LAUGHTER AND LIGHT

Dear Family,

I hope everyone is well.

There are no personal Mazal Tovs this week that I know about, but BEH we are now moving into the month of Kislev which contains Chanukah and so many important and happy Chassidic events. These all reflect much physical and Spiritual LIGHT, in the middle of the dark winter (in the Northern hemisphere) BH

In addition, this week,s sedra Toldos reflects LAUGHTER.

I saw an interesting section about this, in the book 'The Inside Story', based on the works of the Rebbe as follows.

Toldos means 'the generations' or the progeny. It reflects the history of the world.

(When applied in a personal way it could also refer to our own good deeds generated throughout our lives, and what we achieve)

Toldos comes up at the beginning of creation where it says 'These are the toldos of the heaven and the earth upon their creation'.

18 Biblical Books and 3000 years later, Torah concludes the Book of Ruth with 'These are the toldos of Peretz.............and Jesse fathered DAVID.'

The Midrash says that the word toldos throughout Torah is spelt in a deficient way (without a vav) except in the above 2 examples, of Creation and Perez. In these 2 places, both the words toldos of Creation and the toldos of Peretz are spelt in their full form with both vovs!

To explain this the Midrash says, that human history is the journey from toldos ( the perfect world that G-d created), to toldos (the perfection of the age of Mashiach ben David).

In between, from the time of the sin of Adam, the generations are imperfect and trying to address these imperfections.

Now, in the sedra of Noach, it starts off 'These are the toldos of Noach.....' And the sedra is named Noach.

In our sedra it starts off 'These are the toldos of Yitzchak......' But the sedra is called Toldos! Should it not have been called Yitzchok?

The word toldos is no small matter. As we can see from the above, it embraces the cosmos, spans the whole of history, and describes our purpose in life.

So why was this name given to our sedra of Yitzchak and not to the sedra of Noach?

Noach means tranquillity.

Yitzchak means LAUGHTER

Indeed Torah was given to make peace in the world and in our lives, BUT WE WANT MORE THAN THE ABSENCE OF DISCORD. WE WANT JOY. WE WANT LAUGHTER IN OUR LIVES.

Wishing everyone a gut Shabbos and a gut Chodesh with not only joy and laughter, but also much light.