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“And all the wells that were ... dug in the days of
Abraham his father were stopped by the Philistines and filled
with earth...”
“And Isaac redug the wells of water
dug in the days of Abraham his father... And he called them
by the same names that his father had called them.”
Genesis 26:15-18
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are more than the forebears of the
Jewish nation: they are the founding fathers of the Jewish
soul. So we study their lives and analyze their every word
and deed, for these are the foundations of our identity and
the building blocks of our psyche and character.
In Abraham we see a fountainhead of Jewish generosity and
social commitment. “I know him,” says G-d of the
first Jew, “that he will command his children and his
household after him, that they shall keep the way of G-d,
to do charity and justice.”[1]
Abraham, whose home and heart were open to every wayfarer,
regardless of who he was and where he was coming from, offering
food, drink, companionship and guidance.[2] Abraham, who challenged G-d's decree of destruction on the evil
city of Sodom.[3]
Abraham, who traversed the land bearing light and enlightenment
to a dark and befuddled world.[4]
In Jacob we see a prototype of the Jew's devotion to learning.
“The voice is the voice of Jacob, and the hands are the
hands of Esau”—Esau lives by the sword, while Jacob
lives by the word.[5]
For the first 77 years of his life, Jacob was “a dweller
in the tents of study”[6];
his first act upon his arrival in Egypt-where he would live
his final seventeen-was to establish a house of learning.[7]
In Jacob we also find an archetype for the Jew's epochal perseverance
under conditions of exile and adversity: in a foreign Charan,
in the employ of the deceitful Laban, he built his family
and fortune; in an alien Egypt, he imparted a lasting legacy
to the fledgling nation of Israel. If Abraham exemplifies
love, Jacob epitomizes truth-the quest for truth, and the
consistency and persistency of truth.
But who was Isaac? The longest lived of the Patriarchs, we
are told the least about him. The Torah recounts the story
of the Akeidah, the “Binding of Isaac,” but tells
it as Abraham's story, Abraham's test. Then comes the long
chapter describing the process of finding of a bride for Isaac;
but it is Eliezer, Abraham's servant, who is dispatched to
Charan and who is the key figure in the drama of the choosing
of Rebbeca, while Isaac's whereabouts and activities at the
time remain unknown.
What does Isaac do? Basically, he stays put. By divine command,
he is the only one of the three Patriarchs never to set foot
outside of the Holy Land.[8] And he digs wells.
The Torah devotes an entire chapter to Isaac's well-digging
activities. We are told that he reopened the wells that had
been dug by Abraham and stopped by the Philistines after Abraham's
death, and of a series of new wells he dug himself. Then,
although he has at least another 80 years to live, we are
told nothing more of Isaac's life other than his blessings
to his children before his death.[9]
Awe
At his confrontation with Laban at Mt. Gilad, Jacob attributes
his perseverance and success in Charan to “the G-d of
Abraham and the awe of Isaac.”[10]
Therein lies the key to the enigma of Isaac: Isaac was awe
to Abraham's love, restraint to Abraham's expansiveness, self-effacement
to Abraham's self-assertion. Abraham's love of G-d and humanity
took him on a journey from self outward, a journey etched
in the roads of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Canaan. Isaac's was
an inward journey, a journey into the depths of self to the
essence within.
Isaac is the fear of Heaven in the Jewish heart: the Jew’s
self-censoring discipline, his silent sacrifice, his humble
awe before the majesty of its Creator. Isaac was a digger
of wells, boring through the stratum of emotion and experience
in search of the quintessential waters of the soul. Boring
deeper than feeling, deeper than desire, deeper than achievement,
to the selflessness at the core of self.
Alien Love
Abraham, too, dug wells, but his were stopped by the Philistines.
“One opposite the other, G-d made,”[11]
is a cardinal law of creation. Every virtue has its corresponding
evil, every positive force its negative counterpart.
Love, too, has its rival evil. Love, after all, is an assertion
of self-the extension of self to give and relate to another.
Corrupted love is when the self asserts itself not to give
but to take; not in Abrahamic love but in Philistine lust;
not in caring compassion but in egotistic self-gratification.
As long as Abraham was alive, only pure love flowed from
his righteous wells. But after his death, the Philistines
commandeered the fountainheads of love he had established
in the land. The Hebrew word plishtim means “open-ended
ones”[12]; a plishtim love is an uninhibited,
undisciplined love, a profane love bereft of the focus and
commitment of Abraham's holy love.[13]
It was Isaac who redeemed Abraham's legacy of love. As redug
by Isaac, Abraham's wells became immune to Philistine corruption.
For love that flows from a well of selflessness and fear of
Heaven flows faithful to its source and true to its objective.
The Jewish Soul
Every Jew is the child of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Every
Jew has their love, awe and truth encoded in the spiritual
DNA of his soul.
The Abraham in the Jew rushes to embrace the world, to champion
its downtrodden, to extend himself heart, soul and checkbook
to his fellow man. But love, to be true, must be restrained:
the father who embraces his child with the full intensity
of his love will hurt rather than comfort him. And love, unchecked,
eventually disintegrates to the destructive, everything-goes
“love” of the Philistine. Isaac is the Jew’s
source of discipline, humility and reverence; of his appreciation
of the nullity of finite man before the infinity of G-d.
The issue of this marriage of love and awe is truth; truth
that focuses the Jew's outpourings of love in giving, holy
expressions; truth that cultivates his inward retreat to selflessness
toward creative and constructive ends. This is the legacy
of Jacob, in whom the love of Abraham and the awe of Isaac
alloyed into invincible truth.
Based on an address by the Rebbe, Tishrei 5, 5735 (September
21, 1974)[14]
Adapted from the teachings of the Rebbe by
Yanki Tauber
[2] Talmud, Sotah 10a-b; Avot d'Rabbi Natan 7:1; etc.
[4] Midrash Rabba, Breishit 39:24; Rashi on Genesis
24:7; etc.
[5] Genesis 27:22 and 40.
[6] Ibid. 25:27; see Rashi on Genesis 28:9.
[7] Rashi, Genesis 46:28.
[8] Genesis 26:2-3; Rashi, ibid.
[9] Actually, Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau some 57 years
before his death. Yet Isaac himself describes these blessings
as his parting words: “Behold, I have aged and I know
not the day of my death... I shall bless you before I die”
(Genesis 27:2-4). The Torah, which describes Isaac as one
whose “eyes had grown heavy with age” at the time,
says no more of his life and deeds.
[10] Genesis 31:42; meaning either G-d, the object
of Isaac's awe (Onkelus), or Isaac's awe of G-d (Ibn Ezra).
[12] As in mavo hamefulash, “an open-ended alley”
(Talmud, Eruvin 95a.)
[13] Cf. the modern usage of “philistine”
to connote a coarse, unrefined individual
[14] Likkuttei Sichot vol. XV pp. 118-121.
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