In this week's episode on Toldot, we explore how the Ba'al Shem Tov and his students took the long-running rivalry and dualism of Jacob and Esau and offered a refreshingly optimistic and holistic perspective on apparent opposites such as good and evil, body and soul.

The teaching shows the development from the classical Kabbalah of the Zohar to the new interpretation of Kabbalah pioneered by the early Chasidic masters, and has profound implications for how we today address our highly polarized societies.

Here are the sources referred to in this episode:

Start of the parsha:
https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.32.5?lang=bi&aliyot=0

We are all - individually and collectively - composed of "substance" and "form" (for example, soul and body, leaders and followers etc) and our work is to integrate these two.

If we want to effect change, we need to ourselves make Teshuvah (return, repair or fix what is broken), rather than simply making demands of others.

And then when we do communicate with others, we include ourselves in our words, meaning we acknowledge that we are also working on whatever the matter in question is, rather than being hostile or condescending:
https://www.sefaria.org/Ba'al_Shem_Tov%2C_Vayishlach.7?lang=bi

Lovingly unite ourselves with others in order to effect change:
https://www.sefaria.org/Ba'al_Shem_Tov%2C_Vayishlach.8.1?lang=bi

Leaders affect the rest of us, and vice versa:
https://www.sefaria.org/Arakhin.17a.3?lang=bi

Thank you for listening to The Spirit of the Torah from Applied Jewish Spirituality (AJS) - https://www.appliedjewishspirituality.org/

In every episode, Rabbi Daniel Raphael Silverstein explores insights arising from the Hebrew calendar or our weekly Torah portion, and related practices that can help us to effect positive change in our lives.

The intro and outro music is Shiviti by Dreamers - https://linktr.ee/dreamersmusic

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