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| George Segal, Avraham offering his son Isaac, 1973 |
After
the Akeidah. Is there such a thing? “No poetry after Auschwitz,” said Adorno - would
Isaac agree?
This week’s Torah portion focuses on the finding of
a wife for Isaac, but he is barely mentioned in the process, inviting us to
consider Isaac’s life after the Akeidah.
The
truth is that Isaac is the blandest of the Patriarchs. The Biblical spotlight
barely focuses on him. He seems to always play the supporting cast to his
father/wife/neighbors/twin sons. Someone else is sent to find him a wife, he spends
his life digging his father’s wells only to have them blocked or stolen by others,
and finally gets tricked by his son in his old age. Perhaps Adorno is right, and Issac’s life is
to be understood as the poetry-less life of a survivor of patricide
(interestingly, his son Jacob describes God as “the God of Avraham and the Fear
of Isaac” Gen 31:42).
Elie
Wiesel however presents a different take, focusing on the things which we might
take for granted about Isaac:
Isaac survived. He had no choice.
He had to make something of his memories, his experience, in order to force us
to hope. Isaac represents defiance. He defied death. Logically, he should have
pursued oblivion. Instead he settled on his land, married, had children,
refusing to let fate turn him into a bitter man.
He felt neither hatred nor anger
toward his contemporaries who did not share his experience. On the contrary, he
liked them and showed concern for their well-being. After Moriah, he devoted
his life and his right to immortality to the defense of his people. He will
be entitled to say anything he likes to God, ask anything of Him.
Because he suffered? No. Suffering
confers no privileges. Rather Isaac knew how to transform his suffering into
prayer and love rather than into rancor and malediction. This is what gives him
rights and powers no other man possesses.
And as the first survivor, he had
to teach us, the future survivors of Jewish history, that it is possible to
suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of
laughter. (Elie Wiesel, Messengers
of God. pg 92)
Isaac’s
calling, according to Wiesel’s auto-biographical projection, is in transforming
the most traumatic moment in his life into a resource for his community. He is
to become an advocate on behalf of those who suffer in silence. Wiesel’s point
highlights one of the rare moments in which Isaac takes agency. When Rebecca is
barren, he prays on her behalf, turning “his suffering into prayer and love
rather than into rancor and malediction”:
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And Isaac entreated God in presence of his wife, because she was barren;
and God let Himself be entreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived. (Gen 25:21)
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וַיֶּעְתַּר יִצְחָק לַיי לְנֹכַח אִשְׁתּוֹ, כִּי עֲקָרָה הִוא; וַיֵּעָתֶר
לוֹ יי, וַתַּהַר רִבְקָה אִשְׁתּוֹ.
(בראשית כה:כא)
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Isaac’s
behavior puts his heroic father to shame. How come Avraham, in all those years
of Sarah’s barrenness, never “entreated God in presence of his wife”? Returning
to Wiesel’s words above, I wonder if this is in some way connected to the “Art
of Laughter”, and the connection between knowing how to pray and knowing how to
laugh. Prayer is indeed laughable, in the deepest sense. Both come across as the
most primal of human responses, irrational and yet totally real. They are both
actions that embody full presence-in-the-moment, seemingly not representing
action, but actually offering a third way. Laughter and Prayer break the evolutionary
psychologist’s dichotomy of “Fight or Flight”. Avraham knew how to fight, and
he know how to run. But, perhaps, he didn’t know how to laugh.
Shabbat
Shalom,
Mishael
P.S.
Yehuda Amichai completely disagrees with Elie Wiesel in this poem:
Avraham
had three sons, not just two
Avraham
had three sons: Yishmael Yitzchak and Yivkeh.
No
one has ever heard of Yivkeh, for he was the youngest
And
the most beloved, who was sacrificed on Har Hamoriah.
Yishmael
was saved by his mother, Hagar; Yitzchak saved by the angel.
But
Yivkeh was not saved by anyone. When he was young,
His
father would call him, in love, Yivkeh, Yivk, little Yevk
My
sweetie. But he sacrificed him in the Akedah.
And
in the Torah it says a ram, but it was Yivkeh.
Yishmael
never again heard about God, the rest of his life.
Yitzchak
never again laughed, the rest of his life.
And
Sarah only laughed once, and never again.
Avraham
had three sons,
Yishma,
Yitzchak, Yivkeh
Yishmael,
Yitzchakel, Yivke-el.
Yehuda Amichai
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