By Rabbi Gershon Silins

We’ve already had reason to ask some pointed questions about Isaac. Although choosing a wife in biblical times was often a business deal arranged by one’s family, when his father Abraham sends a servant to find him a wife, the narrative presents Isaac as a passive figure, while Rebecca appears decisive. And in this week’s reading, he comes across at best as a schlemiel and at worst, a shlimazel. (A Yiddish saying explains that “a schlemiel is somebody who spills his soup and a schlimazel is the person it lands on.”) Isaac is a man with few notable qualities, who seems incapable of carrying forward the heritage of his father. As this week’s portion, Tol’dot, begins, we are told, “this is the story of Isaac, son of Abraham.” And that story is simply that Abraham begot him. He marries at 40, and although ages in the Hebrew Bible are always suspect, one can’t help but wonder what took him so long. Later, Isaac prays on behalf of his barren wife, but it is she who inquires of God, and it is she to whom God speaks.

In chapter 26, Isaac is a more active figure, but we can see that his activity follows in his father’s footsteps. Like Abraham, Isaac moves to the land of Gerar. The Torah tells us that, again like Abraham, Isaac tricks King Abimelech into believing that his wife is actually his sister. It may be that the repeating of the episode with Abimelech is confusion by later editors as to exactly who the story was about, but it reminds us again that Isaac does nothing new. He also re‑opens the very wells that Abraham first dug, “giving them the same names his father had given them.” Thus Isaac appears as the unremarkable son of an extraordinary father—a difficult role, especially when his own abilities are not evident.

And yet, this uninspiring figure is one of the most central people in the biblical drama, and we as its inheritors recite prayers to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, (as well as, in our day, to Sarah, Rebecca, Leah and Rachel.) Modern culture prizes originality and constant novelty, but Jewish tradition operates differently. The ancient rabbis did not try to create a new religion (even though they effectively reshaped it.) Rather, they sought to preserve what came down to them. In the Mishna, in Pirke Avot, we read, “Moses received the Torah at Sinai and transmitted it to Joshua, Joshua to the elders, and the elders to the prophets, and the prophets to the Men of the Great Assembly. They said three things: Be patient in [the administration of] justice, raise many disciples and make a fence round the Torah.” What’s missing from a modern perspective is “and come up with something new and exciting!” But for them, the Torah didn’t need improvement, rather, it was we who improved ourselves by studying it. Such study has indeed produced fresh understandings of an ancient tradition, and today’s Jews—whether Orthodox or Progressive—practice in ways radically different from our biblical ancestors. Still, a thread binds us across millennia: the commitment to nurture and transmit the tradition. Isaac is thus far from useless; he serves as the caretaker of his father’s legacy, laying the groundwork from which the Jewish story could flourish. In the familiar Chassidic tale, when the students of Reb Zusya found him crying on his deathbed, they asked him, “Why do you cry? You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind as Abraham.” Reb Zusya answered, “When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, I won’t be asked, ‘Zusya, why weren’t you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham?’ Rather, I will be asked, ‘Zusya, why weren’t you Zusya?’” Why, in other words, have I not risen to my own best self? Isaac wasn’t Abraham, but we can credit him with having truly been Isaac. And if today we do no more than care for Judaism and pass it along to descendants who will be greater than we, that is no small achievement.

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