By Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

My paternal grandfather, Chaim Yitzchak Weinreb, was an old-school Jew, with roots in the region of eastern Poland known as Galicia. He had studied under renowned Talmudists back in the old country, and his fervent wish was to see his grandchildren grow up to be dedicated Talmud students.

I was his oldest grandchild and I particularly remember the time he visited my parents’ home when I was in the seventh or eighth grade. I had just received my report card and proudly showed it to him. I felt it was a pretty good report card, but after one glance, he noticed just how uneven my academic performance was.

He spoke to me in Yiddish. He protested that my grades were spotty. “You did very well in Chumash, Bible, but not nearly as good in Talmud. How can one truly know the Bible if he is ignorant of Talmud?”

I responded defensively by saying that I saw no connection between the Bible portions of Bereshit that we were then studying and the tractate of Bava Metzia, our Talmud text that year. “The Chumash is full of great stories, but the Talmud is only about legal arguments, some of which are over my head.”

He smiled and said that if I would give him an hour on the upcoming Friday night, he would demonstrate how the Talmud elucidates the Bible. That Friday, he asked me to review with him a short passage in this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Toldot (Genesis 25:19-28:9).

You know the story. Esau, the older brother, comes in from the field, famished. He finds his younger brother, Jacob, cooking a pot of stew and asks for some of it. Jacob is willing to give it to him, but for a price. He demands that Esau first sell him his birthright; that is, the material and spiritual privileges that come with being the first-born. Translated literally, he says: “Sell me your birthright, kayom, like today!”

He asked me if I found anything problematic with the story. I did. “The phrase ‘kayom’ seems strange, Grandpa. Why does Jacob insist that the sale should be ‘like today?’”

He responded, “Good! But let’s see if you can ask a question on the whole transaction based on the Talmud texts you are now studying in school.”

So I opened the large book, pored over it and focused on the task. I was searching for a connection between a fascinating story and what I then experienced as some very boring rules and regulations.

After some time, I had an “aha” experience. I really got excited. “Grandpa! It can’t be! How could Jacob purchase the birthright from Esau? The privileges of the birthright are way off in the future. They include privileges like a dual portion of their inheritance of their father Isaac’s estate, and Isaac was alive, if not entirely well, at that time. We studied in the Talmud that one cannot buy or sell objects or privileges which do not yet exist!”

My grandfather was thrilled. Finally, I saw a connection between my Bible stories and the legal terminology of the Talmud.

He then sat back, and took the role of the teacher. “If you reached page 16 of the tractate you are studying, you know this scenario. A fisherman wishes to sell the fish he will catch that day to a customer. He doesn’t have the fish yet. Can he sell them? Yes, answers the Talmud. He can sell them if he desperately needs the money to feed himself that day. But if he wishes to sell the fish he will catch in 30 days or in a year, he cannot do that. If one is desperate, he can sell even objects that he does not yet possess, even fish that are still in the sea.”

I now saw the connection between the story and the Talmudic principle:

“Of course Jacob said ‘kayom.’ Sell me your birthright even though its privileges will not be realized until the distant future, but do so in your current state of desperation. Do so because you are famished, and in your desperation have the legal ability, much like the fisherman, to sell something that is now non-existent, because you need it for your urgent immediate needs. Sell me the birthright kayom.”

Grandpa told me that the concept that I had discovered on my own was to be found in the commentary Ohr HaChaim, which he studied assiduously every Friday night.

Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is executive vice president emeritus of the Orthodox Union.