Parshat Toldot

WHEN ISAAC WAS OLD AND HIS EYES WERE TOO DIM TO SEE, HE CALLED HIS OLDER SON ESAU AND SAID TO HIM, "MY SON." HE ANSWERED, "HERE I AM."

(Bereishit 27:1)

 

Isaac's Dim Eyes: Fate, Punishment, or Blessing?

When Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see [meire'ot], another view: meire'ot [also translatable as "from the sight"] - [his blindness was caused by] the power of that act of seeing: When our father Abraham bound his son upon the altar, the attending angels wept, as it is said Hark! The Arielites cry aloud (Isaiah 33:7). Tears fell from their eyes into his [Isaac's] eyes, leaving their impression there, so that when he grew old his eyes were dim, as it says, When Isaac was old, etc. Another view: meire'ot - [his blindness was caused by] the power of that act of seeing: When our father Abraham bound his son upon the altar, he turned his eyes to heaven and looked at the Divine Presence. It may be explained with a parable. What is it like? It is like a king who strolled in the entrance of his palace and saw his beloved's son looking at him through a window. He said: "If I kill him now, it will overcome my beloved. Rather, I should decree that his windows be shut." So too, when our father Abraham bound his son upon the altar, he turned his eyes and looked at the Divine Presence. The Holy One blessed be He said, "If I kill him now, I shall overcome my beloved Abraham. Rather, I shall decree that his eyes be dimmed." So, when he grew old, his eyes became dim, When Isaac was old, etc.

(Bereishit Rabbah 65:10)

 

When Isaac was old - Rabbi Yitzhak began to speak: Who vindicate him who is in the wrong in return for a bribe (Isaiah 5:23) - anyone who takes a bribe and vindicates him who is in the wrong for a bribe and the vindication of the righteous is withheld by him: the vindication of the righteous - that is Moses; is withheld by him - that is Isaac. His eyes went dim because he vindicated the one who was in the wrong - When Isaac was old, etc.

(Bereishit Rabbah 65:5)

 

Rabbi Hanina bar Papa began to speak: You, O Lord my God, have done many things; Your wonders, etc. (Psalms 40:6).

Rabbi Hanina said: [With] all of the deeds and thoughts which you performed unto us for our benefit - why did Isaac's eyes grow dim? So that Jacob could come and take the blessings - When Isaac was old.

(Bereishit Rabbah 65:8)

 

And Rabbi Yitzhak said: Never take the curse of an ordinary person lightly, for Avimelekh cursed Sarah, and it was fulfilled in her children, for it is said, Let this be as a covering of eyes (Bereishit 20). He told her: Since you hid it from me and did not reveal that he is your husband, causing me this great trouble, may you bear children with covered eyes. This was realized in her children, for it is written: When Isaac was old and his eyes were too dim to see.

(Bava Kama 93a)

 

 

An Imposter's Blessing

Daniel Rohrlich

The story of the blessing that Jacob took from Esau deceitfully - "shrewdly", according to Targum Onkelos - is one of the most striking stories of Genesis, yet it is a perplexing story. It is not the motives that are perplexing: Isaac's desire to bless Esau his first-born, Rebecca's ambition for Jacob to be blessed instead, Jacob's hesitating participation in her plan, Esau's shock and pain - all these are clear and understood. What is not understood is the outcome, contained in the crucial verse of the story (Gen. 27:33): "Isaac was seized with violent trembling and demanded, `Who was it, then, who hunted game and brought it to me, so that I ate of it before you came, and blessed him? Now he must remain blessed!' "

The Ramban put his finger on the enormous difficulty in this verse: "It is not characteristic of someone seized with violent trembling, crying, "Who is the one who deceived me", to bless that very one - to finish off his cry with an immediate `Now he must remain blessed!' He should have cursed him instead!" Indeed, how can we understand the sudden change in Isaac's mind? And the Ramban heaped a second difficulty onto the first: "Moreover, Esau should have shouted at him, ` Why are you blessing him now, Father?'!" How can we explain Esau's submission to his father's change of mind? How can anyone trust the sincerity of a father who changes his mind with such unbearable ease?

The Ramban also suggested an answer to his trenchant questions: "The sense of `Now he must remain blessed' is `I have no choice, I can't transfer the blessing to someone else"; for once he had blessed Jacob, he knew prophetically that the blessing was Jacob's..." The Ramban (like other commentators) thus joined Rashi in his comment, based on Breshit Raba: "Lest it be said that if Jacob hadn't deceived Isaac he wouldn't have gotten the blessing, Isaac accepted the outcome and consciously blessed him." But it is hard to reconcile this answer with either the text or morality.

It is hard to reconcile the answer with the text, because the essence of the blessing is not spiritual but material, as Nehama Leibowitz, in her book New Studies in Genesis, pointed out: "Plenty, riches, a healthy and wealthy economy, affluence, dominion and power - all these are meant for Esau." Then what is reserved for Jacob? For Jacob is reserved the "Abrahamic destiny", namely the blessing that Isaac intentionally and consciously bestows on Jacob just before the latter departs for Padam Aram (Gen. 28:3-4): "May God Almighty bless you, make you fertile and numerous, an assembly of peoples. May He bestow upon you and your offspring the blessing of Abraham, that you may possess the land in which you are living, which God gave to Abraham." Thus without the deceit, Jacob would indeed not have gotten the blessing meant for Esau.

And thus it is hard also to reconcile the answer of the Ramban and Rashi and others with morality. After all, it is not a matter of a child's prank or cheerful Israeli chutzpa but of something much more serious, something more like "murdering and taking possession". It cannot be that the Torah is commending to us a blessing won through deceit! So the words "Now he must remain blessed" remain perplexing.

It is instructive to compare this story with a quite different story, about the Gibeonites during the conquest of Canaan (Joshua 9:20). "When the inhabitants of Gibeon learned how Joshua had treated Jericho and Ai, they resorted to deceit." What did the Canaanite inhabitants of Gibeon do? Terrified of Joshua's army, they dressed themselves in ragged clothes and shoes and declared, "Your servants have come from a very distant land, drawn by the fame of the Lord your God, for we have heard report of Him..." The Israelites, who were commanded to destroy the Canaanites, made a pact with the Gibeonites on the basis of this declaration. Three days later, they found out that they had been cheated. "But the Israelites did not attack them, for the chieftains of the community had sworn to them by the Lord, the God of Israel. The whole community protested to the chieftains, but the chieftains all answered the community, `We swore to them by the Lord, the God of Israel, and now we cannot touch them.' "An oath that is sworn in God's Name, even as a result of deceit, must not be retracted. So grave is the Third Commandment - the prohibition of swearing falsely by God's Name - that during King David's reign, three years of famine came as punishment for the killing of Gibeonites by King Saul in breach of the pact with them (II Sam. 21:1-2).

In view of the story of the Gibeonites, we must seriously consider that the words "Now he must remain blessed" testify to Isaac's deep belief that a blessing that he blessed in the name of God must not be retracted, lest he swear falsely by God. (See also the hint in Esther 8:8.) Esau's acquiescence indicates likewise that he was familiar with his father's belief, while Rebecca's speech to Jacob (Gen. 27:7) indicates that she, too, was familiar with this belief of Isaac's and exploited it.

Thus the story teaches us about the Third Commandment through Isaac's personal example. The Third Commandment has not expired nor has its force diminished in our time, and the prohibition applies not only to the literal names of God. Even someone who is careful to write ה' or even ד' instead of God's Name can swear falsely by God.

The National Religious movement is engaged in soul-searching these days, in the wake of the withdrawal from Gaza. Our desire to settle every part of the Land of Israel is understood; but where are the courageous souls who accept responsibility for the claim that the mitzva of settling the Land outweighs and supercedes all other mitzvot, even when it entails injustice, humiliation, rampant uprooting of trees and house demolitions, and unceasing bloodshed? Concerning the mitzva of settling the Land there are various opinions and approaches, but the prohibition of bloodshed outweighs them all. The nationalist fervor of King Saul "in his zeal for the people of Israel and Judah" led him to shed the blood of the Gibeonites. In violating the pact with them, he swore falsely by God and even desecrated His Name (Rambam, Laws of Kings, 5:6). And in the claim that God wants us to settle every part of the Land of Israel, without regard for anything else, there is also a kind of swearing falsely by God and desecration of His Name.

Dr. Daniel Rohrlich is a physicist

 

Are the Deeds of the Patriarchs Signs or Examples for the Children?

As repeatedly remarked, we follow the opinion of our sages, and do not consider it our task to be apologists for our great men and women, just as the Word of God, the Torah itself never refrains from telling us of their errors and weaknesses. If Rebecca brought it about that Jacob deceived his father, it says unequivocally your brother came in deceit. Reb Hanina expresses himself about the events recorded in this chapter as follows: "Anybody who says that God is not so particular" with His "pious ones," that "frum" people need not be so particular in certain directions, "deserves to have his inwards torn out. The forbearance of God grants long credit but the debt has to be paid in the end; one cry Jacob caused Esau to make, as is written, when Esau heard his father's words, he let out a cry and that was repaid in Shushan when Esau's descendant caused Jacob's descendant to cry with a long and bitter cry (Esther 4:1). "Three tears" it says in Tanhuma - "Three tears did Esau shed, one dropped out of his right eye, one from his left, and the third he kept back, and that one, the bitterest that he did not drop, salted the bread of exile with tears and made us taste the tears in full threefold measure." But if quiet thoughtful considerations of this event force one to conclusions that would remove a great deal of its bitterness, we do not think that we should refrain from giving them in order to avoid our appearing as apologists. Enough will still remain which can not be approved of, especially when measured with the same yard-stick of character whose name of honor is Yeshurun, which is only to achieve its purposes in the "straight" [yashar] way, and is to oppose any crooked means for any purpose.

(Rabbi S.R. Hirsch on Bereishit 27:1, Levy translation)

 

Inasmuch as Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge: My commandments, My Laws, and My teachings.

(Bereishit 26:5)

 

Charge is the general term. That is why it is set apart by the Cantillation mark called zakef katan. It is followed by its constituent details: My commandments, My Laws, and My teachings. Everything that a person is required to uphold out of deference to the will of the commander, such as a father's charge to his son, is called a "commandment." If it is [upheld] out of fear of punishment, as in the case of a master's charge to his slave, it is called a "law." If it is [upheld] because of the benefit it grants to those who observe it, such as a teacher's charge to his student, it is called a "teaching." All of God's orders are truly commandments, laws, and teachings, since a person is required to observe them for all three reasons. The verse hints to all of the Torah's commandments, as the Sages said: "Our father Abraham observed all of the Torah, even though it had not yet been given. A literal reading would say that My charge is faith in the Divinity, that he [Abraham] believed in the unique Name, and guarded this faith in his heart, confounding all the idolaters, and calling in the Lord's name to return many to His service.

(Rabbi Yitzhak Shemuel Reggio, ad loc)

 

Did Esau disguise himself as Jacob or vice versa? The mistake is possible in both directions.

The voice is the voice of Jacob and the hands are the hands of Esau: he could not have said, the voice is Jacob's and the hands are Esau's, for then he would have sworn that he had judged according to the voice, and that he was certainly Jacob, and according to the hands, that he was certainly Esau, which is impossible. For if he is Jacob he is not Esau, and if he is Esau, he is not Jacob. But here is the explanation of the matter: he meant that the voice was similar to Jacob's voice, and perhaps he is falsifying his voice, and the truth is that he was Esau, and that he is falsifying himself and speaking in pleas, saying that he was worthy of receiving the blessings. Or else the hands are similar to the hands of Esau, and he is Jacob, who is falsifying himself to make his hands hairy, so that I will think that it is Esau. And why is there an "and" in and the hands? It comes from the verse, and he strikes his father and his mother, meaning or his mother. Thus he meant, or the hands are similar to the hands of Esau.

(Keli Yakar, Bereishit 27:22)

 

Israel's Destiny and Purpose amongst the Nations and in the World

Rabbi Brekhiyah began to speak: Turn back, turn back, O maid of Shulem! Turn back, turn back, that we may gaze upon you (Song of Songs 7:1). Turn back is written four times, corresponding to the four kingdoms into which Israel entered in peace and left in peace; O maid of Shulem [HaShulamit] - a nation that is led from tent to tent by the Ever Living Peace [a name of God]. HaShulamit - a nation which has peace bestowed upon it each day by the Priests, for it is said and they shall place My Name (Bamidbar 6) and also and place peace upon you. HaShulamit - a nation in which dwells the Everlasting Peace, as it is said, Make me a Sanctuary and I shall dwell within it (Shemot 28). HaShulamit - a nation which I shall grant peace in the future, for it is said, and I shall grant peace in the land (Vayikra 26). HaShulamit - a nation to which I shall extend peace in the future, as it is written, Thus says the Lord: "I will extend peace to you like a river..." (Isaiah 66).

Rabbi Shemuel bar Tanhum and Rabbi Hana said in the name of Rabbi Idi: A nation that makes peace between Me and My world. If it were not for it, I would have destroyed My world. Rabbi Huna began speaking in the name of Rabbi Aha: The Earth melts with all of its inhabitants [it is I who kept its pillars firm, Selah] (Psalms 75:4) it [the word melts] is to be understood as when it said: All the inhabitants of Canaan melted [with fear] (Shemot 15:15). I who kept [its pillars] firm - I - as soon as they took upon themselves [the commandment to believe] I am you God, I...kept its pillars firm. Selah - the world became well-founded. Rabbi Elazar ben Meron says: A nation that pays for the world's enduring existence, both in this world and the next. Rabbi Levi said: All good that comes to the world comes only by this nation's merit; the rain falls only by its merit, the dew descends only by its merit, for it is said, and God will give to you of the dew of heaven. To you - thanks to your merit - that is what it depends upon.

(Bereishit Rabbah 66:2)

 

 

 

 

 

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