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26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck, NY 11023 (516) 487-6100 Shabbat Announcements Toldot 5780
hate and provoke violence. All three conditions are essential. The phenomenon of “wealth without power.” That was precisely the
hated group must be conspicuous, for otherwise it would not be position of Isaac among the Philistines.
singled out. It must be successful, for otherwise it would not be
envied. And it must be a minority, for otherwise it would not be There is a second aspect of our passage that has had
attacked. All three conditions were present in the case of Isaac. He reverberations through the centuries: the self-destructive nature
was conspicuous: he was not a Philistine, he was different from the of hate. The Philistines did not ask Isaac to share his water with
local population as an outsider, a stranger, someone with a them. They did not ask him to teach them how he had
different faith. He was successful: his crops had succeeded a discovered a source of water that they – residents of the place –
hundredfold, his flocks and herds were large, and the people had not. They did not even simply ask him to move on. They
envied him. And he was a minority: a single family in the midst of “stopped up” the wells, “filling them with earth.” This act harmed
the local population. All the ingredients were present for the them more than it harmed Isaac. It robbed them of a resource
distillation of hostility and hate. that would, in any case, have become theirs, once the famine had
ended and Isaac had returned home. More than hate destroys the
There is more. Another profound insight into the conditions that hated, it destroys the hater. In this case too, Isaac and the Philis-
give rise to antisemitism was given by Hannah Arendt in her book tines were a portent of what would eventually happen to the
The Origins of Totalitarianism (the section has been published Israelites in Egypt. By the time of the plague of locusts, we read:
separately as Anti-Semitism). Hostility to Jews becomes Pharaoh’s officials said to him, “How long will this man be a snare
dangerous, she argued, not when Jews are strong, but when they to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the Lord their
are weak. This is deeply paradoxical because, on the face of it, the God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?” (Exodus 10:7)
opposite is true. A single thread runs from the Philistines’ reaction In effect they said to Pharaoh: you may think you are harming the
to Isaac and Pharaoh’s to the Israelites, to the myth concocted in Israelites. In fact, you are harming us.
the late nineteenth century, known as The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion. It says that Jews are powerful, too powerful. They control Both love and hate, said Rabbi Shimon bar Yocĥai, “upset the
resources. They are a threat. They must be removed. Yet, says natural order”. They are irrational. They make us do things we
Arendt, antisemitism did not become dangerous until they had lost would not do otherwise. In today’s Middle East, as so often
the power they had once had: When Hitler came to power, the before, those intent on destroying their enemies end by doing
German banks were already almost Judenrein (and it was here that great harm to their own interests, their own people. Third, Isaac’s
Jews had held key positions for more than a hundred years) and response remains the correct one today. Defeated once, he tries
German Jewry as a whole, after a long steady growth in social again. He digs another well; this too yields opposition. So, he
status and numbers, was declining so rapidly that statisticians moves on and tries again, and eventually finds peace. How fitting
predicted its disappearance in a few decades. it is that the town that today carries the name Isaac gave the site
of this third well, is the home of the Weizmann Institute of
The same was true in France: The Dreyfus affair exploded not Science, the Faculty of Agriculture of the Hebrew University, and
under the Second Empire, when French Jewry was at the height of the Kaplan hospital, allied to the Medical School of the Hebrew
its prosperity and influence, but under the Third Republic when University. Israel Belkind, one of the founders of the settlement in
Jews had all but vanished from important positions. Antisemitism 1890, called it Reĥovot precisely because of the verse in our
is a complex, protean phenomenon because antisemites must be parsha: “He named it Reĥovot, saying, Now the Lord has given us
able to hold together two beliefs that seem to contradict one room and we will flourish in the land.”
another: Jews are so powerful that they should be feared, and at
the same time so powerless that they can be attacked without Isaac is the least original of the three patriarchs. His life lacks the
fear. It would seem that no one could be so irrational as to believe drama of Abraham or the struggles of Jacob. We see in this
both of these things simultaneously. But emotions are not rational, passage that Isaac himself did not strive to be original. The text is
despite the fact that they are often rationalized, for there is a unusually emphatic on the point: Isaac “reopened the wells that
world of difference between rationality and rationalization (the had been dug in the time of his father Abraham, which the
attempt to give rational justification for irrational beliefs). So, for Philistines had stopped up after Abraham died, and he gave them
example, in the twenty-first century we can find that (a) Western the same names his father had given them.” Normally we strive to
media are almost universally hostile to Israel, and (b) otherwise individuate ourselves by differentiating ourselves from our
intelligent people claim that the media are controlled by Jews who parents. We do things differently, or even if we don’t, we give
support Israel: the same inner contradiction of perceived them different names. Isaac was not like this. He was content to
powerlessness and ascribed power. Arendt summarizes her thesis be a link in the chain of generations, faithful to what his father
in a single, telling phrase which links her analysis to that of Amy had started. Isaac represents the faith of persistence, the courage
of continuity. He was the first Jewish child, and he represents the
Chua. What gives rise to antisemitism is, she says, the
single greatest challenge of being a Jewish child: to continue the
journey our ancestors began, rather than drifting from it, thereby
bringing the journey to an end before it has reached its
Great Neck Synagogue destination. And Isaac, because of that faith, was able to achieve
26 Old Mill Road, Great Neck , NY 11023 the most elusive of goals, namely peace – because he never gave
516-487-6100 up. When one effort failed, he began again. So, it is with all great
achievements: one part originality, nine parts persistence.
Rabbi Dale Polakoff, Rabbi
Rabbi Ian Lichter, Assistant Rabbi I find it moving that Isaac, who underwent so many trials, from
Rabbi Aron White, Intern Rabbi the binding when he was young, to the rivalry between his sons
Dr. Ephraim Wolf, z”l, Rabbi Emeritus when he was old and blind, carries a name that means, “He will
laugh.” Perhaps the name – given to him by God Himself before
Yitzy Spinner, Cantor
Eleazer Schulman, z”l, Cantor Emeritus Isaac was born – means what the Psalm means when it says,
“Those who sow in tears will reap with joy” (Ps. 126:5). Faith
Rabbi Sholom Jensen, Youth Director
Zehava & Dr. Michael Atlas, Youth Directors means the courage to persist through all the setbacks, all the
grief, never giving up, never accepting defeat. For at the end,
Mark Twersky, Executive Director despite the opposition, the envy and the hate, lie the broad
Dr. James Frisch, Assistant Director spaces, Reĥovot, and the laughter, Isaac: the serenity of the
Erran Kagan, President destination after the storms along the way.
Harold Domnitch, Chairman of the Board