In last week's Torah portion, we read a brief genealogy of Esau's family. We did not receive a lot of specifics, just a list of who married whom and who was born to whom.
At the beginning of this week's sedra, Vayeshev, we immediately return to Jacob and his family. The Torah pays a great deal more attention to Jacob than it does to Esau and gives us a wealth of detail.
Rashi points out that the Torah spends more time on Jacob because Jacob was more important to God than Esau. He elaborates with a midrash about a man who accidentally dropped a valuable pearl in the sand. Until he found the pearl, he quickly threw piles of sand this way and that.
So it is with the Torah. Jacob's family is valuable in the eyes of God, so the Torah goes through Esau's history and genealogy very quickly. Rashi also notes that the same thing can be seen in Parashat Noah, which whips through ten generations of humanity because they aren't that important. Only when it reaches Abraham does the Torah slow down and take its time, for the Torah is about his family's saga.
We learn something important from this for our daily lives. We should spend a great deal of time on things that are important. If something is not important, than we shouldn't spend a lot of time and energy on it. Time is a precious, irreplaceable resource, so we must preserve it whenever possible. If the Torah follows this rule regarding Esau and Jacob, then we should all the more so!
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