A STRONG IDENTITY

“And these are the offspring of Yitzchak son of Avraham, Avraham begot Yitzchak.” (Bereishit 25:19)

The opening verse of our parasha contains a glaring redundancy. If Yitzchak was the son of Avraham then is it not obvious that Avraham begot Yitzchak? Rashi (citing the Midrash Tanchuma and Talmud, Bava Metzia 87a) provides this explanation: The scoffers of the generation were saying that Sarah had become pregnant from Avimelech, king of the Philistines. Their reasoning was that she had been married to Avraham for many years but she had never conceived and yet after she was abducted by Avimelech for one night (Bereishit 20), she later gave birth to Yitzchak. In order to dispel this conspiracy theory, God caused Yitzchak’s face to resemble Avraham’s face and thus there was irrefutable evidence that “Avraham begot Yitzchak.”

This is not an unusual phenomenon. I have met many people, men and women, who look remarkably like their parents. In fact, this can even occur over several generations. I have a book on the history of Jewish clothing. One of the illustrations in the book is a portrait of Rabbi Tzvi Ashkenazi, the famous Chacham Tzvi (1656-1718), who served as Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam. It is an oil painting that was completed in 1714 when Rabbi Ashkenazi was visiting England. It is currently housed in the Jewish Museum in London. The Chacham Tzvi’s descendant Rabbi Uri Ashkenazi (1944-2020) was known as the Stanislaver Rebbe of London. He was a prominent and prolific mohel who operated a Beit Midrash (study hall) in the Stamford Hill suburb. Rabbi Uri passed away during the Covid pandemic at the age of 76. At the time, I saw an obituary about him online that contained a photograph of the Rebbe. The resemblance to his ancestor, who passed away 226 years before he was born, is striking. Their faces are almost identical.

I believe, however, that this verse contains a much deeper message. What the Torah means is that Yitzchak was Avraham’s son in every possible way. Unlike Avraham who was a trailblazer and innovator, Yitzchak was a “maintainer”. He continued his father’s legacy in the fullest sense with great pride and sacrifice. An example of this is the episode of the wells. While Yitzchak was living in the territory of the Philistines during a drought in Canaan, the local inhabitants spitefully filled in the wells that Avraham had dug decades before. “And Yitzchak dug anew the wells of water which they had dug in the days of Avraham his father and the Philistines had stopped them up after Avraham’s death; and he called them by the same names that his father had called them.” (Bereishit 26:18). Yitzchak’s insistence on keeping the same names his father had given the wells sent a strong message to the Philistines: I am the continuation of my father. You thought you could erase him when he died but you cannot because he continues to live on in me. In a sense, Yitzchak was Avraham, hence their physical similarity to each other.

Yitzchak was possessed of a remarkably robust identity. He was a Hebrew. He feared and served the One God. He was a son and disciple of Avraham and Sarah. He may have lived among the tribes of Canaan but he was not one of them. Prior to the destruction of Sodom, God was considering whether he should reveal His intentions to Avraham. He concluded that it would be proper to do so (Bereishit 18:19), “For I have loved him, because he commands his children and his household after him that they keep the way of Hashem, doing charity and justice, in order that Hashem might bring upon Avraham that which He had spoken of him.” Avraham passed his legacy to his family. It was not something that happened accidentally. He did so with purpose and intent. Later, the Torah (Shmot 13:8) would command all Jewish parents to teach their children about the Exodus and share the story of their people with them at the Seder table. In this way, Jews have been able to maintain their identity even when surrounded by people with entirely different cultures and beliefs.

But what happens when one does not have a strong identity? This can lead to a breakdown of society. In my humble opinion, the fall of the West and the willingness of some countries to surrender their culture to immigrants who oppose their democratic principles is a result of weak identities. When we scrutinise the people living in the West, it becomes readily apparent that those with the strongest identities are religious: fundamentalist Christians; observant Jews; and Muslims. The regular citizen of a Western country, like America, possesses a vague identity, if any at all. Such a person might ask him/herself: “Who am I? What principles do I stand for? What does it mean to be an American in the 21^st century?” A religious person knows the answers to these questions. They have received their story from their family. They live in accordance with their legacy and they guard it fiercely. But someone with little identity is fair game for Woke adherents who view the world as made up of victims and perpetrators. Imagine a secular, white American man attending college. His lecturers or peers tell him that his forebears were oppressors. They came to America from Europe and colonised the country. They killed and oppressed the Native Americans.  Later, they sailed to Africa and brought back slaves. They were slave owners and racists. When one’s history is portrayed in these terms, one naturally begins to loathe one’s identity and one then identifies with groups that are considered victims. The same thing has happened in the United Kingdom. Your regular ‘Brit’ has been told that his culture is toxic, that he comes from a nation that sought to build a massive empire by oppressing local populations in the colonies, in places like India, Africa and America. He is ashamed of his past and in an effort to cleanse his mind and seek penance, he will gladly grant citizenship and support to groups that oppose the very society he is part of. When I was in the United Kingdom last year on a visit to my sister, my nephew confirmed that there was a distinct effort taking place in schools and elsewhere to minimise, and in some ways, erase traditional British culture. And yet immigrant cultures are flourishing.

Professor Gad Saad, whose family fled Syria as Jewish refugees when the State of Israel was born, refers to this phenomenon as ‘Suicidal Empathy’. “Dr. Saad is a leading public intellectual who often writes and speaks about idea pathogens that are destroying logic, science, reason, and common sense” (from his official website). Here is a synopsis of Saad’s theory, as appears in the blurb for his latest book Suicidal Empathy – Dying To Be Kind on Amazon.com: “What happens when a society elevates victimhood to a virtue and decides that punishment is cruel? You get the disease Dr. Gad Saad calls suicidal empathy. And the West may be terminally infected. In his new book…Saad unleashes a blistering critique of maladaptively irrational altruism that has gripped our culture. This mind parasite hijacked the empathy module of our progressive elite, leading to a catastrophic miscalibration of moral priorities. The results are everywhere: from coddling violent criminals to protecting rapists to branding self-defense as toxic behavior. We are witnessing a civilization in rapid decline. Lunatic policies are instituted because we prioritize the feelings of ostensibly marginalized groups over The Truth, criminals over victims, and squatters over homeowners. This is not humane; it’s an active dismantling of the pillars that keep us safe and free. This crisis of empathy creates a horrifying system of inverse morality where the strong and successful are demonized, and the destructive are celebrated.”

Lee, Chani Merryl & Naomi join me in wishing you Shabbat Shalom.  Rabbi Liebenberg.

This week’s YouTube message: https://youtu.be/i6n6aKEI6Zk?si=f8xgClpqgDDk0GQ4