THE BIG IDEA
Take a moment this Shabbat to consider the magnitude of the project first taken on by Abraham, Sarah, and now Yitzchak and Rivka. The project to participate in the creation of the world by pulling down souls that tended toward good, and the awareness of the divine.
(as we keep seeing from the creation of the first human - the human tends toward temptation and evil).
So you can imagine the psychic, cosmic, and physical pain that was inside Rivka when she was carrying two opposing forces warring within her womb. Ya’akov the soul of their dreams, and Esau the hunter of nightmares. Seed souls out of which the Jewish nation and the Roman Empire emerged.
This Shabbat let’s all take a moment to pause with awe for Rivka, who carried these two opposing souls to term, and actively redirected the blessing to the younger twin.
Find the forces within your own psyche, within your own womb, within your own body; the carnal energy of Edom, the material attachment to this world and its pleasures and then find the Ya’akov within you, the part striving toward holiness, toward closeness with the divine, toward moral and spiritual alignment – And then, just like Rivka - feel the pain of the struggle, admit how it feels within and then, best you can, ACTIVELY direct the blessing of life force within yourself to the Ya’acov energy.
It is no wonder those forces have such a pull on us and the world - they come from the most powerful and enduring prayer in the world (that of Yitzchak).