From the Rabbi

In this week’s Parsha, the Torah relates the very mysterious episode of Isaac and the wells. The Torah relates how “Isaac dug the wells which were dug in the days of Avraham his father, as the Philistines had stopped them up after Avraham had died– and he called the wells the same names that his father had called them.” The Torah describes how the Philistines filled in the wells that had been previously dug– only for Isaac to re-dig them, and name them the same names that his father had called them. What is the lesson? Everything the Torah records is by design– every word has meaning– what are we supposed to learn from this?

Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks ztl describes how this seemingly enigmatic episode literally provides us guidance for how to deal with the oldest hatred in the world– anti-Semitism. He comments how the Philistines filling in these wells becomes a paradigm for how anti-Semites act for millennia to come: Their hatred of the Jewish People is so strong, and so intense, that they literally sabotage their own self interests. Rather than ask Isaac to share his water with them, or to ask him to teach them how he and his father discovered these vital sources of water, they instead stopped up the wells, filling them with earth. Sabotaging the supply of water inevitably hurt them way more than it harmed Yitzchak. He would have left shortly after the famine ended, and that well, full of water– a vital necessity– would have remained with them. As Rabbi Sacks teaches, more than hate destroys the hated, it destroys the hater.

How does Isaac respond to this? What does he do? The Torah powerfully relates, “He reopened the wells that had been dug in the time of his father Avraham which the Philistines stopped up after he died, and he gave them the same names his father had given them. Rabbi Sacks points out that he was, “faithful to what his father had started,” and represented the faith of persistence and the courage of continuity. As the first Jewish child, he represented the single greatest challenge of being a Jewish child– to continue the journey our ancestors began rather than drift from it. 

When faced with the irrational hatred that is anti-Semitism we have one of two choices: We can try to assimilate into the culture we are in, hoping that they will overlook our Jewishness, embrace us, and ultimately leave us alone. Or, we can dig the same wells our fathers dug, and call them the same names that our fathers called them. We can lean more into who we are, and not run away from it.

Isaac teaches us that this is the correct response to anti-Semitism. Not to abandon our people and our faith– but to embrace our people and our faith. Indeed, I have observed after October 7th dozens, if not hundreds of young Jews who have done this. After being harshly reminded of their Jewishness, tens of thousands of secular Jews were left with a choice: would they embrace their eternal heritage, or run away from it? Isaac teaches us how we are to respond. 

And not only that– when confronted with this irrational hatred– Isaac does not go on social media, doom scroll about how everyone hates us, and then join a WhatsApp group, in which he and others complain about how everyone hates us. Rather, he is moved to act. After the shepherds of Gerrar claim the well that he just dug, he simply moves on, and digs another well.  

He teaches us that the response to hatred against us is not to simply sulk in paralysis and despair over plight. Rather, we act– we put one foot in front of the other, and keep digging.