Parsha_Push Parshat Toldot

In recent years, leadership programs are constantly emerging. The problem with these programs is that leaders without followers isn’t very helpful. At times, it seems that alongside leadership programs, there is a need to create follower’s programs, programs that prepare people to join large movements and establish them.

On the surface, it seems that Isaac’s role is to continue Abraham’s revolution. Isaac’s life is ‘colored’ by the mark of being’ Abraham’s son’. During his time, there is a famine, besides the first famine in his father’s days. God reveals Himself to Isaac as ‘the God of Abraham’, and promises him blessings in Abraham’s merit. He arrives in Gerar, like his father, and like his father, says that his wife is his sister. He digs the same wells and calls them by the same names. The deeds of the fathers are a sign for the children, on the most basic level possible.

And yet, Isaac’s stories are not exactly the same as his father’s. Isaac does not go up to the land, nor does he go down to Egypt. His command is “Sojourn in this land”. Isaac’s wife is not taken to Abimelech’s house, and Abimelech himself commands that Isaac and Rebecca be protected. Isaac has livestock, like his father, but he also sows. Abraham digs wells, but Isaac fights over them, because a landworker cannot simply continue moving all the time.

Abraham is the new immigrant, and in this he renews his ability to walk and move, and to turn his gaze from his father’s house. But Isaac is the sabra, who has the ability to continue in the way of the fathers, but also to improve upon it. He is not just a shepherd (the livelihood of the wanderer), he is rooted in the ground and begins to feel at home. Abraham, the wanderer, feels insecure in every place he goes, and therefore needs to agree with Sarah that they will always say she is his sister. But Isaac discovers that he is no longer in survival mode, he is already more protected (at least in this area). Alongside the growing sense of security, he continues to hold on, fight, and prove his place in this land. Abraham is told “Do not fear” and receives promises for the future, but Isaac is told “Do not fear” and the promises are for the present – “for I am with you”.

Isaac does not just continue his father’s legacy, nor just broaden the path that Abraham took , he also colors things in his own hue. After Abraham, the ‘new immigrant’, Isaac the sabra, will turn Israel into the Jewish people’s homeland, so that later Jacob can become the ‘returning resident’ to ‘the land of his birth’.