On the words “These are the descendants (Toldot) of Yitzchak”.
Rashi comments that “these are Ya’akov and Eisav (Jacob and Eisav).
Chassidut teaches us that Ya’akov represents the soul and Eisav the body. The Parasha is named after them because the soul and the body have unique and exclusive qualities.
The soul is described as a “child” of G-d because the love between the soul and G-d is a natural type of love, resembling a parent/child love.
The body, on the other hand, has no love for G-d. It is physical and egocentric and it conceals G-d.
Eisav wanted the material world and Ya’akov wanted the spiritual world, but in this world they are intertwined one with the other and for them to be effective they have to work together. Ya’akov and Eisav represent our good inclination and our bad inclination. It is like two kings trying to rule one kingdom, but this is not possible. When one is ruling the other one is subservient to the other. Our whole life internal struggle is to see who is going to rule inside of us. Our Ya’akov (our good inclination, which only wants to do G-d’s will)? Or our Eisav( bad inclination, who is egocentric and only wants to feel pleasure not caring if it hurts on the way to achieving its goals)?
The choice is ours, with our free will we can always choose which of the two we want to be.
