Toldot 2025 (VIDEO) / Terah, the character is forgotten, the father of all the patriarchs and matriarchs

I. The Hebrew word תּוֹלְדוֹת – toldot

1. Etymology and semantic field

• Root: comes from the verb י־ל־ד (yalad), “generating”, “give birth to”.
• Basic sense: “eyesores”, “offspring”, “generations”, “what emerges from...”.
• In a broad sense, toldot means the result or product of a person, thing, or event: its genealogy, its history, or its consequences.

In translations is typically seen as:

• “generations”
• “offspring”
• “lineage”
• “history”, “chronic”, “story of what happened,” (when you enter narrations, not only lists of names).

2. Toldot as the structure of the book of Bereishit (Genesis)

The book of Genesis is organized around formulas header type:

“These are the toldot X...”

VIDEO PARASHA TOLDOT 2025 IN SPANISH

Scholars point out 10 main uses this formula, which marked internal sections of the book.

Key examples:

• “These are the toldot of heaven and earth” (Gen 2:4): it does not display a genealogy, but the history of what came out of the building.
• “These are the toldot Noahide” (Gen 6:9): includes your children, but also the narrative of the Flood.
• “These are the toldot of the sons of Noah” (Gen 10:1): table of nations.
• “These are the toldot of Teraj” (Gen 11:27): time at which it enters Abraham in the scene.
• “These are the toldot Isaac, son of Abraham” (Gen 25:19): our parasha Toldot.
• “These are the toldot of Jacob” (Gen 37:2): opens the cycle of Joseph.

Conclusion: toldot it is a bookmark literary organized by the Genesis in large blocks of narrative-genealogical; each block has what went (“what is born”) of a person or actually, in terms of children, history and consequences.

3. Expansion of the term in jewish tradition

In the Hebrew literature later toldot it happens to also mean:

• Biography / life of someone:
  • Toledot Yeshu – a compilation of controversy medieval “life of Jesus”.
  • Toledot ha-Ari – biography legendary kabbalist Yitzchak Luria.
• The story of a group or phenomenon: “toldot the jasidismo”, etc

That is to say, toldot becomes virtually synonymous with history of lifenot only genealogical list.

4. Perspectives exegetical

a) Peshat (plain sense)

• Toldot = physical descent and historical account derivative.
• Not only indicates who are the children, but also what happens: the “file” of a family line.

(b) Midrash / reading homiletics

The midrashim are usually read toldot as:

• “Fruits” of the life of a person: not only biological children, but also disciples, acts, merits, and spiritual consequences.
• The toldot of a righteous are his good deeds; of a wicked, their negative impacts on the story.

This idea allows us to talk about, for example, of the toldot a wise man even though you have not had children, because their teachings generate a “spiritual seed”.

c) Perspective kabbalistic

In the Kabbalah, the term is expanded still more:

• Toldot is associated with the idea of the emanations or “results” spiritual of each level of reality and of every human act.
• In comments kabbalistic the parasha Toldot, stresses that “offspring” is not only genetic but also line of spiritual energy, identity, and free will: what a world we create with our decisions.
• It is often compared with the image of “the peel and fruit”: first appears as a grosser (Esav, the body, the shell), and then reveals the fruit internal (Yaakov, the soul).

In this framework, toldot they are:

The projections of our being on all levels: children, works, words, footprint spiritual.

5. Importance of toldot in judaism and Kabbalah

1. Collective identity: Israel defines itself by its toldot – for the chain of patriarchs, matriarchs, and tribes.
2. Historical memory: the Torah records meticulously toldot to show that the story has meaning and direction.
3. Responsibility intergenerational: what one does affects their toldot; there is an ethical weight in how we leave the world to those who come behind us.
4. Frame kabbalistic: the toldot let you think the tikún (repair) generation: how each generation fixes, enhances or alters the inheritance received.

VIDEO PARASHA TOLDOT 2025 IN ENGLISH

II. Teraj (תֶּרַח) in the light of the concept of toldot

Your question is just a figure underestimated: Teraj, the father of Abraham.

1. Teraj in the biblical text

• Appears in the genealogies of Genesis 11:26-32, Joshua 24:2 and 1 Chronicles 1.
• It is presented as:
  • Son of Najor (a descendant of Shem).
  • Parent of Abram (Abraham), Najor and Make.
  • Head of the family, which comes out of Ur of the chaldeans way to Canaan, but they stopped at Haran.
• Joshua defined as idolatrous: “your parents... Teraj, the father of Abraham... and they served other gods.”

In the biblical narrative, a time that God calls Abram, Teraj practically disappears from the focus.

2. Teraj in the midrash classic

The midrashim give you a more intense:

• Teraj is manufacturer and seller of idolslet Abram in charge of the shop; Abram breaks the statues and ridicules idolatry.
• Is associated with Teraj with the episode Ur Kasdím: Abraham would have been thrown into a furnace of fire, by order of king Nimrod, in a context where Teraj plays an ambiguous role, first working with the power and then being surpassed by his own son.
• Some sources (for example, materials collected in Sefaria) transmitted by the tradition of that Teraj's finally done teshuvah (repentance) before you die, and reached a certain degree of straightness.

From this perspective, Teraj is not only a “wicked idolater”, but a character in the process, whose toldot will be radically transformed by his son.

3. Readings modern: the shadow of Teraj

Contemporary studies underline that:

• In Joshua 24, God takes Abraham not only of his land, but also of the religious culture of Teraj; it is almost a “new beginning of history”.
• Theologically, Abraham is presented as the one who breaks from the house of his father, but the text never denies that Teraj to remain your father: simply ceases to be the spiritual reference.
• That is why some authors speak of “claim to our ancestors, to recognize the complexity of Teraj, instead of deleting it completely.

4. The enormous importance genealogy of Teraj

If we look at the Genesis from the prism of toldot, Teraj is a knot decisive:

1. Line of Abraham
   • Abraham → Isaac → Jacob → 12 tribes of Israel.
   • Here comes all the people of Israel and, in the reading rabbinic, the history of the revelation of the Torah.
2. Line Najor (brother of Abraham)
   • Najor → Bethuel → Rivká (Rebekah).
   • Of Najor and your home also come Laban, Rachel and Read.
   • That is to say: the matriarchs Israel (Rebekah, Rachel, Leah, are descendants of the same house Teraj.
3. Line Will be (another son of Teraj)
   • Will → Lot.
   • Of Lot, according to Genesis 19, will emerge Moab and Amon, towns related to Israel.

In strict terms of toldot, the whole plot patriarchal Genesis 12-50 is based on the toldot of Teraj: your home come out Abraham, the matriarchs and the border towns with the Israel convivirá and confront.

5. Re-reading the theological and kabbalistic of Teraj

(a) The paradox of the father idolatrous

• The father is idolatrous; the son, father of monotheism.
• From the perspective of the ethics and kabbalistic, this illustrates the principle that a root dark you can leave an immense light:
  • The “shell” (klipá), may serve as protection for the fruit (Abraham) to mature and then separate.
  • The merit of Teraj is not in its initial conduct, but in that her lineage becomes the channel of the covenant.

(b) Toldot of Teraj as a process of tikún

If we apply the language of toldot and tikún:

• The toldot of Teraj include both your idolatry as the overcoming that idolatry on the part of Abraham.
• The Cabal can often see history as a series of corrections generational:
  • The world of Teraj represents a stage of spiritual confusion.
  • Abraham introduces the emuná (faith in the One) and re-orients the toldot family to holiness.
• If we accept the tradition that Teraj did teshuvah at the end of your life, then your merit is twofold:
  • begat Abraham,
  • and he had the lucidity to get closer to the truth than his own son revealed.

c) symbolic Relevance

Teraj thus becomes a symbol:

1. The generation that did not see the fullness of the promise, but the start.
2. The father, whose biography is ambiguous, but whose toldot lead to redemption.
3. The responsibility of every generation: our decisions form part of a chain, but do not determine mechanically what will our children; they can to break, to correct or to elevate our heritage.

Conclusion

• “Toldot” it is not only “generations” in the narrow sense. In the Torah, the midrash and Kabbalah, is the result set – biological, historical, and spiritual – that sprout from a reality.
• The book of Genesis is structured by ten headings toldotand one of the most decisive is just “These are the toldot of Teraj”: from there begins the story of Abraham.
• Although the focus of the narrative shifts to Abraham, a deep reading shows that Teraj is the trunk that go all the branches, patriarchal, and much of the surrounding nations.
• Read from the Cabal, Teraj embodies the level where it still dominates the idolatry, but which emerge from the toldot that will make it possible to monotheism and, ultimately, the revelation of the Torah: an example of how a root problem can be the starting point of a tikún historical and spiritual.