Isaac the Laughable? On this week’s parsha Hayyei Sarah

Isaac was not the weakest link.

Abraham the founder had many potential successors. There was his first-born son Ishmael, by Sarah’s maidservant Hagar. After Sara’s death  Abraham fathered six children with Keturah. Abraham was aware of another option:  adopting Eliezer, his faithful servant.

Yet God chose Isaac, Sarah’s son, as the next link in the covenantal chain. At the same time, God assigned Isaac his name,  meaning  “he will laugh.”

Was Isaac a worthy successor for Abraham?

Abraham, the iconoclast, a man who not only spoke to God but argued with Him,  a father of many people through three different women, a warrior, a peacemaker, a man whose very name was expanded by God to reflect his eminence.

Was Isaac worthy of being the father of the next in line, Jacob? Jacob who struggled with his conscience and with an angel and emerged victorious, whose name was elevated to Israel?

Jacob refers to “the God and Abraham and the Terror of Isaac.”    Was Jacob thinking of Isaac’s terror as he was led up a mountain to an altar,  apparently to be sacrificed by his own father?

Even now, we refer to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But is Isaac the weak link in the chain? He started off “Isaac”,  ended up “Isaac”… and what did he ever accomplish that merited a new name?

We can interpret Isaac as chronically passive. He is chosen as Abraham’s successor, rather than earning the title by brave deeds, like Moses or David. He is led up to Mount Moriah towards his potential death by sacrifice. He does not choose his bride; Abraham; his servant, Eliezer, and Rebecca herself make the decisions. Instead of innovating like Abraham, Isaac repeats many of Abraham’s actions – such as pretending that his wife is a sister or becoming a prosperous businessman.

Some interpreters have argued that Isaac was not merely passive but dull-witted and a suitable object for ridicule.

But the Talmud urges us to judge everyone with favour. It turns out that there is a powerful case that Isaac is worthy of our admiration and gratitude.

Isaac was not unquestioning. He asked his father, Abraham, why no animal was chosen on the way to the altar at Mount Moriah. Even in his old age, Isaac cross-examined his birthright-seeking son Jacob, wondering why the voice sounded like Esau’s.

Instead of dismissing Isaac as passive, we can say he was accepting. He chose to trust his father on the way to the Akeda rather than attempt an escape. He accepted the wife he had chosen for him and loved her. He only ever had one woman in his life,  unlike Abraham, unlike Jacob. When Isaac realized that Jacob, his son, had tricked him into naming him as the covenantal successor,  Isaac still chose to abide by his earlier word. He did not try to escape from the consequences of his being fooled. Perhaps Isaac intuited that Jacob was the choice of God in the covenantal chain.

Isaac chose to redeem the legacy of his father. Where his father had dug wells and where the Philistines had stopped them, Isaac opened them again, Genesis 26:18.

In the covenantal chain from generation to generation,  only one man can be the founder. That was Abraham. Only one man can be the namesake for the whole people. That was Jacob.

Over the generations, from time to time, there will be great leaders like Joseph and Moses.

Yet the chain only continues because between the founder and the messiah, interspersed among the great leaders and worldly achievers, there are generations after generations of Isaacs. They are people who embraced their place in the chain of generations, who preserved the memory of their forbearers and passed on the Tradition to the next generations.

On my father’s side of the family, we have an oral legend that we are direct lineal descendants of the male side of the Baal Shem Tov. I am not sure that it is actually true. There is probably no way to ever know. But suppose the Baal is our direct ancestor. Would that diminish the role of all the generations in between mine and the Baal Shem Tov’s? My brothers, all of our children, still owe their existence and identity to those generations who came between the Baal and ourselves.

During Covid, I did some work on my genealogy. The ancestors I can trace in the old country lived in Fiddler on  the Roof shtetls. Some might have been brilliant or artistically gifted, but none become famous in their time or after. Few, if any, had any real opportunity to come to personal prominence. Yet as far as we know, all of the intervening generations keep the Tradition and passed it on to their children.,

Israel is fighting a war right now. There might be a few famous political leaders or generals. Yet our survival depends upon the many unfamous people, some young, some taking risks we can hardly imagine,  but who are willing to serve.

As a Jew, you do not have to define your value only with reference to your own individual achievements. You see yourself as part of an extended and enduring family,  a people who have given beyond measure to the arts, science, human ethical growth, and spiritual possibilities. You can locate yourself in that Tradition, and actively embrace it. You can derive from your past a sense of identity, meaning, and worth.

And like Isaac, you can strive towards the survival of the Jewish people for countless generation to come. A few of your descendants might become great in the worldly sense, but what we ultimately should care about is not that they are great people, but that they are good people   – and that that they are, in their turn, faithful to the Tradition and committed to continuing it.