah, these two voices, imbued Yaakov’s life, and are the paradigm for our lives as well. Using the first verse of the next parsha, Rav Chefetz quoting the Ohr Hachayim Hakadosh interprets Yaakov leaving Be’er Sheva as the baby leaving the womb where it had been sworn/shova to observe the Torah that is the be’er/wellspring of all life. The baby goes out to Charan, to the world at large where the yetzer horo immediately enters into his psyche. How does one overcome these challenges? Through prayer, through encountering and entreating the Omnipresent/Hamakom.
This was the model for life that Yaakov Avinu presents us. Yaakov left his parents’ home, spent fourteen years sitting in the womb/tents of Shem and Ever studying Torah. During that time, he never took time to sleep. Finally, he stops to rest. He takes stones, the building blocks of the world, the Torah that is the foundation of the world, and puts it under his head. Upon awakening, Yaakov called this place a Beit Tefillah, a house of prayer, and articulates a prayer that Hashem protect him and return him whole and pure to his father’s house, a home that will ground him in prayer and Torah, a formula that will guide him, and us until we awake in the True World.
We hear prayers from Yaakov Avinu again. When Yaakov returns from Lavan’s house and meets Esau approaching with 400 men, he again prays, “Please save me from the hand of my brother, from the hand of Esau.” [Note that here too we have two hands of Esau, one hand with a sword and one with the merit of serving and honoring their father during Yaakov’s absence. CKS] Rabbi Chefetz points out that both times Yaakov is articulating what he needs. Words create reality. Similarly, it is important that when we pray, we put our requests into words. While Hashem knows what we need, He wants us to create worlds, to create reality.
Towards the end of the saga of Yaakov’s life, Yaakov again shows us the importance of Torah. Yaakov is preparing to move the family down to Egypt. The first stage of planning is sending Yehudah ahead to establish a yeshivah so that Torah will continue to be studied even in exile, in Egypt.
Rav Segal, the Manchester Rav z”l, brings us back to Yaakov’s original acquisition of the birthright and explains that while Esau viewed the exchange as Yaakov’s manipulating a very hungry Esau, Yaakov felt he earned the birthright through his constant prayer, through using his bow. The bow, representing [and shaped like] the lips, can propel the arrow great distances. Similarly, our lips can propel our prayers to reach the pinnacle of heaven. However, if our lips are faulty, like a broken bow, our words will not rise very far. Once Yaakov’s prayers were accepted, Hashem arranged the circumstances to meet the need. Similarly, when we pray for something, Hashem will arrange the circumstances, although they may seem purely coincidental, to answer and fulfill our prayer.
The mouth has two kinds of power, writes Rabbi Eisenberger. On the one hand, there is the true power of the mouth, the power of prayer. But the empty power of the mouth is the egotistical, bragging mouth that believes himself to have the power of the sword, that his personal conquest made him successful, not Hashem. This person’s prayers are empty, and never acknowledge that all the world belongs to Hashem. When one has full faith in Hashem, he will use his hands in Hashem’s service, to put in his own effort with God’s help to actualize his prayer. Otherwise, his hands are the hands of Esau. Rabbi Eisenberger, then recalls the medrash we’ve cited earlier, but interprets it in our present context. When Bilaam told the nations to go to the shuls and listen if children’s voices can be heard, he was implying that Bnei Yisroel need to raise their voices to Hashem in complete dependency, as a small child is completely dependent on his parent. If Bnei Yisroel has such faith, the hands of Esau have no power.
The man of true faith knows that all he has is a gift from Hakodosh Boruch Hu. Hashem has extended him credit in spite of his having minimal collateral. He will pray to Hashem with pure humility and focus, as a beggar asking for charity, writes Rabbi Matisyahu Salomon. We may not discern the true prayer from the counterfeit, but Rabbi Solomon presents us with a striking example of the latter. One may observe a man praying fervently in shul, arriving early for minyan, taking his time with Shemonah Esrei. Then he goes off to his business and can be observed making cutthroat deals, using practices bordering on the dishonest. This man’s prayers do not reflect his reliance on Hashem, but are rather asking Hashem not to interfere with his plans; he believes his success is actually a result of his own business acumen rather than a gift from Hashem. His prayer is lacking, his voice missing a letter.
What is the letter that is missing in the first kol of our verse? It is the letter “vov” whose numerical value is six. In Kabbalistic terms, six refers to the quality of foundation, the trait associated with Yosef Hatzadik, writes Rabbi Schorr. Yosef was the essence of sanctity and purity, raising his whole physical body to that state. It is necessary to prepare oneself and sanctify oneself and one’s thoughts before entering into prayer. If one‘s thought are impure, his prayer is defiled, and the hands of Esau are empowered. Rabbi Schorr warns us to avoid the lure of current technology in these respects. These impure images have become so pervasive, we have become desensitized to them as they flood our culture and society. Before beginning our prayers or our Torah study, we must cleanse our minds from these impurities. We should remember that before we were ready to receive the Torah, Hashem commanded us to sanctify ourselves.
Rabbi Wolbe z”l likens the lure of the yetzer horo to a powerful magnetic field that pulls us ever so slightly into its orbit. We must strengthen the counter balancing magnetic fields of wisdom and neshamah to pull us away from the negative and toward the holy.
Hashem established two covenants with Bnei Yisroel, writes Rabbi Schorr, the covenant of speech and the covenant of circumcision. When the sanctity of one’s speech is corrupted, the covenant of circumcision, representing physicality also becomes corrupted. The generation of the flood began with dishonest speech and ended up corrupting all flesh. Rabbi Schorr suggests that it was Noach’s refined and pure speech that found favor in Hashem’s eyes and earned him salvation.
Citing the Sefas Emes, Rabbi Schorr notes that the voice actually has two powers, that of speech and that of silence. [When someone notes that “the silence was palpable,” we know how profoundly powerful silence can be. CKS] The first kol in our verse, without the “vov,” refers to silence, writes the Shvilei Pinchas, while the second, full kol refers to speech. We need to know how to use both silence and speech appropriately.
Yaakov Avinu understood both, continues Rabbi Pinchas Friedman, and the two women he married, our Matriarchs Rochel and Leah, each epitomized one of these traits. Rochel was our silent matriarch. She knew to keep silent, to maintain secrecy [in the marriage of Yaakov to Leah], while Leah understood the power of speech in expressing gratitude and naming her son Yehudah/will give gratitude. But these two characteristics are not mutually exclusive, and one must know when to use each. Hur, of the Tribe of Yehudah, a descendant of Leah, protested against making an idol, against what would become the golden calf, while Aharon, a great great grandson of Levi, also from Leah, remained silent at the death of his two sons. In contrast, Rochel Imeinu raises her voice in heaven at the exile of her children in such continuous and loud weeping that Hashem tells her to restrain her voice from weeping.
It is speech that creates our identity, writes the Sifsei Chaim, Rabbi Friedlander z”l. We take ephemeral, spiritual thoughts and concretize them through speech. Thus, speech can be a powerful tool for kedushah/sanctity. Conversely, it can also be a tool for depravity. When you are unsure if your speech has any productive, positive value, it is best to restrain yourself and remain silent. When we add the numerical value of the two spellings of hakol, we get 272, the same value as areiv/pleasant and sweet. Our speech should always be pleasant, and our Torah learning, as we ask Hashem in our morning prayers, should always be sweet. If you include the ‘vov”, the letter that literally means connection, then Torah is sweet; if we leave out that connection, we are left with 260, sur/left, our Torah learning will not remain connected to us and will leave us.
The Sifsei Chaim makes another interesting observation. Each month is connected to another letter of the aleph bet, with samech being the match for Kislev, the month we just began and which includes the Chanukah victory. We recite the verse which begins with a samech daily, “Somech Hashem lechol hanoflim/Hashem supports all those who stumble…” The month of Kislev is auspicious to breaking out of Esau’s hold. Here too the numerical value provides insight. The value of “Somech Hashem lechol hanoflim, that Hashem supports all who are falling is exactly equivalent to “Hakol Kol Yaakov,” 453. Thus we can understand that Hashem supports us when we are faltering specifically because our voices are filled with he sanctity of Torah and tefillah.
In securing the blessings for Yaakov, Rivkah was also conveying a profound message, a message encapsulated in the verse of our discussion. When you go out into the world, Yaakov, know that you will be encountering evil, the hands of Esau, but remember that the evil is in the outwardly visible hands, while truth and goodness are deep within, in the power of speech. When we can access that inner world, we can overpower the hands of Esau, when we see in everything the goodness and kindness of Hashem Yisborach, when we taste the sweetness of Torah and connect to Hakadosh Boruch Hu with our tefillah, the hands of Esau are powerless. Our strongest weapon is the voice Hashem instilled in us. May Hashem help us keep our voices sweet.