[ad_1]
Credit photo: Rabbi Sacks
There is a strange pbadage in the life of Isaac, ominous in its foreshadowing of much later Jewish history. Like Abraham, Isaac finds himself forced by famine to go to Gerar, in the land of the Philistines. There, like Abraham, he knows that his life may be in danger because he is married to a beautiful woman. He fears that he will be killed so that Rebecca can be taken into the harem of king Avimelech. The couple went themselves off as brother and sister. The deception is discovered, Avimelech is indignant, explanations are made, and the moment pbades. Genesis 26 reads almost like a replay of Genesis 20, a generation later.
In both cases Avimelech promises the patriarchs security. To Abraham he said, "My land is before you; live wherever you like "(Gen. 20:15). About Isaac, he commands, "Anyone who molests this man or his wife shall surely be put to death" (Gen. 26:11). Yet in both cases, there is a troubled aftermath. In Genesis 21 we read about an argument that Abraham had dug: "Then Abraham complained to Avimelech about Avimelech's servants had had seized" (Gen. 21:25). The two men make a treaty. Yet, we have discovered, this was not sufficient to prevent further difficulties in Isaac:
"Isaac planted crops in the same year and reaped a hundredfold, because the Lord blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So the father of his father, the Philistines stopped up filling the earth. "
Then Avimelech said to Isaac, "Move away from us; you have become too powerful for us. "
So Isaac moved away from there and encamped in the Valley of Gerar and settled there. Isaac, Abraham, who the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them.
Isaac's servants dug in the valley and discovered water. But the herdsmen of Gerar quarreled with Isaac's herdsmen and said, "The water is ours!" So he named Esek, because they disputed with him. Then they dug another well, but they quarreled over that one as well; so he named it Sitnah. He moved on from there and dug another well, and one quarreled over it. He named it Rechovot, saying, "Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land." (26: 12-22)
There are three aspects of this pbadage worthy of careful attention. The first is the intimation of the Israelites in Egypt. Avimelech says, "you have become too powerful "Centuries later, Pharaoh says, at the beginning of the book of Exodus," Behold, the people of the children of Israel are greater in number power than we are. Come on, let us deal wisely with them, they will multiply and come back to where they are, and they will come out of the land "(1: 9-10). The same word, Atzum, "Power / powerful," appears in both cases. Our pbadage signals the birth of one of the deadliest of human phenomena, anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism is in some respects unique. It is Robert Wistrich's sentence, the world's long hatred. No other prejudice has lasted so long, mutated so persistently, such demonic myths, or had such devastating effects. But in other respects it is not unique, and we must try to understand it as best we can.
One of the best books about anti-semitism is Amy Chua's World on Fire. Her thesis is that any conspicuously successful minority will attract envy that may deepen into hate and provoke violence. All three conditions are essential. The hated group must be conspicuous, for otherwise it would not be singled out. It must be successful, for otherwise it would not be envied. And it must be a minority, for otherwise it would not be attacked.
All three conditions were present in the box of Isaac. He was conspicuous: he was not a Philistine, he was different from the local population as an outsider, a stranger, someone with a different faith. He was successful: his crops had succeeded to hundredfold, his flocks and herds were wide, and the people envied him. And he was a minority: a single family in the midst of the local population. All the ingredients were present for the distillation of hostility and hate.
There is more. Another deep insight into the conditions that give rise to anti-Semitism was given by Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism (the section has been published separately Anti-Semitism). Hostility to Jews a dangerous, she argued, not when they are strong, but when they are weak.
This is profoundly paradoxical because it is the opposite. A single thread runs from the Philistines' reaction to Isaac and Pharaoh's to the Israelites, to the myth concocted in the late nineteenth century, known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It says that Jews are powerful, too powerful. They control resources. They are a threat. They must be removed.
Yet, says Arendt, anti-Semitism did not get dangerous until they had lost the power they had once had:
"When Hitler came to power, the German banks were already almost Judenrein (and it was here that Jews had held key positions for more than a hundred years) and German Jewry as a whole, after a long steady growth in social status and numbers, was declining so rapidly that statisticians predicted its disappearance in a few decades. "
The same was true in France, says Arendt:
"The Dreyfus affair exploded not under the Second Empire, when French Jewry was at the height of its prosperity and influence, but under the Third Republic, when it was all over the world."
Anti-Semitism is a complex, protean phenomenon because it is so powerful that it can not be resisted. without fear.
It would seem that one could be so irrational as to believe both of these things simultaneously. But emotions are not rational, despite the fact that they are often rationalized, for there is a world of difference between rationality and rationalization.
So, for example, in the 21st We can find that (a) Western media are almost universally hostile to Israel, and (b) otherwise intelligent people claim that the media are controlled by Jews who support Israel: the same inner contradiction of perceived powerlessness and ascribed power.
Arendt summarizes her thesis in a single, telling sentence which links her badysis to that of Amy Chua. What gives rise to anti-Semitism is, she says, the phenomenon of "wealth without power." That was precisely the position of Isaac among the Philistines.
There is a second aspect of our pbadage that has had reverberations through the centuries: the self-destructive nature of hate. The Philistines did not ask Isaac to share his water with them. They did not ask him to teach them how to get to know they – residents of the place – had not. They did not even simply ask him to move on. They "stopped up" the wells, "filling them with earth." This act harmed them more than it Isaac harmed. It robbed them of a resource that would, in any case, have become theirs, the famine had ended and Isaac had returned home.
More than hate destroys the hated, it destroys the hater. In this case too, Isaac and the Philistines were a bearer of what would eventually happen to the Israelites in Egypt. By the time of the plague of locusts, we read:
"Pharaoh's officials said to him, 'How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so they may worship the Lord their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined? '"(Exodus 10: 7)
In fact they said to Pharaoh: You may think you are harming the Israelites. In fact you are harming us.
Both love and hate, said Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, "upset the natural order." They are irrational. They would do things we would not do otherwise. In today 's Middle East, so often before, those being destroyed by their own interests, their own people.
Third, Isaac's response remains the correct one today. Defeated once, he tries again. He digs another well; this too yields opposition. So he moves on and tries again, and eventually finds peace.
How is it that the city carries the name Isaac gives the site of this third, is the home of the Weizmann Institute of Science, the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University, and the Kaplan hospital, allied to the Medical School of the Hebrew University. Israel Belkind, one of the founders of the settlement in 1890, called it Rechovot parsha: "He named it Rechovot, saying, Now the Lord has given us room and we will flourish in the land."
Isaac is the least original of the three patriarchs. His life lacks the drama of Abraham or the struggles of Jacob. We see in this pbadage that Isaac himself did not strive to be original. The text is unusually emphatic on the point: "Abraham", "The Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died," Gave them the same names his father had given them. "
Normally we live by ourselves by differentiating ourselves from our parents. We do things differently, or even if we do not, we give them different names. Isaac was not like this. He was happy to be a link in the chain of generations. Isaac represents the faith of persistence, the courage of continuity. He was the first Jewish child, and he represents the single greatest challenge of being a child of the world. And Isaac, because of faith, was able to achieve the most elusive of goals, namely peace – because he never gave up. When one effort failed, he began again. So it is with all great achievements: one part originality, nine parts persistence.
I find it moving that Isaac, who underwent so many trials, from the binding when he was young, to the rivalry between his when he was old and blind, carries a name that means, "He will laugh." God Himself before Isaac was born – means what the Psalm means when it says, "Those who will be in tears will reap with joy" (Ps. 126: 5). Faith means the courage to persist through all the setbacks, all the grievance, never giving up, never accepting defeat. For at the end, despite the opposition, the envy and the hate, lie the broad spaces, Rechovot, and the laughter, Isaac: the serenity of the destination after the storms along the way.
[ad_2]
Source link
