The images are simply too painful to behold. A day ago I was sitting in a different room from my kids watching a video link on my phone someone sent to me. It was a vigil for R. Mosheh Twersky hy’d at my High School, Maimonides in Boston, where he too graduated. My wife insisted I shut it off, even though I was in the next room. Our children should not be exposed to such violence or visions. She was right.

None of us should ever be exposed to this. The leader of Zakka, the organization that gathers every last shred that needs burial after a terrorist attack, whose ubiquitous presence in the aftermath of such horrors has given him way too much experience in mayhem, confessed that this scene was right out of the Shoah, something different from the other catastrophes he has unfortunately witnessed.

Indeed it was. And to echo the words of Rabbi Aharon Yehudah Leib Steinman, one of the sagacious leaders of world Torah Jewry, there are simply no words. There are times when silence bests eloquence. If anything, the gruesome photos serve as illustration for the elegy of the ten martyrs we read so lugubriously on Yom Kippur and Tisha B’av. We read of the Romans murdering some of our greatest rabbis while reciting Shma or reciting Kiddush, both testifying to fidelity to the Almighty in both life and death. Those two elegies, Arzei Halevanon on Tisha B’av and Eleh Ezkerah are now poetic captions to the ghastly images we saw this week. 

Every year on Parshas Toldos I feel a need to defend Yitzchak from his detractors. He’s accused of not being Avraham, of not being a fire-brand, with off-the-charts charisma, a leader who opens his mouth  and people flock to him and transform their lives. He is criticized for his lack of ‘lines’ in the Torah. He has a minor line in the Akeidah narrative, despite playing a major – if not leading – role. His one dialogue in this week’s parsha seems to mimic what his hallowed father had done with Avimelech. Some note that he is absent at his beloved mother’s funeral and he is criticized for his inability to find his own wife. I’ve even read that some audaciously have associated Yitzchak with forms of developmental disability or cognitive delay, which are fodder for those who want to argue that the Akeidah psychologically injured Yitzchak permanently. While one can always conjecture, I suppose, there is no scriptural or Midrashic support for this. 

What do we make of Yitzchak? Seriously, imagine the pressure to be the son, disciple and heir to Avraham Avinu?

Rabbi Ezra Bick of the famed Har Etzion Yeshiva made a case last week for Yitzchak’s limited actions being seen as active and not passive. Regarding the wells, he argues, that it is true, that he does not confront per se the shepherds of Gerar. But he succeeds in his strategy of wearing them down by continuously digging. “He is not passive, but quietly persistent and perseverant, and eventually forces the king of Gerar to come to him and basically to sue for peace. This avoidance of confrontation may well be a defining characteristic of Yitzchak, and may well explain his attitude to Eisav, but that is a very different thing from attributing to him the attribute of passivity.” 

Rabbi Bick continues by interpreting the short passage regarding the meeting and marriage of Rivka and Yitzchak as demonstrating Yitzchak’s active involvement. 

"ויצא יצחק לשוח בשדה לפנות ערב וישא עיניו וירא והנה גמלים באים. ותשא רבקה את עיניה ותרא את יצחק ותפל מעל הגמל. ותאמר אל העבד מי האיש הלזה ההלך בשדה לקראתנו ויאמר העבד הוא אדני ותקח הצעיף ותתכס. ויספר העבד ליצחק את כל הדברים אשר עשה. ויבאה יצחק האהלה שרה אמו ויקח את רבקה ותהי לו לאשה ויאהבה וינחם אחרי אמו" (בראשית כ"ד:ס"ג-ס"ז)

And Yitzchak went out to meditate in the field at the evening time; and he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold, the camels were coming. And Rivka lifted up her eyes and when she saw Yitzchak, she lighted off the camel (literally fell). For she had said to the servant, what man is this who walks in the field to meet us? And the servant had said, It is my master; therefore she took a veil, and covered herself. And the servant told Yitzchak all things that he had done. And Yitzchak brought her to his mother Sarah’s tent, and took Rivka, and she became his wife; and he loved her; and Yitzchak was comforted after his mother’s death” (Bereshis 24:73-77). 

Rav Bick notes first of all, Avraham was not party to this important meeting. Were Yitzchak somehow disabled or unable to make important decisions on his own and in need of a guardian despite being an adult, Avraham would have been there. After all, Avraham dispatched his servant to find this mystery woman. Second, Rav Bick analyzes a plethora of commentaries who view Rivka’s descent from the camel and covering herself as signs of awe for her intended; that he projected import and dignity and she sensed that. He notes that Rivka refers to the servant as an ish (a man) throughout their encounter, until she beholds Yitzchak. Yitzchak now becomes the ish and the servant reverts to being the eved. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the events in the last verse are far from passive. Rav Bick argues that ‘bringing Rivka into Sarah’s tent’ does not mean that Sarah had her own tent. We see no indication that Sarah had an independent domicile. Earlier we clearly learn that she and Avraham share a tent, as one would expect of married couples, when the angels sought her out (Regarding Yaakov’s four wives, obviously, things are different). Rav Bick suggests, based on Rashi’s interpretation of the verse that the miracles that occurred during Sarah’s life resumed with Rivka’s advent, that Yitzchak administered his own litmus test for the woman who would not only be his wife, but the heir to his mother, the first matriarch of the Jewish people. And she passed and only then did he actively decide to marry her. Yitzchak did not just rely on the servant, but decided on his own. Rav Bick concludes: “Unlike his father, Yitzchak is not an initiator, but rather, one who through strong perseverance gives his father’s accomplishment the roots of permanence.”

I saw a D’var Torah this week by Rabbi Dov Linzer, Rosh Yeshiva of Yeshivat Chovevei Torah, who eloquently made a similar point. “Yitzchaks are the backbone of our people. They are those countless mothers and fathers who have sacrificed everything so their children would have a Jewish education and a Jewish home. They are the ones who learned Torah every day not in hopes of becoming great scholars, but because it was the lifeblood of the Jewish people. They are the ones who toiled to provide for their families, who endured hardship to keep the mitzvot, who refused to give up or compromise their Jewish identity no matter the cost. They are the ones who, day-to-day, with or without hardship, have lived and continue to live a committed life of Torah and mitzvot, keeping it alive for themselves and passing it on to the next generation. They are the ones who keep re-digging the wells and who keep the water flowing. 

  

We all need to be more thankful for the Yitzchaks in our lives, to recognize the profound value of our own work as Yitzchaks - the things we do in our daily lives as Jews to keep the Torah alive for ourselves, our families, and our communities - and to appreciate those who are truly moser nefesh(sacrifice) for the Jewish community, ensuring that it will continue to survive from one generation to the next. 

Yet, despite my efforts to show Yitzchak’s active role and defend his character from those who impugn him, I would like to conclude with an opposite thought. There is greatness in passivity. There is virtue in submission.

After the State of Israel was established and the subsequent war was concluded, the nascent Jewish state needed to create a meaningful way to memorialize the 6 million who perished in Europe prior to the creation of a Jewish homeland. The secular Zionists sought to create a day called Yom Hashoah vehagevurah, Holocaust and Bravery Day. Since obviously there was no specific date, for the Nazi killing machine neither slept nor slumbered during its years of efficiently killing and incinerating Jews, they opted for a date proximate to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. The image they sought to create was one of Jewish resistance, of Mordechai Anielewicz with a clenched fist featuring a trajectory to be thrown, resisting the Nazi beasts. That indeed is the statue featured at Yad Mordechai, and that is indeed when Yom Hashoah is observed, despite the halachic question of a day of mourning during the joyous month of Nisan, the month of the exodus, of Pesach. The term gevurah (bravery) is officially part of the name of the day. 

The religious community, especially the survivors of the Hungarian onslaught who tend to be chassidim, (at the time the religious Zionist community was very small) use the term churban Airopa (destruction of Europe) and the image transmitted is not of resistance, but rather submission to the will of the creator. They want to perpetuate the image of the Jew going to the gas chamber singing the haunting words ani ma’amin, the heroic anthem of ultimate fidelity to God. They lived their lives in awe of God and died that way as well, in perfect faith. 

The images out of Har Nof this week remind us of Yitzchak’s ultimate submission. A Jew lives as a Jew and dies as a Jew. While ghastly and macabre, the images we saw should provide us the strength not only to die for our beliefs, but to live for them. May their memories be a blessing and may we learn from the quiet and humble spiritual strength of the victims.