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Life Lessons & Life Skills

obormottel Wednesday, 30 November 2016

"Yaakov was sitting in Tents." While most explain this to say that Yaakov was in the Beis Midrash learning Torah - some meforshim say that he dwelled in the Tents -The Tent of Rachel & The Tent of Leah.

The obvious question on this explanation is that Yaakov at this point was not married, hadn't even met Rachel & Leah & certainly wasn't dwelling in their tents!!!

The answer is that conceptually, even while unmarried, he was already there. His mind & heart was clear & he knew what middos he needed to work on & what mindset he needed to have to build the family of Klal Yisroel - even then, he was in the tents of Rachel & Leah.

"Esav was a man of the field" - in concept too - he married but even when married he wasn't moral & committed immoral acts - the concept of tents was foreign to him.

Truth is that their natures were different & Eisav wasn't expected to be enclosed as Yaakov was. He was indeed a man of the field. But he needed to learn from Yaakov & also incorporate the concept of tents to go along with his going out in the field. David Hamalech intrinsically has Eisav's characteristics - he was also, in essence, "a man of the field" - but David sang to God in the fields, he fought wars to Hashem in the fields & he too knew to bring the tent into his life - He also learned a lot of Torah & connected with the Sanhedrin in the Tents of Torah.

If Eisav would have chosen to do as David did - He would have become very great - even as a man of the field.

Yaakov, as a man of the tents , needed to also integrate the "fields" into his life. Yes, he learned Torah in tents & even hid for 14 years in non-stop learning in the tents of Torah - but Hashem, in His Master Plan, forced Yaakov into the fields of Lavan, having to deal with a lot of "field" issues - whether reluctantly "stealing" the berachos from Eisav, dealing with Shechem, fighting with the spiritual forces of Eisav, & ultimately ending up in Egypt. (Even though creating a Tent in Goshen - he was still in the open, exposed field of Mitzrayim.)

All this teaches that while one needs to be true to his or her own nature & to use it wisely, one needs the opposite characteristic as well to create harmony & beauty in serving Hashem.