Rabbi's Derasha

We read this morning that “Isaac planted in that land, and reaped a hundredfold that year.”

Last week we read “And Isaac went out to the field and he saw a caravan approaching.”

As head of school of our local Orthodox day school, SPHDS, there are a lot of things that I do which you’d expect the head of school to do such as make
educational and religious policy decisions, attract and support excellent staff, and make sure there’s enough funds to pay for it all.

One of the many things I do which you wouldn’t have necessarily realized are on my weekly schedule is proofreading the weekly student newsletter coordinated by our Bnot Sherut, Roni and Miryam. Each week they have the students of a different grade write the various columns.

Last week, when the 8th grade boys wrote each section, I had a dilemma regarding the joke section. The jokes are, in general, puns in little caption bubbles which K-8 students think are very funny, such as…

How did the ocean say hi to the river?
It waved

What does a bee say to its wife? Nothing- bees can’t talk
 

What do you call a person with no body and no nose?
NO BODYNOSE

What do you call a fish with no eyes?
FSH

The controversial joke had "the jokes and YOU” as the punchline). Get it -- you’re a joke!  You’ve got to love middle school boy humor!

What I realized yesterday when Rabbi Feldman asked me to give the Derasha this Shabbos is that the “YOU”-joke was very relevant last week, and even more relevant to this week’s parsha, which focuses on Yitzchak. Why? Because the second one of our Avot, when you think about it, was named “Joke” - Yitzchak -- from the Hebrew word tz’chok.

As I pointed out to our Board of Directors at its recent meeting, Yitzchok seems to be a minor player in the pantheon of Jewish forefathers. He gets relatively little press in the Book of Genesis. Abraham’s life covers 14 chapters of Breishit. Jacob’s life spreads over 25 chapters. Isaac’s life, however, spans only six chapters- less than half of Avraham and less than a quarter of Yaakov).

And those six chapters seem to be either a rerun of Isaac’s father Abraham’s life, such as the famine which forces him to move, and he claims his wife is his sister to protect himself, and the fact that he literally redigs the wells that his father had created.

Yitzchak is passive in the situations that the other Avot are active -- he’s the sacrifice in Akeidat Yitzchok while his father is the sacrificer.

Not only does he not move the large stone covering the Biblical equivalent of a singles bar- the well- like Yaakov and Moshe, but he’s not even at that scene.  He stays home while his father’s chief of staff looks for his bride.

Yitzchak might have started life as a “joke”- being born to centenarians, but at first glance, his accomplishments also seem like a joke compared to his father and son.

Rav Adin Steinsaltz in a chapter entitled “The Challenge of the Second Generation” in his book Biblical Images says that … Isaac is the symbol not of the power that breaks through limitations and creates, but of the power that conserves and maintains things in their place. He is Exhibit A that Avraham is not just a flash in the pan, a fad, but is the forefather of a family of monotheists, proving that G-d was right when he said כִּ֣י יְדַעְתִּ֗יו לְמַעַן֩ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְצַוֶּ֜ה אֶת־בָּנָ֤יו וְאֶת־בֵּיתֹו֙ אַחֲרָ֔יו  (Genesis 18:19) -- I know that as opposed to Chanoch and other righteous people who lived in the ancient world, you will successfully pass on the faith to your children and they will then carry the torch and keep the faith .
       
I didn’t share with a recent board meeting the insight of Rabbi Alex Israel on the verse with which we began-

וַיִּזְרַ֤ע יִצְחָק֙ בָּאָ֣רֶץ הַהִ֔וא וַיִּמְצָ֛א בַּשָּׁנָ֥ה הַהִ֖וא מֵאָ֣ה שְׁעָרִ֑ים ׃
Yitzchak worked the land and yielded 100x the produce from it than previous owners.

If you think that farming was just a side hustle, that Yitzchak was only producing food for his family and animals, I remind you of another pasuk you’re familiar in which we also don’t pick up the hint-

וַיֵּצֵ֥א יִצְחָ֛ק לָשׂ֥וּחַ בַּשָּׂדֶ֖ה לִפְנ֣וֹת עָ֑רֶב וַיִּשָּׂ֤א עֵינָיו֙ וַיַּ֔רְא וְהִנֵּ֥ה גְמַלִּ֖ים בָּאִֽים׃

And Isaac went out into the field toward evening and, looking up, he saw camels approaching.

Whatever Yitzchak was doing in the field (every elementary school student at SPHDS will tell you he was davening), he was in the field -- that’s where
you can find a farmer.

Avraham was a shepherd. He wandered from place to place, a nomad, with no permanent dwelling place. Avraham is transient. He never settles in a single location and when his wife dies he has no real-estate to call his own. Yitzchak, Rabbi Israel infers from the verse above, is a man of the land.  He farms the land, and grips the land, argues over land. A farmer is fixed in place. The wells move, the fields do not move. Unlike his father vraham and his son Jacob, Isaac doesn’t travel throughout Israel or internally. G-d tells him גּ֚וּר בָּאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֔את - Reside in this land.

Each of us is at times an Avraham and at times a Yitzchak. There are times that our challenge is to build, to create, to go where no man has gone before.

However, there are times that our role is conservative, to just keep the enterprise, the tradition, the practice going. Sometimes that can be a greater challenge that forging ahead- מי יעלה בהר ה' ומי יקום במקום קדשו- staying on top of the mountain can be a greater challenge than climbing it.

May the Almighty grant each of us, our communal institutions, and the State of Israel the wisdom to know when to do each- to be a builder and to be a maintainer. Shabbat Shalom.