"Torah Lights"
 
Video Insights on the Parsha
 
 by Rabbi Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel – “And these are the generations of Isaac, Abraham's son: Abraham begot Isaac” (Gen 25:19). 

As Abraham, the over-towering and over-powering, path-breaking founder of a new nation and a new religion, passes from the scene, it must be left to his son and heir Isaac to establish continuity of leadership, to set down the majestic guide lines necessary for the direction of Abraham’s seed towards the fulfillment of their universal destiny to bring G-d’s words and blessings into the world. What might be the most qualifying talents for such a sensitive and complex task? To what extent will personal psychological baggage and haunting familial inter-play influence Isaac’s decision? And thus, the question of questions; why does Isaac seem to favor (and especially love) the aggressive and entrapping Esau over the whole-hearted and introspective Jacob?

To penetrate the subtleties that this critical question raises about the nature of Jewish destiny, we must concentrate not only on what the Bible says and on what the Bible doesn’t say, on what is written in the lines of our sacred parchment scroll and on what is written between those lines, but we must also attempt to understand the sequence of the story-line, especially when the order seems to be out of “sync” with our logical expectation for how narrative should be constructed.

For example, our Biblical portion of Toldot opens (from the middle of  Genesis Chapter 25) with the birth of the twin sons to Isaac and Rebecca, followed soon with the account of how the elder son Esau spurns the birthright by ‘selling’ it to his younger brother Jacob for a dish of lentils! Then, in Chapter 26, the text digresses from the main theme of the brothers’ differences and rivalries and records how Isaac goes down to Gerar, the land occupied by the Philistines and their King Avimelekh, detailing his adventures there – only for the text to return (Chapter 27) to the sparring of the siblings and the subterfuge involved as to which brother will eventually receive the blessings and the birth-right.

Oddly, this break in the narrative seems unnecessary, even awkward. Why not join the section of Jacob’s deception to steal the blessings of the birthright with the earlier chapter that deals with Esau’s sale of the birthright, and then record the story of Isaac and Avimelekh afterwards?! Certainly an orderly, sequential description of events, without the interruption of Gerar and Avimelekh right in the middle, makes more sense. 

The first verse of our portion of Toldot – and the description of the next generation of Hebrew leadership – reads as follows: “And these are the generations of Isaac the son of Abraham, Abraham gave birth to Isaac” (Gen. 25:19). Is it not strange that the text describes the generations not from Isaac’s children, the usual Biblical style, but rather from Isaac’s forbear, “the son of Abraham, Abraham gave birth to Isaac”? But perhaps this is the key point: Isaac’s relationship to his sons – and his choice for future leadership – is a direct result of what Isaac perceived to be his relationship with his father, and his father’s brand of (and choice for) leadership.  

Abraham was a founder in every sense of the word – encompassing all of the dynamism, initiative and courage we would expect of a founder. He not only follows his G-d but even walks in front of Him; in order to save Lot, he wages war against the terrorizing nations of the Fertile Crescent and wins; and he succeeds in educating the next generations “…to guard the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice.” (18:19). In the eyes of a founder’s son, Isaac, the founding father Abraham was first and foremost a larger-than-life aggressive and forceful “type A” personality. 

Isaac himself, however, is a much more passive and introspective individual, the almost natural result of living under the shadows of father so daunting and complete that it virtually makes it impossible for the son to feel that he can compete with his ‘invincible’ father. Isaac never initiates: he is “taken” (kah-na) to the binding, a wife is found for him, and the blessings are wrested from him. And although he has been marked by G-d as the heir-apparent to the birthright of Abraham, “For through Isaac shall be called your seed” (21:12), he can never forget that his father did not really want Yishmael banished, and that when G-d first promised Abraham a son with Sarah, the patriarch’s reaction was, “Would that Yishmael will live before You” (17:18). Indeed, Yishmael is more aggressive and powerful than Isaac, a man “…whose hand wins over everything and everyone”, (16:12), and perhaps, in his father’s eyes and heart, even more fitting for leadership and more beloved than Isaac would seem to be. Isaac’s “obsession” with Yishmael causes him to constantly return to the Be’er LaHai Ro’I, the place where the Almighty saved Hagar and blessed Yishmael (24:62; 25:11), and perhaps it is his own feelings of inadequacy which lead him to love and to choose for the birthright the more dominating and dominant Esau over the seemingly passive Jacob, who reminds him too much of himself.  

These feelings are re-inforced in Gerar, where Isaac calls Rebecca his sister just as Abraham, a generation earlier, referred to Sarah as his sister. Gerar is where Isaac is driven away from a particular area in the land of Canaan (Israel) where Abraham and his descendants had been permitted to live by virtue of a treaty with Avimelekh, - and Isaac leaves quietly, without even a complaint.  All he does is re-open those wells dug by Abraham which Avimelekh had shut up after the patriarch’s death. Moreover, Isaac is forced into another treaty with Avimelekh, since “…he was only treated well (by the Philistines) who merely banished him from the area but did not harm his person” (26:29). No wonder the passive Isaac is then moved to call upon Esau to bring him his beloved venison meat and receive the birthright (Genesis 27). 

However, Isaac’s wife Rebecca had never been exposed or subjected to the complex family dynamics between Abraham and Isaac. Her vision was clear, wise enough to understand how Isaac’s willingness to participate in the “binding” (“…and the two went together” 22:6,9) and his commitment to the Land of Israel (26:12,13) more than entitled him – and not Yishmael – to the birthright.  Similarly, Jacob’s whole-heartedness and studiousness, his deeper appreciation of what the birthright stood for, made him, rather than Esau, the proper heir to the Abrahamic covenant. In the final analysis it is the steadfast commitment to the mission of Israel to bring Blessings to the world through compassionate righteousness, morality and peace – rather than ambitious aggression - that define leadership for the seed of Abraham.

Shabbat Shalom