Bais HaVaad on the Parsha, Parshas Toldos

Point and Shoot

Excerpted and adapted from a shiur by Dayan Yosef Greenwald

November 24, 2022

Now sharpen, if you please, your gear—your sword and your bow—and go out to the field, and catch game for me.

Bereishis 27:3

According to Rashi (27:9), this happened on the night of Pesach. But the Mishnah (Beitzah 23b) forbids trapping on Yom Tov, as it is not one of the melachos permitted for ochel nefesh on Yom Tov, so given that the Avos kept the Torah, how could Yitzchak instruct Eisav to violate Yom Tov?

The Da’as Zekeinim and the Maharil Diskin answer that Yitzchak’s instructions were issued on Erev Pesach for Eisav to carry out before Yom Tov, so that Yitzchak could eat the meat on Pesach. But the language of the Yalkut indicates otherwise.

Perhaps we can answer based on the Chazal that bigdei Eisav hachamudos were inherited from Nimrod (see 27:15 and Rashi) and had a special property: Animals that saw them would be stunned and freeze, enabling Nimrod to capture them. The Re’eim explains that although Eisav could have used these clothes to trap animals, Yitzchak instructed him in the above pasuk to use his bow and arrow instead, because stunning them with the clothes may have entailed the melacha of tzeidah (trapping). Since the Gemara (Chulin 31b) says it is possible to perform shechitah with a bow and arrow, Yitzchak told Eisav to do that, which would be permitted on Yom Tov.

But this approach wouldn’t work according to the Ramban. He maintains (Beitzah 23b) that any act that brings a wild animal into human possession cannot be permitted as meleches ochel nefesh on Yom Tov—which would bar shechitah by arrow.