Parashat Toldot: Shaken not Stirred
The words of the meteorologists on KARE11 this week were “we’re going to start shaking in our boots a bit.” And they were right. Though we’re not even close to the dead of winter, there were some temperatures over the past few days that brought about a shiver. But in life, the reason we shiver, the reason we tremble, is not only because we’re cold. Sometimes we shake with excitement and other times we quake with fear.
Jacob, by his mother’s suggestion, duped his father into thinking that he was his brother Esau. Unbeknownst to his father Isaac, many years earlier, Jacob swindled Esau and took his birthright.
Fast-forward: Isaac gives Jacob Esau’s blessing. Jacob exits Isaac’s tent and Esau enters moments later. Just when Isaac realizes that the blessing meant for Esau he actually gave to Jacob, the text captures Isaac’s physical reaction: And Isaac shook and shook a great deal (Genesis 27:33), Vayecherad Yitzchak charadah g’dolah ad-m’od.
But why did Isaac tremble? Was it excitement? Was he cold? Was it fear? For this answer, we need walk through the pages of time.
The overwhelming majority of commentators agree that, using an interpretive and fantastic lens, Isaac was shaking in his boots out of fear. In fact, it was heat and not cold. The scene is painted in the midrash (Genesis Rabbah 77:2): Rabbi Yochanan taught that Isaac trembled because when Esau came in, Hell actually came in with him; Rabbi Acha added that the walls of the house began to seethe from the heat of Hell.
500 years later, the great Torah commentator Rashi paints an even darker, more frightening picture: Isaac saw hell and the ground opening beneath him, for Esau entered his tent and wanted to curse Jacob—Isaac was the one at fault, hanging in the balance.
Perhaps hell hath no fury like an Esau scorned, but, I’m sorry folks, even as a fan of midrash, this doesn’t do it for me. On one hand, I can see a blind, frail Isaac fearing the rage and anger of his son Esau, but the special effects of Hell shattering earth are a bit too fantastic. If Isaac is shaking out of his sandals, we need a reason to which we can relate.
About 100 years after Rashi, the Chizkuni suggests to us that Isaac did not quake out of fear of Hell or wrath or fury or even Esau—but his trembling still was out of mountain-moving fear: When Isaac had the startling realization that he inadvertently blessed Jacob, he said to himself, “if I really erred in distinguishing between Esau and Jacob, that’s not the reason I am shaking. I am not surprised that I made this mistake because I have weak eyes and clearly did not know who it was. But I do know that nothing is hidden from the eyes of the Holy Blessed One – and so I shake and I am petrified – How could God agree to transfer the birthright from the elder to the younger? Why has God done this?
Isaac shakes because he’s afraid. His faith falters. He no longer has faith in God’s plan, or worse in his mind, he questions God’s intentions and motives. Isaac no longer has a handle on God’s care for the world.
But why would that matter to us? Why would the Torah not just say “and Isaac’s faith waned?” Why embed the soul-searching within an ambiguous physical reflex—a violent tremor?
Because really, this shaking, this fear and trembling, is something that is not really all that ambiguous when it comes to our relationship with Isaac.
As we move through time, we’re reminded by a later anthology of commentaries on the Torah called Da’at Zekenim, that this is not the first time Isaac shakes in his boots.
Da’at Zekenim reminds us that Isaac actually trembled twice in his life. The first time was when he was bound on the sacrificial altar atop Mount Moriah by his father Abraham, and the other we read this morning: the moment Esau entered his tent.
The binding of Isaac is yet another story well-known throughout the ages. There Abraham binds Isaac, fully prepared to offer his beloved son at God’s command.
In his landmark work Fear and Trembling, Danish Theologian and Philosopher Soren Kierkegaard helps us try to summon up some of the potential dialogue between Abraham and Isaac on that infamous mountaintop.
“Then Isaac trembled and cried out in his fear: ‘God in heaven, have pity on me, God of Abraham, show mercy to me, I have no father on earth, be thou then my father!’ But Abraham said softly to himself: ‘Father in heaven, I thank thee. Better is it that he believes me inhuman than that he should lose his faith in thee.’”
Isaac shook because his father was dead to him and he was afraid that God was dead to him too. But God sent an angel down to spare Isaac. And with that Angel, not only was Isaac’s life spared, but his faith was spared as well. When his wife could not bear children, Isaac prayed and she conceived and gave birth to twins. Again, Isaac’s faith is restored.
But after living this life of perpetual torment, as I’m sure many of us can relate, there we find Isaac losing faith almost completely. Da’at Zekenim further reiterates that Isaac’s second moment of trembling is fear-based—a combined “What have I done?” and “What have You done?” moment. We can almost imagine Isaac raising his hands and fists at the sky, yelling “Why?!”
Why did Isaac tremble so greatly? Because at that moment, with every violent tremor, Isaac’s faith splintered and cracked further until it finally shattered into a thousand pieces. Isaac’s faith was lost.
The next scene with Isaac, which is our last encounter with him before he dies two Torah portions later, is Isaac’s charging Jacob not to marry Canaanite women. With the charge and proscription, Isaac offers Jacob a blessing. Interestingly, Isaac refers to God as El Shaddai. “May El Shaddai bless you, make you fertile and numerous, so that you become an assembly of peoples. May God give you the blessing of Abraham to you and your offspring, that you may possess the land where you are sojourning, which God assigned to Abraham” (Genesis 28:3-4).
Why El Shaddai? Rashi tells us that Isaac refers to God who has sufficient, She’Dai, blessings for those who are blessed by God. And we can read into Isaac’s words that he doesn’t feel like he’s one of those chosen, one of the blessed. He doesn’t feel like the blessings are meant for him. In fact he subtly reveals this to Jacob. Concealing his pain and his doubt, Isaac offers not his blessing, not his faith, and not his covenant with God, but the borrowed and invoked blessing of his father Abraham.
This past week, a student at the Talmud Torah asked me the all too familiar question: Why do we believe in God? Why should we put our trust God? Why should we rely on God? The entire class chimed in with pros and cons. Proof of this and Disproof of that. And I just sat back and listened. But at the end of the conversation, there wasn’t a “why” or a “how.” There was a “what.” And that “what” was a leap of faith.
After Isaac’s faith in God was broken, he turned to the only other stronghold he knew, faith in humanity. Isaac charged his son with the task of building a family. He charged his son with the task of mixing with a people he, or better, Rebekkah, felt would yield good kin. He charged his son with becoming an assembly of nations, v’hayyita likhal amim (Genesis 28:3).
We might understand that this expressed Isaac’s hope that Jacob and his offspring are to become many and powerful, but perhaps the charge is not: “May God make you fertile and numerous, so that you become an assembly of peoples.” Perhaps it is really: “May God make you fertile and numerous, so that you can become the one who brings the nations together. You can be the one who makes peace. You can be the one who makes things right.”
Isaac shifts the weight of his faith from God to man, to humanity.
I took a deep breath, and gathered my thoughts, and the room of students listened as I shared with them what I felt to be the recipe for navigating the world. There wasn’t a “why” or a “how.” There was a “what.” And that “what” was a leap of faith.
To participate in this world fully, we need faith. But that faith is not necessarily faith in God. At any given moment in our life, we need either faith in God or we need faith in humanity. For certain, if we strive to have both, and find both, then we might find ourselves overwhelmingly happy with our lot in life, but we also may be naïve, not struggling with either our theological dilemmas or our critiques of society. However, if we wander this world devoid of faith in both humanity and God, then we will lose all will to walk this earth and we cannot possibly fully partake in the absolute joys of this world. Without faith in either humanity or God, this world has nothing to offer us. We will enjoy nothing and we will understand nothing. But if we have faith in one, either God or humankind, each very well may lead us to renewed faith in the other.
Isaac shook violently in our Torah reading this morning and in reflecting on that we shake from our potential indifference. We shake violently not out of fear or out of loathing. We shake awake recognizing that we need not be afraid of doubt or of questioning.
When Isaac eventually died at a ripe old age of 180, he was buried by both of his sons, together. And in what order were they mentioned? Esau and Jacob, not Jacob and Esau. Resolution. Isaac lost his faith in God and put his faith in family, in humanity, in the world. And the boys eventually worked it out for themselves.
When your faith is shaken, I implore you, don’t lose all hope. Our tradition recognizes that faith is not a steady line. It is a path that zigs and zags, but a path we must navigate nonetheless, with care and an open heart and an open mind. Do not be afraid to shake violently just as our father Isaac did.
This world is a partnership between God and humanity—on any given day we only need choose one. And in doing so, both, God and humanity, we hope and we pray, will eventually choose us.
