Isaac
his blindness and sense of humor
We learned last week that Sarah was known for her vision.
Ironically, her son Isaac (Yitzhak) became known for his blindness.
The Torah introduces one of its most famous scenes by first telling us that “Yitzhak was old and his eyes had dimmed from seeing.” This realization that he’s gotten old moves him to summon his eldest son Esav to go out and hunt, and prepare delicacies for him to eat so that he would be able to bestow upon him the blessings he’d been waiting for so long to give. After enjoying a meal made with his son’s love and dedication to him, he would be able to bless him “with his whole soul.”
Although Esav’s penchant for hunting and spending his days in the field didn’t exactly match Yitzhak’s aspirations for his eldest son and heir apparent, he knew that Esav shined whenever he would ask him to do something for him — so he did. This would allow him to draw from within himself the feelings of affection necessary for his blessings to have the impact of shaping the future of his descendants until the end of time.
While at first, it isn’t clear why the detail of Yitzhak’s failing vision is relevant here, it quickly becomes all too clear.
Immediately after Rebecca (Rivka) overhears the conversation between her husband and her son Esav, she proceeds to tell Jacob (Yaakov) her other son to dress in a costume using Esav’s clothing, and hair that would feel to the touch like Esav’s hairy arms and neck, to deceive Yitzhak, thereby allowing him to receive the blessings Yitzhak had intended for Esav his older, twin brother.
Despite Yaakov’s visceral opposition to this deception, especially towards his father, his mother urges him to listen to her based on her clairvoyant insight into the implications of him failing to do so. She tells him, “Listen to my voice — I’m commanding you to go now to the flock and fetch me two choice goats, and I will make from them a dish for your father, just as he likes.”
She is so certain that this is the correct course of action that when Yaakov voices his concerns, she lays them to rest with the words “your curse is upon me — [you have nothing to worry about].” Yaakov submits to his mother’s instructions.
Since Esav had to go out and hunt to get the food, and Yaakov just had to go fetch goats from the backyard, Yaakov naturally beats Esav to it, managing to reach their father’s bedside with fresh, hot food before his brother does.
There are a few nail-biting moments in which Yaakov is unsure about the identity of the son in front of him — how did he arrive arriving from the hunt so quickly? Why is he speaking like Yaakov? Despite these snags, Yitzhak is eventually convinced that it is indeed Esav who is standing before him, and proceeds to bless him and his children, and children’s children with wealth and power on a global scale.1
Moments after he finishes blessing him, Yaakov departs, and Esav walks in ready to feed his father what he’d just hunted, and receive his blessings.
As the pin drops in Yitzhak’s mind about what had just transpired, he becomes momentarily gripped with absolute terror as past, present and future flash before his eyes.
I must have given the blessings to Yaakov.
He tricked me...
Why would Yaakov trick me?
Why would Rivka give him Esav’s garments for this ruse?
How could Hashem have allowed this to happen?
Was Esav not worthy of receiving these blessings?
He must not have been because he clearly didn’t.
Hashem would not have allowed an injustice to transpire.
But for years I’ve worked so hard to see the good in Esav — to accept him as he is! Is this not what Hashem wanted from me??
It is precisely what Hashem wanted from me, and this is precisely what He wants to be happening right now.
If it’s happening, it must be His will.
In that instant, Yitzhak accepts all of it, and ratifies his blessing to Yaakov — “he should be blessed!”
No remorse.
No guilt.
No looking back.
It’s all from God.
Juxtaposed to Yitzhak’s shockingly stoic acceptance of it all, Esav lets out a deafening scream of anger in protest against the universe that has conspired with his brother to commit this injustice against him.
Meanwhile, Yitzhak is unperturbed.
If you’re familiar with this story, you are likely all too familiar with it, and therefore have lost sight yourself as to how bizarre it is from beginning to end.
While the unusual actions of Rivka, Yaakov and Esav can be explained, Yitzhak remains a complete enigma at the center of the storm.
Why did Yitzhak wait until he was old and blind to give the blessing to Esav?
If it was so clear to his wife Rivka that Esav did not deserve these blessings, why didn’t Yitzhak see the writing on the wall? How was he so “blind” to who his son was? And why didn’t Rivka feel comfortable simply speaking with him?
Why did Yitzhak ask Esav to go hunting for wild goats if they had goats at home?
How does Yitzhak manage to turn on a dime and ratify his blessings to the “wrong son” and so quickly see him as a the “right son” without any regrets? It’s baffling.
And while we’re at it, let’s ask about Yitzhak’s name: for someone who is known for his deep sense of justice and reverence for God, what are we to make of his name Yitzhak-יצחק, which mean “he will laugh?” These aren’t laughing matters.
When Yitzhak was 37 years old, his father Abraham was instructed by God to do the unthinkable, offer his son as a sacrifice on Mount Moriah, the site of the future Temple in Jerusalem. Abraham’s greatness was that he used his intellect to arrive at a holistic understanding of the existence and constant involvement of the Creator of the Universe, and the ethical way of life He asked us to live by. He was now being asked by the Creator to transcend his intellect by doing something that ostensibly contradicted it.
Abraham was challenged to accept that which he could not see clearly in his mind’s eye.
Yitzhak, who wasn’t privy to a direct communication from God regarding his unique role in his father’s test, had a challenge of acceptance that was even greater.2 Yitzhak, however, was born to pass this test. While Abraham’s superpower was in his love and openness to people, Yitzhak had a totally different superpower: openness to whatever God wanted from him, and an extraordinary ability to accept whatever that was.
Most of us spend enormous amounts of time and energy staring angrily at things we cannot control: traffic, the weather, delayed flights. More dramatically, we may find ourselves frustrated with habits or character traits that our spouses, children or coworkers possess which we will never change. We bang the steering wheel. We scream. We curse. Of course, to no avail.
Our field of vision becomes filled with that which we cannot change, and therefore we are blind to that which we can. Namely, ourselves.
Yitzhak, however, taught himself to do the exact opposite. He looked past that which he could not change, so that he could focus only on that which he could — himself.
When he was nearly sacrificed by his father he took this ability to the next level. The Midrash provides a parable to describe what happened to him:
[Why is Yitzhak’s blindness described with the words “his eyes had dimmed from seeing?” What did he see that made him blind?]
We cry when we are overwhelmed and cannot understand what we’re seeing. Tears well up in our eyes, blurring our vision — an apt metaphor for our feelings.
The ministering angels cried as Abraham was about to sacrifice his son. Yitzhak understood that if angels could not grasp what was happening, he didn’t stand a chance. This experience changed him forever. How could it not? But instead of a life of trauma and anger against his father and God and the world, he changed his way of seeing life. He understood how much he didn’t understand, and doubled down on that which he did: that nothing can happen unless God wills it. He ultimately became blind to what was right in front of him, and fully aware of what wasn’t.
If we can understand the degree to which Yitzhak wanted to accept that which he didn’t understand, we can see so much more clearly that which was so blurry to us before:
Esav was indeed not the son Yitzhak had expected to have been given by God, but he accepted him anyway, and waited to see what would become of him. Perhaps because he had to work especially hard to accept him was the reason his love for him deepened even beyond his love for Yaakov, who was easier to love. Although he was deeply pained by seeing the lifestyle his son had chosen, when God made him physically blind, Yitzhak accepted that he had to go ahead and give Esav the blessings without demanding any signs that he had become fit to receive them.
Yitzhak was operating on such a different framework that Rivka his wife knew that she would not be able to get him to see things as they were. Any "issue” she might point out in Esav’s behavior, Yitzhak had already committed to looking past. Trying to change his mind was futile. Only God Himself would be able to do so.
Yitzhak knew he had goats at home, but sent Esav to hunt since he knew that this was his son’s authentic self-expression even if he didn’t share it. Additionally, opening himself up to the unknown by letting Esav go out and hunt instead of grabbing a goat from the pen was more authentic to his own project of radical acceptance of whatever life would throw his way.
Yitzhak’s ability to change gears from 6th Gear to Reverse on a hairpin turn, and accept in that moment that God wanted Yaakov to receive the blessings, and not Esav, was a function of the same radical acceptance that had led him to that point. Radical acceptance is what allows a person to change course without attachments to expectations or fantasies.
What about Yitzhak’s name? When life surprises us and things don’t go our way, we can react one of two ways: 1) we can get angry or 2) we can laugh. They are two sides of the same coin. While anger rages against the universe for “conspiring against us,” humor comes from an openness to the twists and turns of life that make us laugh that we didn’t think of them ourselves.3
Yitzhak remains the most mysterious of the forefathers. He transformed himself into a person who saw life so differently from the way we do.
On the other hand, as the world gets crazier, and our eyes are exposed to more and more, and we understand less and less, perhaps we will be increasingly inspired to dim the lights of what’s appears on the surface, so we can open our minds to that which our Creator is trying to show us.4
Rav Shlomo Wolbe (1914-2005) urges us to ponder how different Jewish history would have been had Jews not received these blessings of wealth and power As challenging as it’s been for us, without these two in our favor, how much more would we have suffered?
The episode is known as the “Binding of Isaac — עקידת יצחק” because not only did Yitzhak agree to be offered by his father as a sacrifice, he asked him to be bound so that he wouldn’t flinch thereby invalidating himself as a sacrifice (Tanchuma).
Admittedly, the theme of humor deserves a longer treatment on its own.
The Talmud in Shabbat 89b highlights Yitzhak as our ancestor with the unique way of seeing that “changes God’s mind,” so to speak. Perhaps it can be better understood by his perspective changing our mind of how we see ourselves.