Portion of the Week / Parashat Toldot / The sweat of our brows - Haaretz

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Thu., November 08, 2007 Cheshvan 27, 5768

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Portion of the Week / Parashat Toldot / The sweat of our brows

By Benjamin Lau

tags: Parashat Toldot

Isaac the Patriarch is overshadowed by his father Abraham and his son Jacob, the Jewish nation's chief supporting pillars. Many commentators consider Isaac merely a conduit connecting Jacob with God's blessing to Abraham; God does not appear to Isaac in the same way he appeared to Abraham - "I am the Almighty God" (Genesis 17:1) - when he blessed him with many descendants and blessed the Promised Land (Gen. 17:2-8).

Isaac appears as a passive figure in the Bible: He is protected by his mother Sarah, who banishes Hagar and Ishmael, and led to the altar of sacrifice by Abraham in the Binding of Isaac episode. Even in the Torah portion focusing on the search for a wife for Isaac, he is almost totally absent: He is not consulted and is hardly seen.

Similarly, Isaac in the role of an elderly father inspires embarrassment. He lives in the shadow of a dominant wife, Rebecca, and seems overly dependent on his hunter son Esau. Many exegetists regard Isaac's attachment to Esau as blind - or, at least, myopic - love.

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Next week's reading opens with "And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba, and went toward Haran" (Gen. 28:10). Jacob is fleeing the wrath of his brother Esau whose vengeance he fears and the midrash in Genesis Rabba tells us: "It is written, 'And Jacob went out from Beer-sheba.' We can learn from this verse that the departure of a righteous individual from a community creates a major impression. A righteous individual dwelling in a city is its light, its majesty. When that person leaves, the light is gone and so is the majesty." The midrash describes the vacuum caused by a righteous person's departure - in this case, Jacob. No one seems to be paying any attention to the fact that when Jacob leaves Beer-sheba, his father Isaac is still alive. Yet the latter is not that city's light and majesty.

At the heart of this week's portion is a chapter (26) that depicts Isaac's attempt to express his uniqueness: Unlike his father Abraham, the wealthy and widely respected merchant, who traveled the length and breadth of the Near East extensively, and unlike his nomadic son Esau, Isaac settles in the southern part of Canaan, the Negev, becoming a farmer.

In fact, God instructs Isaac to remain in Canaan: "Go not down into Egypt; dwell in the land which I shall tell thee of: Sojourn in this land" (Gen. 26:2-3). According to some commentators, Isaac willingly parts with most of Abraham's property in order to live a simple agrarian life where he is bonded to the earth and its blessings. Adopting this approach, Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra (11th-century Spain) explains why Esau so nonchalantly gives up his birthright: "He does so because he sees that his father is not affluent. The fact that Isaac is not prosperous might surprise many because he inherited a large sum of money from Abraham. Although he grew up in a wealthy family, he is indigent in his old age. This is corroborated by his love for Esau, who provides his basic needs. Had his father's home been affluent and had Isaac been a highly respected member of society, Esau would not have sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil stew. If Isaac eats delicacies every day, why should he instruct Esau to bring him venison? And why does Jacob not have a set of fancy clothes [like his brother Esau]? Why does his mother not give him gold and silver for his journey? After all, he even prays to God to 'give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on' (Gen. 28:20)! Why does she not send him money, although she loves him, and why is he thus forced to guard Laban's flock?"

Although Nahmanides harshly attacks this commentary by Ibn Ezra, there is more than a grain of truth in the latter's remarks. Perhaps, when we consider Zionism's early days and the revolution expressed in the return of the Jews to a life of nature and in their abandonment of their Diaspora lifestyle, we can understand Isaac a little better. Over 80 years ago, A.D. Gordon articulated his dream of a "religion of work": "I am beginning everything from scratch. I am starting life all over again, with a new alphabet. Instead of changing or mending, I am doing everything in a new way. The first thing, which initially opened my heart to the life around me, is something that I knew about, just like the others: the value of work. Not work for the sake of a livelihood, not work for the sake of performing one of Judaism's commandments. No, I am referring to work for the sake of life - work upon which a new light is shining. Work, which I have observed and which I have concluded to be one of the basic elements of life, one of its deepest roots. And that is why I work."

This is how I want to read Isaac: An individual who grows up in an affluent family that has everything except the connection to the land. Isaac seeks to anchor in the reality of his life that blessing over the land which Abraham received from God. His entire purpose in life is to work, not for the sake of a livelihood, not for the sake of performing one of Judaism's commandments, but simply to be bonded to the soil of the Promised Land. As one of the Jewish nation's three Patriarchs, his role is not to serve as the conduit connecting Jacob to Abraham but rather to be the root that binds the People of Israel to its land. He is keenly aware that, without the plow and without wells from which to draw water for the fields and livestock, his descendants will never have strong ties to the Promised Land. Whereas the life of a prosperous merchant allows you to travel extensively and easily change your location, the determined rootedness to the land binds you to it with a powerful glue. Isaac's life is one of hard work; it is not a glamorous life, it is bereft of the drama of the frequent traveler, it does not provide you with the immense wealth enjoyed by successful merchants. With the sweat of his brow, Isaac creates the link that has turned Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) into the precious gem of Jews throughout the generations.

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