Take It for Me: Blessings Received for Heaven

22Or “And Rivkah said …” speaks of the Shechinah and her children. The holy Zohar says that the Shechinah is called “Rivkah,” and the people, Bnei Yisrael, are called by the name “Yaakov.” We can explain the verse this way. Yitzchak wanted to bless Esav with physical blessings in this world. But the holy Shechinah is the mother who has compassion on her children Israel; “in all their trouble, she is troubled.”¹ She longed greatly for Yitzchak to bless Yaakov in this world too. How could she bear to see the poverty of her people, in distress in this world? So she told Yaakov to go and receive the blessings from Yitzchak.

23Yaakov was very much afraid of being blessed with physical things. He feared that the physical might make him coarse and cut him off, Heaven forbid, from the service of Hashem, blessed be He, as the verse says, “Lest you eat … and your heart grow haughty.”² So he said to Rivkah his mother, the holy Shechinah: How can I receive the blessings of this world? “Esav is a hairy man”:³ this world suits him, by his nature. He is a man of mixed nature, good and bad jumbled together, who goes the way of his heart; whatever comes to his hand, good or bad, he does not hold himself back from doing it. “But I am a smooth man”: I must be smooth and polished, pure in His service, with no dross or refuse. And perhaps the physical would draw my heart away from His service. “Perhaps my father will feel me”: my Father in Heaven. Yemusheini (ימושני), “will feel me,” means that the Creator will yemashmesh (ימשמש), probe and search, my deeds. “And I will be in his eyes as a deceiver, and I will bring upon myself a curse and not a blessing”: through this blessing a curse will sprout, may it never be.

24“His mother said to him,” the holy Shechinah, “Upon me be your curse, my son”:⁴ it is upon me to guard you from a curse. “Only listen to my voice, and go take for me”: receive the blessings of this world as well, so that they will be “for me,” that is, for His service, for His great Name. In all the matters of this world, eating, drinking and every other physical thing, let your intent be only for the sake of Heaven: to bring out the holy sparks, the fragments of holiness scattered in the world, from within the food as you eat in holiness and purity, and to have strength to serve Him, blessed be He, and to occupy yourself with His Torah and His mitzvos. So too in everything, let your intent be for Heaven. “He went, and took, and brought to his mother”⁵ explains itself: he did as the Shechinah commanded and received the blessings in this way, for the sake of His great Name. May He be blessed and exalted, and may His remembrance endure forever and to all eternity. Amen.