I was telling Ziv, my grandson in Israel, that I was going to do a d’rasha for the Library Minyan on Chayei Sarah, (parshah Chayei Sarah is mainly concerned with choosing a wife for Isaac) when Ziv excitedly said "Grandpa, this was my bar mitsvah parshah 9 years ago".
All Ziv could remember was his saying, "Abraham says to his son Isaac "Isaac, I want you to marry a nice Jewish girl" and Isaac answers him "but dad, there aren’t ANY Jewish girls, nice or otherwise." So Abraham sends his servant Eliezer, to select an Aramean bride for Isaac, from Abraham’s native land of Aramea.
I had forgotten about Ziv’s bar mitzvah but I do remember very vividly something that occurred when I was a teenager of about 15. My orthodox uncle Rueben, who lived on the Lower East Side of N.Y., used to attend a little neighborhood shtibeleh. When he died the rabbi who spoke at his funeral impressed me with how dignified and literate the rabbi was. He compared my uncle to Isaac. Spoke of Rueben as being like a field of wheat. "The wind may blow and move the wheat back and forth, but the wheat remains firmly rooted." My uncle being rooted resulted in transmitting his orthodoxy to his sons, thus helping to perpetuate orthodoxy in America.
So in analyzing the character of my uncle, and by suggestion Isaac, the rabbi was saying poetically, that the main characteristics of Isaac were 1. his passivity resulting in his being swayed this way and that by the people around him and 2. his being rooted in the land. So I think it worthwhile to continue the discussion of last week’s bar mitzvah boy Alex on the character of our forefather Isaac. You remember that Alec criticized the passivity of Isaac when he was faced with being the potential sacrifice victim at the Akedah.
Actually the passivity of Isaac is shown in every event of his life as recorded in the Torah, including having the servant Eliezer select his bride Rebecca, rather then the 40 year old Isaac choosing his own bride, as all other Torah heroes do. But I’ll discuss only the two most well known examples of Isaac’s passivity.
As Alex said of the Akedah, the binding or sacrifice of Isaac "And Isaac, on the way to the sacrifice, said to his father Abraham "Here is the fire and the wood…but where is the sheep for the sacrifice? Nehama Leibowitz says and it’s pretty obvious, that Isaac had a premonition or inkling of what was to come.
Again as Alex mentioned. Abraham was an old man and the younger Isaac was very capable of resisting being bound. But not only didn’t Isaac protest being the potential think sacrificial victim, as Alex suggested he should have, but according to the Midrash, Isaac agrees willingly to be sacrificed. What could be more passive than that? No struggle, no revolt, but acceptance. Maybe not willingly, but certainly without protest consistent with his personality.
A second example. Isaac decides before dying, to bless his first born son Esau, his favorite. However Jacob under the instruction of Rebecca, his mother, puts the skins of a goat on his arms to resemble the hairy Esau, in order to fool his father, who had become blind. And when Jacob approached Isaac and Isaac felt Jacob’s arms, Isaac said "Ha-kol, kol Yaakov v’hayadayim y’day Aysov." "The voice is the voice of Jacob, but the hands are the hands of Esau." So once again, the passive Isaac has a premonition that he totally ignores and goes along with his manipulation by Rebecca and Jacob.
So there are parallels in the two stories. In both cases Isaac has a premonition voiced on his part by a short question, but then there is no follow-up action by him.
Think of how history would have been changed if Isaac could have had a simple cataract operation. But as Everett Fox says, Isaac’s blindness leads to the transmittal of the blessing to the proper recipient, Jacob.
There’s also a parallel between the stories of Abraham and Isaac regarding their first born. Just as Abraham under the influence of his wife Sarah displaces his first born son, Ishmael, so Isaac under the influence of his younger and more assertive wife Rebecca displaces his first born son, Esau. Another instance of the many first born displacements in the Torah.
Isaac is the passive transitional character between the dynamic figures of Abraham and Jacob. Even in the collections of droshot, much more attention is paid to Sarah and Rebecca, let alone Abraham and Jacob, than to Isaac, because they are the more dynamic personalities. To some extent Isaac is the neglected patriarch. Everett Fox goes to the absurd extreme of claiming that Isaac has no personality. So Alex and I are making up for this inattention. Even when the Akedah is discussed it’s usually with consideration of the feelings of Abraham, not those of Isaac.
Perhaps I’m belaboring the obvious, but my father’s name was Isaac and he really WAS an Isaac, passive in character. Dominated by his wife, whom he really loved, just as Isaac really loved Rebecca, he was never confrontational and was a loving father. But his wife and children inadequately appreciated him, just as today we may not truly appreciate the Isaac of the Torah, or people with his type of personality
As my son Dan points out, considering only at the passivity of Isaac ignores Isaac’s real importance and contribution. The most significant thing is that in the Torah, God specifically commands Isaac not to leave Israel and travel to Egypt as Abraham and Jacob do when he Isaac is confronted by a famine. Isaac is the only patriarch who spends his entire life in and never leaves Israel. This is the being "rooted" that the rabbi I told of previously, was referring to. Isaac is necessary for the continuity of and consolidation in the land of Israel. Just as Abraham gives claim to the land by the purchase of the Cave of Machpelah, so Isaac furthers that claim by the continuity of his life in the land, and by his digging up again the wells of Abraham, that the local inhabitants, the Philistines, had filled up after Abraham’s death. Isaac transmits this heritage to Jacob, not dying until after Jacob returns from Aramea.
From a broader perspective the development of the Jewish nation has different demands, at different points in its history. For Abraham the demand was to break from his association with the idol worshipping past. "Lech l’cha me’artzcha …..oo-me beit avicha". "Go forth from your native land …..and your father’s house." Be dynamic. But for Isaac the necessity was to be rooted and for continuity in the land, a more passive role.
It is sometimes harder and more necessary to continue what the previous generation started, than for each new generation to start all over. "They also serve (a purpose) who only stand and wait."