Tag Archives: encountering God

Parashat Toledot – What do we learn from Isaac?

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“Isaac dug anew the wells that had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and that the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them. But when Isaac’s servants, digging in the wadi, found there a well of spring water, the herdsmen of Gerar quarrelled with Isaac’s herdsmen, saying, “The water is ours.” He named that well Esek, because they contended with him. And when they dug another well, they disputed over that one also; so he named it Sitnah. He moved from there and dug yet another well, and they did not quarrel over it; so he called it Rehovot, saying, “Now at last GOD has granted us ample space to increase in the land.” From there he went up to Beer-sheba.

וַיָּשׇׁב יִצְחָק וַיַּחְפֹּר  אֶת־בְּאֵרֹת הַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר חָפְרוּ בִּימֵי אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו וַיְסַתְּמוּם פְּלִשְׁתִּים אַחֲרֵי מוֹת אַבְרָהָם וַיִּקְרָא לָהֶן שֵׁמוֹת כַּשֵּׁמֹת אֲשֶׁר־קָרָא לָהֶן אָבִיו׃

וַיַּחְפְּרוּ עַבְדֵי־יִצְחָק בַּנָּחַל וַיִּמְצְאוּ־שָׁם בְּאֵר מַיִם חַיִּים׃

וַיָּרִיבוּ רֹעֵי גְרָר עִם־רֹעֵי יִצְחָק לֵאמֹר לָנוּ הַמָּיִם וַיִּקְרָא שֵׁם־הַבְּאֵר עֵשֶׂק כִּי הִתְעַשְּׂקוּ עִמּוֹ׃

וַיַּחְפְּרוּ בְּאֵר אַחֶרֶת וַיָּרִיבוּ גַּם־עָלֶיהָ וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמָהּ שִׂטְנָה׃

וַיַּעְתֵּק מִשָּׁם וַיַּחְפֹּר בְּאֵר אַחֶרֶת וְלֹא רָבוּ עָלֶיהָ וַיִּקְרָא שְׁמָהּ רְחֹבוֹת וַיֹּאמֶר כִּי־עַתָּה הִרְחִיב יְהֹוָה לָנוּ וּפָרִינוּ בָאָרֶץ׃

וַיַּעַל מִשָּׁם בְּאֵר שָׁבַע׃

On the first reading of this text, we notice how Isaac is doggedly following in his father’s footsteps – renewing the wells that had been dug by his father, and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death.  Isaac gives them the same names that his father had given them. As soon as he is successful in getting the water, he is challenged by the herdsmen from Gerar that the water is not his, but theirs. Meekly moving on to the next place – albeit after having given another name to each well to describe the dispute and contention found there, he eventually comes to a place where there is no quarrel over the ownership, and he calls the place “Rehovot” – wide spaces.   It seems that Isaac is trying to launch himself as  heir to Abraham’s legacy, but despite his wealth and status, he struggles to establish the claim.

A closer look gives us more questions – given the huge importance of accessible fresh water in the desert, why did the Philistine stop up the wells of Abraham in the first place, choking them with dirt? Rashi comes to our aid “סתמום פלשתים THE PHILISTINES STOPPED THEM, saying, “They may become a source of danger to us because of marauding troops that may invade us” (i.e.,they may invade our country to obtain possession of the wells, or if they invade us for any other reason they will be able to find a supply of water). (Tosafot Sotah 10.)

The wells of Abraham were evidently left without an owner to care for and protect them – leaving them available to potentially hostile strangers keen to access the precious water, or worse – they could become an asset to an invading army.

The explanation makes some sense of a strange event, but surely the best approach would have been for the Philistines to annex these “ownerless” wells and keep them in good repair.

The 16th-century Italian rabbi and commentator Sforno gives us another potential reason for the Philistines’ actions – jealousy. He writes that since the king had forbidden them to harm Isaac’s person, they would harm him by attacking the source of his wealth. Yet Isaac made his own wealth from sowing grain in the fields of Gerar!

Another question that arises from this text – what were the names given by Abraham to these wells? The bible never tells us, yet it stresses that Isaac gives the wells the names his father had given them, before then changing their names to reflect the hostility of the Philistines to his settling there.

It seems that the text considers it of great importance to tell us that Isaac was following Abraham’s actions and renovating Abraham’s wells, not digging new wells for himself. But why? 

The text seems keen for us to understand that Isaac is the true heir to Abraham – for we know that Abraham had many sons.  In The Legends of the Jews, Ginzburg writes “Isaac departed from Gerar, and began to dig again the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Abraham his father, and which the Philistines had stopped. His reverence for his father was so great that he even restored the names by which Abraham had called the wells. To reward him for his filial respect, God left the name of Isaac unchanged, while his father and his son had to submit to new names.”

Filial respect as well as claiming rightful inheritance – the midrash wants us to understand that this is not the act of a greedy man, or one who wants to pile up further wealth at the expense of others – he is merely claiming what is his by right, and fulfilling the wishes of his father by honouring his father’s naming of the wells.

I particularly like the idea that God rewards Isaac for his act of filial respect when in the physical world he is repeatedly humiliated and made to leave. The reward – that he gets to keep the name he is born with – is an interesting one. Both Abraham and Jacob (and of course Sarah) have their names altered to encompass their particular encounters with God, and one can argue that God is placed within their names (the added letter “heh” for Abraham, the “el” in Yisrael for Jacob, though poor Sarah loses her “yod” giving half of it’s value to her husband….)   Isaac on the other hand is named for an event before his birth – the laughter that Sarah speaks of at the idea that such elderly parents would produce a son – it is hard to see the reward in keeping a name that echoes the expectation of mockery.

We know that Abraham named places in response to his encounters with God in these places,  – is Isaac trying to repeat history? Is he hoping for his own encounters with God by using the names his father gave? Is he simply underlining that Abraham had had such encounters, and by renewing these wells he is reminding everyone of the history which the Philistines, by stopping them up, was trying to erase?

Isaac, more than either his father Abraham, and his son Jacob, is the embodiment of dogged resilience in the face of great trauma. He is the personification of the notion of “keeping on keeping on”.  His father Abraham tried to sacrifice him to prove his blind loyalty to God and his son Jacob took advantage of his near blindness in his old age, lying  to him in order to receive the blessing that Isaac had meant to give to Esau. Even his brother Ishmael was perceived as a risk to him and sent away after Sarah saw his actions towards the young Isaac as threatening:

וַתֵּרֶא שָׂרָה אֶת־בֶּן־הָגָר הַמִּצְרִית אֲשֶׁר־יָלְדָה לְאַבְרָהָם מְצַחֵק׃

Isaac tries so hard to live up to what is expected from him. He repeats much of his father’s history – the famine that causes him to go to Abimelech, the wife/sister stratagem that could so nearly lead to disaster, yet which surprisingly provides the possibility to gain great wealth; the disputes between herdsmen – Isaac’s with the men of Gerar, Abraham’s with those of his nephew Lot….

It is the verse after Isaac has finished digging wells, after he has found his place in Rehovot that gives us a clue to the man whose persistence and dogged determination ensure not only his survival but also his own encounter with God :

“From there he went up to Beer-sheba. That night GOD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham.” So he built an altar there and invoked GOD by name. Isaac pitched his tent there and his servants started digging a well.  And Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his councilor and Phicol chief of his troops. Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you have been hostile to me and have driven me away from you?” And they said, “We now see plainly that GOD has been with you, and we thought: Let there be a sworn treaty between our two parties, between you and us. Let us make a pact with you that you will not do us harm, just as we have not molested you but have always dealt kindly with you and sent you away in peace. From now on, be you blessed of GOD!” Then he made for them a feast, and they ate and drank.

Early in the morning, they exchanged oaths. Isaac then bade them farewell, and they departed from him in peace. That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water!” He named it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day. (Gen 26:24-33)

The city of Beersheva is named twice, once by Abraham and once by Isaac. Note the difference

In Genesis 21 we read

“At that time Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, said to Abraham, “God is with you in everything that you do. Therefore swear to me here by God that you will not deal falsely with me or with my kith and kin, but will deal with me and with the land in which you have sojourned as loyally as I have dealt with you.” And Abraham said, “I swear it.”

Then Abraham reproached Abimelech for the well of water that the servants of Abimelech had seized. But Abimelech said, “I do not know who did this; you did not tell me, nor have I heard of it until today.” Abraham took sheep and oxen and gave them to Abimelech, and the two of them made a pact.

Abraham then set seven ewes of the flock by themselves, and Abimelech said to Abraham, “What mean these seven ewes that you have set apart?” He replied, “You are to accept these seven ewes from me as proof that I dug this well.” Hence that place was called Beer-sheba, *Beer-sheba I.e., “well of seven” or “well of oath.” for there the two of them swore an oath. When they had concluded the pact at Beer-sheba, Abimelech and Phicol, chief of his troops, departed and returned to the land of the Philistines.

Abimelech affirms that God is with him in everything he does, but then demands a treaty. Abraham confronts him with the seizure by Abimelech’s men of the well of Beersheva– and negotiates that the treaty will affirm Abraham’s right to the water there. In thetreaty it is Abraham who provides the sheep and oxen to Abimelech in order to conclude the deal. Abimelech offers nothing.

But the story of Isaac reads a little differently

“That night GOD appeared to him and said, “I am the God of your father Abraham. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and increase your offspring for the sake of My servant Abraham.”  So he built an altar there and invoked GOD by name. Isaac pitched his tent there and his servants started digging a well.  And Abimelech came to him from Gerar, with Ahuzzath his councilor and Phicol chief of his troops.

Isaac said to them, “Why have you come to me, seeing that you have been hostile to me and have driven me away from you?”  And they said, “We now see plainly that GOD has been with you, and we thought: Let there be a sworn treaty between our two parties, between you and us. Let us make a pact with you  that you will not do us harm, just as we have not molested you but have always dealt kindly with you and sent you away in peace. From now on, be you blessed of GOD!”

Then he made for them a feast, and they ate and drank. Early in the morning, they exchanged oaths. Isaac then bade them farewell, and they departed from him in peace.

That same day Isaac’s servants came and told him about the well they had dug, and said to him, “We have found water!” He named it Shibah; therefore the name of the city is Beer-sheba to this day. (Genesis 26:24-33)

Unlike his father, here we meet an Isaac who has the confidence that God really is with him.  He built an altar and called upon God before beginning to look for water.   When Abimelech came with a similar affirmation to that given to Abraham,  that he can see God is with Isaac, Isaac does not behave as his father did, but instead confronts the hostility he has received at the hands of the men of Gerar. The pact is made between equals, only then is the well of Beersheva discovered, there is no doubt as to its ownership.

What are the lessons we can draw from the life of Isaac, often described as the son of a great man and the father of a great man but not himself a great man?

We can see a man for whom history matters, a man who gives respect to others, who works to ensure the past is not erased despite the efforts of those who would like to see it so. We see a man who persists, a man who despite very real trauma and betrayal of trust by both his father and his son, still loves his mother, his wife, his children.  We see a man of great – albeit quiet – resilience. Even before birth he is the object of mockery, but he keeps on going, and he achieves on his own terms. We see a man who reconciles with his brother, whom family lore may well have described as a danger to him.

All our biblical heroes are flawed human beings – Isaac no less than others. But Isaac’s flaws are not the dramatic personality traits that are damaging to others – his flaws seem to stem from his early trauma and damage only himself.

In the biblical narrative of larger than life heroes who claim our attention and our interest, this sidra is reminding us – it is ok, indeed it is more than ok, for us to be more like Isaac.

Shemot: God and we are both in the process of becoming. We will be what we will be.

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When Moses first encounters God he asks for God’s name so as to be able to prove to the Israelites that he did indeed meet their ancestral deity, and God tells him not a name he will understand, but to say “Ehyeh asher Ehyeh – I will be what I will be – tell them Ehyeh sent you to them”

 The word Ehyeh is the first person future of the verb ‘to be’, and suggests that God is not a fixed and definable figure, knowable nameable and therefore predictable to human beings, but is rather an evolving, mysterious and dynamic power that is always in process of becoming more than what it was or is. The implication is that God grows and changes through contact with us, just as we grow and change in contact with God.

In the earliest books of the Hebrew bible God is very present – God speaks to individuals, walks with them, appears in our world.  Encounters with God are recognised as being what they are, the significance is understood.  And while much of the language describing the experience is of necessity quite simple and concrete – walking with, appearing, speaking – signs and wonders, outstretched arms, and so on, the writers of the text knew quite clearly that the real encounter was complex and abstract.  There is no language even to begin to paint the sense of the evolving, mysterious and dynamic power which is always in process, always becoming rather than merely being.  God may have been revealed to individuals, but making a sensible remembrance of that revelation is beyond the skills of human transmission.

Increasingly it seems to me we are losing the ability to communicate real religious experience as we more and more try to define, describe and explain everything around us, and more and more we seek to explain God.  Scriptural literalists take refuge in the minutiae of the meaning of the bible as they read it; secularists scoff at what they see as the inability to transmit coherent systems of understanding; people searching for spiritual depth are put off by the archaisms or anthropomorphisms.  How do we get across the reality of our encounters with God, the vibrancy of them, the totality of that transient understanding that has nothing to do with language?   How do we begin to recognise God, to recognise the significance of our meetings with God when we have no framework to do so? 

Every generation has created its own language for its religious encounters – the rabbis of the Talmud say that there are 70 names for God within the Hebrew bible, and they created many more. The mystics created the name EIN SOF – meaning “the entity without end”. The truth is that even after having called God every possible word, we still would not come close to revealing the mystery of the identity of God.  But that doesn’t give us the reason not to try to come closer.   Every generation is responsible for understanding God in its own way.  If God is truly always becoming as well as always being, then what God is in the process of becoming must have something to do with us and our own evolving, our own developing, our own relationship with God. 

If we are serious about our Judaism we have to base ourselves on the understanding that our own process is connected to God’s, the imperative for our continual ‘becoming’ is a reflection of Gods continual ‘becoming’, God is bound up with us and we with God: as God says at Sinai “You will be my people and I will be your God”. There is within such a statement the almost-heresy – if we no longer choose to be God’s people then God will no longer be our God.

For God to work in our world, we have to do God’s work. That we are partners with God in the world, Co-creators with God, is not a pious statement: it is an imperative we should not take lightly. God always ‘is’ regardless of what we do or don’t do, but what God ‘becomes’ is in our hands.

Naso. Birkat Cohanim – we are commanded to bless God’s creation with love

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Rabbi Elazar ben Shammua was once asked by his disciples: To what do you attribute your longevity? He said to them: In all my days, I never made a shortcut [kappendarya] through a synagogue. Nor did I ever stride over the heads of the sacred people, i.e., I never stepped over people sitting in the study hall in order to reach my place, so as not to appear scornful of them. And I never lifted my hands for the Priestly Benediction without first reciting a blessing. The Gemara asks: What blessing does the priests recite before the benediction? Rabbi Zeira says that Rav Ḥisda says: Blessed are You, Eternal our God, Sovereign of the universe, Who has sanctified us with the sanctity of Aaron and commanded us to bless Your people, Israel, with love.  (BT Sota 39a)

This blessing is unique in its formulation. The Cohanim (priesthood) are commanded to perform the blessing with intentional and conscious love. While there are three commandments to love in Torah To “love your neighbour as yourself”(Leviticus 19:18); To “love the stranger as yourself” (Leviticus 19:34); and “You shall love the Eternal your God for all your heart, soul and strength” (Deuteronomy 6:4), there is no other blessing over a commandment that requires us to perform it “with love”

Rav Joseph B Soloveitchik  taught that this blessing, recited by the Kohanim prior to their delivering God’s Birkat Kohanim to God’s People, has much to teach us with its unique commandment to bless God’s people Israel with love. Rav Soloveitchik explains that this is not a blessing on the mitzvah per se “but it is a desire for the Priestly Blessing to be accompanied by love.”

He notes that the commandment of Birkat Cohanim has two separate parts – there is “the  transmission of a direct blessing from God” as the priests speak the words and God blesses the people and there is also  hashra’at ha-Shechinah (the manifestation of God’s presence).”

In effect, when the  Birkat Kohanim is recited, there “is a direct meeting with the Shechinah that presents us with an intimate encounter in which we come [so to speak] face to face with God.” (Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, Darosh Darash Yosef: Discourses of Rav Yosef Dov Halevi Soloveitchik on the Weekly Parashah)

Unlike any other prayer or any other benediction, this ancient text of threefold blessing, given in community yet addressed in the singular to each and every person,  has the power to eradicate the distance between the people and God. And so, says Rav Soloveitchik, we are reminded to enact it with intentional and deliberate love.

When Moses is told to tell Aaron about the giving of this blessing, the text is clear. The priests will say the words, but the blessing is to come directly from God. This is why the Cohanim uttering the words do not have to be deeply righteous or saintly people necessarily – they are only the vessels through which the blessings come.  On ascending the bimah to give the blessing they become faceless, their heads covered by their tallit they neither look directly at the people nor do the people look directly at them. Their role overrides any personal history at this moment.

And yet – this is more than those of Aaronic descent being the conduit for a divine blessing. As Rav Soloveitchik understands the event, they are not only conveying the divine blessing but they are re-enacting hashra’at ha-Shechinah – literally creating an immediate and intimate encounter between God and the Jewish people.

By doing this with intentional love, it seems to me that the Cohanim are taking on something of the role or characteristic of the Divine.  Unconditional love, deliberate and intentional love, is a pre-requisite of the ceremony. Regardless of who is saying the words of blessing, regardless of the actions and choices of each of the individuals receiving those words of blessing, the bond is formed through loving acceptance of the other.

The word for love used in the blessing “ahavah” is first used in the narrative the Akedah, when God speaks to Abraham of his son Isaac “the one you love” before testing that love to the limit. Ahavah seems to be used biblically across a full spectrum of loving feelings – from parental love to sensual love to loving friendship to spiritual love.  All use the verbal root alef hey beit.

The mystical tradition notes that the numerical value of ahavah (love) and echad (one) are the same – 13, and that the verse that precedes the command us to love God ends with the word “Echad” – describing the unity of God – a verse best known as the first line of the shema.

From this comes the idea that perceiving unity is the ultimate objective of love, and that love both brings the understanding that not only God is One, but creation too is connected and makes up one whole – even while we tend to note diversity and difference more frequently than we note unity and similarity.

So why are we commanded to love God? Because loving God – who is unified and whole – should cause us to love Creation – which is unified and whole. Loving God means we have to love people – all people, regardless of whether we might find them appealing or appalling, regardless of whether they are “of us” or are different from us.

The Talmud (Yoma 9b)  tells us that the destruction of Jerusalem and the Exile of the Jewish people from the Land of Israel was a direct result of sinat chinam –  causeless hatred.  Rav Abraham Isaac Kook famously wrote that to rebuild Israel we would have to cultivate ahavat chinam – causeless love.

Causeless love is the requirement in the blessing before Birkat Cohanim, the priestly blessing. It is the only time we say the blessing to fulfil a mitzvah with these words. We need to nurture and cultivate the ability to causeless love for the other, not because this makes us fit to be the conduit for God’s blessing in the world, but because this makes us able to bring God’s presence into the world.

As Rabbi Akiva said, “Love your neighbour as yourself is the foundational principle (klal gadol) of Torah”.   He was not talking about love as feelings, nor as something to be earned or deserved, but to treat other human being with respect, with justice, with awareness that they too are part of the Unity that God has created, that they are part of us as we are part of them.

In this time of increasing polarisation, of rising anxiety and tensions, of spewing hatred in social media and on our streets, it is time to remember the unique formulation of blessing before enacting hashra’at ha-Shechinah, trying to bring God into the world; time to remember and be intentional knowing that God commands us to treat God’s people with love.