Parashat Toldot 5768/2007

Early Shabbatot have arrived. Services this evening begin at 4:15pm (with candle lighting taking place no later than 4:10pm) in our Rabb Chapel. There will also be a Cuddle Up Shabbat service in the Main Sanctuary at 6:00 pm with Jennifer Rudin and Jon Nelson, all are welcome.

Services tomorrow morning begin at 8:45am in our Main Sanctuary. We look forward to learning Parshat Toldot together. Following Kiddush, Landers Playspace will be open and Talmud will convene at 4:00pm.


Mincha services tomorrow afternoon begin at 3:45pm in our Rabb Chapel. At that time we look forward to celebrating the Bar Mitzvah of Jacob Heineman. Mazel tov to Jacob and his whole family. Shabbat ends not before 5:09 pm.

Rosh Hodesh Kislev services begin on Sunday morning at 8:00am in our Rabb Chapel.

Thanks to an anonymous member of our KI family for sharing many insights that make up this week's Torah Gems. First I wish to consider a few thoughts and questions.

Parshat Toldot contrasts the relatively sedentary life of Isaac with the emotional turmoil surrounding the transmission of a blessing to Jacob.

Isaac is the only patriarch to never set foot outside of the land of Canaan. He seems to follow, quite literally, in the footsteps of his father Abraham, simulating a wife/sister switch with Avimelech, re digging his father's wells, and dedicating an altar at Beer Sheva. It appears as if nothing is new here. We've seen it all before in the life of his father Abraham.


Yet these three incidents in Isaac's life, I have argued in the past, offer three compelling models for how we inherit as Jews. In the first instance, when Isaac claims to Avimelech that Rebecca is his sister (not the truth that she is his wife), Isaac is engaging in simple imitation. Often this is our aim in honoring the particular customs of our ancestors, simply imitate and enact them. In the second case, when Isaac redigs the wells that had been dug by his father, he is engaging in conscious reclamation. This form of inheriting is more purposeful (as opposed to the default mode of simply imitating), requiring more effort deliberating, considering, appropriating. Finally, a comment on Isaac's dedication at Beer Sheva (ir beer sheva) suggests that he is speaking of the whole region of Beer Sheva (as opposed to Abraham that is only attentive to the well in a more circumscribed space). This third mode of inheriting I will call creative expansion. It invites a form of inheriting that expands creatively on the gifts we are given by our ancestors that we might adapt and change traditions as purposefully and as reverently as they may have.

On the emotional anguish surrounding the deception which enables Isaac's blessing to be bestowed upon Jacob, Rebecca has a curious role. When we first met her last week, she is singled out for her Hesed (lovingkindness). More considerate, caring, and kind than most, Isaac is blessed to make her his wife. Yet, I have always been troubled by Rebecca's conduct in the deception of Isaac and the supplanting of Essau's blessings her role is to get God's blessing to the intended son Jacob. Yet the manner she chooses to achieve this fills Essau with agony and Isaac with trembling and travail. What has happened to her Hesed? I am eager to here of your thoughts on this matter over Shabbat.


Shabbat Shalom and enjoy the additional comments and insights that follow.

Rabbi William Hamilton



Of all the people in the Torah, Isaac is the one I would have wanted for a friend. He is kind, caring, compassionate, and passive or gentle, depending on your mindset. He might have been the prototype for the game show "Who(m) Do You Trust"? He never argues (except once, which we'll get to later), he accepts; he is guileless, but everyone tries to betray him.

His life never really gathers momentum because he is the embodiment of momentum. He is the live link between Abraham and Jacob. Unlike Abraham, he is not a leader; unlike Jacob, he never tries to kill his brother, or anyone else; he never goes to war. He is the only patriarch who is monogamous, who never leaves home, who grows up as an only child, and who doesn't choose his own wife. Everything is done for him, or is given to him, Yet, he is far from spoiled. His faith has the consistency of a rock, and though he is attributed with blindness in his old age, I suspect that if the maxim "Love is blind" is true, he would have been born blind. Could that be why he lived the longest of any of the patriarachs?

The facts of his life are simple:


Sarah and Abraham bore him when she was ninety and they named him "Isaac" meaning "to laugh" since they had laughed when the angels had told her she was to have a baby.

Isaac's sole playmate was Ishmael, son of Hagar, Sarah's handmaiden, whom she had asked to bear a son for her husband fearing that she could not. Ishmael was in his teens when Isaac was born and though they got along, Ishmael was perceived by Sarah as being too rough, and so she entreated Isaac to send him and Hagar away, to banish them. This did not sit well with Abraham, but God told him to listen to Sarah, and thus her wish was granted and they were exiled into the desert. This is the first time I have to wonder what Isaac thought, or, indeed, what he was told, when his half brother suddenly disappeared. They do reunite to bury Abraham at Cave Machpelah.

Then there is the famous enigma of Isaac's near sacrifice on Mount Moriah. His silent temerity, his disquieting solitude, plague us to this day. Why did he comply so willingly? What did he think? Did he think? Or did he just

the rest of his years I suspect the latter. He never saw what he could not fathom.

Sarah died when he was thirty six and he grieved sorely for her. She had been his fiercest protector and had taught him to love the Lord with her Shechinah.

When he was forty, Abraham sent a slave, Eliezer, to find a wife for him, with strict considerations as to what would be acceptable. Rebekkah fit the description and she willingly went to meet her betrothed; they supposedly fell in love at first sight. He took her into his mother's tent and the Shechinah became her.

Twenty years later God answered their prayers for children by blessing Rebekkah with twins, Jacob and Esau, who began fighting in her womb and apparently never stopped. Esau, the eldest, disdains Torah for love of the wilds, and so it is Jacob the scholar, the second, to whom Isaac wants to entrust the leadership of the Jewish people, but alas, he cannot.

Isaac does well as a farmer, but is almost forced to leave his land when there was a famine. God appeared to him and told him not to leave, but to settle elsewhere, and so he did. In his travels he copies his father's plan of passing his wife off as his sister.

He prospers so greatly in his new home that his neighbors try to annoy him by plugging up his wells. Rather than fighting back, he digs new wells and they are so impressed by his kindness that they approach him to be friends. His love of peace is thus manifest. Could this be the first instance of "Love thy neighbor as thyself?"

And now comes the one time when Isaac challenges the Almighty. A dispute over what else? The children. A midrash states, "When Abraham and Jacob, says the Talmud, were told that their children had sinned, they answered, "Let them be blotted out for the sanctification of Thy name"; but when God said to Isaac, "Thy children have sinned." Isaac answered, "Why are they my children more than Thine? When they answered, 'We will do [all that God shall command] and we will listen,' Thou calledst them 'My first Fborn'; yet now they are mine and not Thine! Moreover, how long can they have sinned? The duration of man's life is seventy years. In the first twenty years he is not punished [being irresponsible]; half of the remaining fifty is passed in sleeping. Half of the remainder is spent in praying, eating, etc. There remain only twelve and a half years. If thou art willing to bear the whole, it is for the better; if not, let half be borne by me and the other half by Thee. But if Thou insist upon my bearing the whole, I have already sacrificed myself for Thee" (Shab. 89b)."

And so the buck was first passed. Isaac won that one hands down!

And finally, the last humiliation by Rebekkah when she encourages Jacob to dress as Esau to secure the blessing of the eldest although his entitlement springs not from law but from nature. Jacob never lies. When Isaac queries, "Is it you, Esau? You have the arms of Esau but the voice of Jacob." Jacob's reply, "It is I, Father," cleverly begs the question, and seemingly satisfies Isaac. The blessing is given and Isaac loses both his sons when Esau's rage forces Jacob to flee. What did Isaac know of the ruse? Did he care to know? Was he deceived or did he embrace trust?

They, too, reunite to bury their parents at Machpelah.

What can we make of life so mildly lived, of a nature ostensibly so innocent, of a temperament so harmless? Is he a simpleton to be scorned, or a gentle giant of gallantry? My vote is for the latter and I wish I had been his friend.