Isaac Finding Joy in His Yetzer HaTov

Someone wishing to convert to Judaism asked Rabbi Hillel to summarize Judaism on one foot and he responded, “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. The rest is commentary. Now go and learn!” When Rabbi Menachem Mendel Leffin of Satnov wrote Cheshbon HaNefesh, the Accounting of the Soul, he used “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor” as the remez, the one-sentence summary, for the middah (soul-trait) Tzedek, or Right Action.

A perfect example of how NOT to fulfill this middah appears in this week’s parsha, Toldot. Isaac and Rebecca move to Gerar and Isaac is afraid that people will kill him on account of his wife Rebecca, because she is beautiful, and so he lies and says she is his sister. This is a perfect example of how our yetzer hara, our tendency to selfishness, is activated. First, Isaac is afraid and acts out of his fear. This is very often the case when our yetzer hara is activated – we are afraid of something. Sometimes, this fear is justified – and this is why G!d created us with a yetzer hara in the first place. However, much more often for most of us, it is not, and our fearful action is the wrong action.

Second, his yetzer hara distorts his relationships to others. He lies about Rebecca, claiming she is his sister rather than his wife. He has a distorted – and, as it turns out, inaccurate – view of the inhabitants of Gerar and its king, Avimelech. His concern with his own well-being to the exclusion of others causes him to not be able to see the others for who they really are.

Avimelech then looks out the window and is upset to see Isaac engaging in an activity with Rebecca that spouses engage in but siblings do not. The 1917 JPS translation says “Isaac was sporting with Rebekah his wife” while the Kehot (Chabad) translation has “gladdening” – this being a discussion of Tzedek and not Tznius, I’ll leave it at that. But the Hebrew is very interesting – Yitzchok metzachek et Rivkah ishto. Yitzchok and metzachek are from the same root, meaning to laugh or play. This pun speaks to the fact that Isaac in this moment is bringing his full self in his yetzer hatov in his love of Rebecca – who here is called his wife, seeing and acknowledging who she really is. It could be translated as “Isaac was Isaacing with Rebeccas his wife.”

The grammar teaches us even more. Yitzchok is in the imperfect tense – in modern Hebrew, the future – “he will laugh/sport/gladden” – that is, he is potentially who he is meant to be but not yet actualized. Metzachek is the participle – in modern Hebrew the present – and so in this moment, acting out of his yetzer hatov, his concern for and participation in the well-being of the other, in this case his wife Rebecca, the potential becomes the actual and he is in this moment actually who he is meant to be, not merely potentially. Furthermore, metzachek is the Pi’el participle, which has the added meaning of being emphatic – thus, the phrase could be translated as “Isaac was REALLY Isaacing with Rebecca his wife” – so he is very vibrantly and emphatically in that moment who he is meant to be – who he is at his core. Also, as my friend Rabbi Geoff Basik pointed out to me, living in his yetzer hatov and being vibrantly himself brings great joy to both himself and Rebecca.

And that is the contrast between the yetzer hara and the yetzer hatov – fear vs. joy – distortion vs. truth – constriction vs. expansiveness.

Of course, this story appears two other time in the book of Genesis. In parshat Lech Lecha, Abraham has the same fear for his life and tells the same lie about Sarah his wife – and Pharaoh takes Sarah but is unable to do anything due to a plague. Again, in parshat Vayera, Abraham tells the same lie about Sarah – this time to Avimelech, who is warned in a dream that they are actually spouses. (Avimelech means “my father the king” and is a title rather than a name, and the Avimelech Isaac encounters is almost certainly the son of the one his father encounters.)

This teaches us that often, our fearfulness and distortion of the truth come for our upbringing – our parents, our extended family and community, our country. I say this not to blame these people who passed along their fears and distortions – but to point out how difficult it is for us to even notice and see them. However, this difficulty does not absolve us of the responsibility to see them and heal from them. In healing them, we can cease from doing that which is hateful to us to our neighbor.

May we, in the merit of Isaac becoming himself in laughter, in sport, in gladdening, overcome our fears, our distortions, our lies – our selfish yetzer hara – and embrace the joy of serving others and living in joy through our yetzer hatov.

My Thoughts About the Akedah – 5785

As many people know, I have been obsessed with the Akedah for decades. I even chose Yitzchok as half of my Hebrew name as a direct result. My thinking about it has evolved, and I am sharing  my current reading of the Akedah. I emphasize that a proper understanding of Torah allows for a variety of readings, even contradictory readings – as the sages say, there are 70 faces of Torah – and if, in matters of halachah, opinions of both Hillel and Shammai are preserved because “these and these are the words of the living G!d” even as the rulings of Beit Hillel are usually followed, then how much more must this be true for Aggadah, about which the Or HaChaim HaKodesh has said that we are free to come up with new interpretations even when they contradict those of Chazal!

It is not difficult to understand why the Akedah speaks so powerfully to me – my parents were married for twenty years without being able to have a child. One child died at birth and there were at least a couple of miscarriages. My mother didn’t even recognize the signs of pregnancy when she became pregnant with me! My father was nearly 50 and my mother 41 when I was born, a much less common occurrence in the 1960s than today. Deeply religious, my father a Southern Baptist minister, my parents offered me to G!d before I was born and held a dedication service for me, almost unheard of in Southern Baptist churches at that point (it smacked too much of infant baptism), although it has become more common in the intervening years. My father had very serious unaddressed mental health issues that unfortunately were exacerbated by his religious views. He was fired by four churches when I was between five and twelve years old and his beliefs in faith healing, miracles, and the prosperity gospel as well as in his own special calling led to abusive and negligent parenting. In many ways, it felt like I, or at least my childhood, was metaphorically sacrificed to my father’s understanding of what G!d asked from him.

Given that background, for many years, I followed the approach of many who hold that Avraham failed the test – that G!d wanted him to do the ethical thing and reject G!d’s demand – after all, he had argued with G!d about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah – why could he not argue with G!d about his own son? And I still see this as a very valid reading of the Akedah. It was very important to me that G!d be exonerated from wrongdoing and Avraham be condemned for his action or lack thereof. I noted that neither G!d nor Yitzchok ever spoke to Avraham again – surely this was a divine consequence of Avraham’s action. I also failed to find convincing the rabbis’ view that Yitzchok was thirty-seven years old – it made sense to me that he was perhaps around thirteen years old.

A couple of years ago, a friend confided in me on Shabbat Vayera that she had concluded, when hearing the Akedah read on Rosh Hashanah, that G!d was the villain of the story. And thanks to that and reading feminist critiques focusing on Sarah’s grief that led to her death after Yitzchok failed to return, I began to read the Akedah with Avraham banished from the position of protagonist, replace by Yitzchok (and I believe readings with G!d, Sarah, the ram, and others as protagonist are also very valuable). I also read Rabbi Ben Greenfield’s essay “Hesed, Gevurah, and Emet: Do These Attributes Actually Describe our Forefathers?” (https://thelehrhaus.com/tanakh/hesed-gevurah-and-emet-do-these-attributes-actually-describe-our-forefathers/), in which he argues that these attributes are given respectively to Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov because they lacked them and needed them, which helped me to see that Yitzchok, as an adult survivor of trauma (such as his half-brother Yishmael being sent away), could quite easily have been thirty-seven years old. Rabbi Goldie Guy, in a wonderful class on Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, introduced me to his idea that “Ayeh?” “Where?” – referring to a question about where G!d is while in the place furthest from G!d – becomes the place of G!d’s greatest closeness – when applied to Yitzchok’s question “Ayeh ha-seh l’olah?” “Where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?” is transformed into the proclamation “[The question] ‘Where?’ is the lamb/means for the ascent!”

With all of this in mind, this is how I read the Akedah today – not as a story of G!d testing Avraham, but rather of Yitzchok finding the courage and the gevurah – the strength – to leave an abusive situation and find a life of meaning.

While it is obvious that Avraham is going to sacrifice Yitzchok, Yitzchok nonetheless chooses to deny it and remain oblivious and accompany his father, the young men, and the donkey (chamor) to the mountain. Once they leave the two young men and the donkey behind, he begins to get a glimpse of what is going on and notes the fire and the wood when asking his father where the lamb is. Notably, he leaves out mention of the knife, which is the instrument which would be used to kill him – he has begun to awaken, but still cannot fully fathom the horror of his father’s intention to murder him. He ends up being bound and placed on the altar and his father has taken in hand the knife to kill him when the angel intervenes.

After the angel (not G!d, the angel) talks to his father, the text notes that Avraham returns to the young men. As rabbinic commentators note, Yitzchok is not mentioned, and they speculate that he did not return with Avraham, perhaps going to Gan Eden to heal from being actually wounded or even killed, perhaps going to yeshiva to learn Torah, or perhaps going to rejoin his brother Yishmael. What very few note is that the donkey is also not mentioned.

I believe Yitzchok ran back to the young men and took the donkey and rode it into the rest of his life, a life free of his abusive and murderous father. I read chamor (donkey) as chumrah – stringency – the same three-letter root (Hebrew linguists might quibble and insist they are, in fact, different roots that share the same three letters – but I choose to read this in a midrashic and Chasidic way) – the stringency that is a demonstration of the gevurah that he is able to access to make this bold journey. G!d says “Lech lecha” – “go forth” – or “go to yourself” – to Avraham at the beginning of this story – as he did in his first words to Avraham – but perhaps THIS lech lecha was meant for Yitzchok, not Avraham – to find the gevurah to go and find himself.

But the story does not end with his escaping the abuse. Later one, we read that Yitzchok was meditating in the field toward evening (the institution of the afternoon prayer of Mincha, according to the rabbis) and he looks up and sees camels coming – which bore his soon-to-be wife Rivkah. Again, I read camels – g’malim – not only as g’malim but as g’milut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness. He is able to transcend his trauma and embrace acts of lovingkindness and live a life of meaning and purpose. After his father dies, we read that G!d blessed him – the Chizkuni and others say that Avraham failed to bless him and therefore G!d blessed him with the blessing Avraham was meant to give him – and he settles near Beer-Lachai-Roi, the well Hagar is shown when she is expelled while pregnant by Avraham at the insistence of Sarah.

This is a redemptive reading for me. Yes, Avraham inflicted horrible abuse on Yitzchok given his understanding of what G!d wanted. Yes, it is an extremely problematic story. But, for me, the Akedah now represents Yitzchok’s finding the strength to make his exodus from this horrific situation for a life of meaning and purpose, a life blessed by G!d.

So may all of us merit such a redemption. Amen.