The Greatest of All Gifts: D’var Torah for Parshat Vayishlach
The very best gift that a person can give is a Mincha. But hold on, isn’t Mincha the afternoon service that we pray every day? In what way is it a present? And how does it become the best of all presents?
In Parshat Vayishlach we are told how Jacob desperately wanted to appease his twin brother Esau, and so he sent him a gift of many hundreds of animals, part of the wealth he had accumulated, having worked for Laban for 22 years. And the Torah describes this as “mincha hei shlucha”, he sent this mincha to his brother.
Onkelos, the authoritative Aramaic translation of the Torah, explains that the word mincha is ‘tikruvta’, which means a sacrifice. Tikruvta also comes from the root ‘karov’, which means to be close. It is s a sacrifice that you make, and through which you become closer to another person. Jacob wanted to show Esau that he cared about him and therefore he invested money, effort, energy, care, and love into the present he was giving. That is what makes the mincha so special.
And you know that a mincha does not have to cost a lot of money. For example, God forbid, if somebody is sitting shiva and people bring a meal for the family to eat, that is a mincha – they’re showing their love and their care. Or when you bake a cake for somebody on their birthday, that feeling of closeness becomes really intense because one invests so much love and effort into the mincha that is given.
And one of the greatest of all minchas is actually, the ring that the groom gives to a bride under the chuppah. In order to show that he loves and cares for her, he needs to have bought that ring, as a token of his affection for her. He places it on the forefinger of her right hand, declares that with this ring they become husband and wife, and it is called Kiddushin. It is a moment of a sacred bond between them. That is how they become husband and wife. And here we see another element of tikruvta. Not only are the groom and bride being bonded together but Almighty God becomes part of a three-way, sacred relationship. Hashem exists in places where people are there to give to others.And now we can understand why in the Gemara, Masechet Brachot, our sages tell us that Elijah the prophet was answered through the mincha offering in the afternoon. Because when it comes to the mincha prayer, we have to make a special effort. Shacharit is first thing in the morning, Ma’ariv late at night, but especially during the winter months you have to make a special effort to invest in finding that time to pray the mincha service and that is why it is elevated above the others.
So therefore, if you want to come closer to others and closer to Hashem, why not give a mincha?
Shabbat Shalom
