Dedicated to a refuah shelaima for Chaya Sofya Sara bas Mera and Binyamin ben Simcha, and for the release of the captives and the safety of the chayalim.
I wish that I would not still be seeing correlations in the parsha to the times in which we live, but it has been over a month and the hostages have not been returned, and our soldiers are still fighting, and missiles are still falling upon the cities of Israel, and the nations have shed their masks and shown their true feelings towards us – both good and ill. And so, because it inspires me, I will continue to share with you those things within the parsha that strike me as fascinating correlations.
In this week’s parsha we read about Yitzchak’s interactions with the Philistines, and, again, in this it mean the ancient Aegean sea race. Like his own parents, Yitzchak takes his wife to Avimelech the King of Gerar. A significant number of pasukim are spent discussing this storyline, which mirrors that of the generation before. They pose as siblings, the king wants to marry Rivka, Hashem intervenes so that nothing happens, and Yitzchak and Rivka are recognized and treated with great respect.
There is, however, a second story with the Philistines, and this one seems to be of some significance into seeing that which we can now see as historical repetition. Yitzchak became wealthy and successful, and he noticed that the wells his father had dug had been stopped up. Avimelech asked Yitzchak to move away because his people were growing jealous, and Yitzchak politely obliged. But even after he moved, the Philistines were still jealous and hassled him. He discovered that they had stopped up the wells near Gerar that had been part of Avraham’s covenant with the Philistines. When Yitzchak’s servants dug new ones, the Philistines claimed them. Then it happened again. One more move, one more set of wells, and only then, when he had moved quite far away as, perhaps, implied in the name he gave the place – Rechovot (meaning wide) – did they leave him alone. And Yitzchak said, “For now the Lord has made room for us, and we will be fruitful in the land.”
It has always seemed odd that this situation is described in a way that is both vague and detailed. What might be the significance of these machinations being recorded? It appears to be just a land dispute. But was it, perhaps, a warning to us, so many millennia later, that there is an inherent untrustworthiness in the Philistines. We see a great sense of entitlement in how these original Philistine claim the land that Yitzchak made bountiful, and it feels like foreshadowing to the claims we are hearing today.
One would be remiss in looking at this narrative and not seeing that immediately after the Philistines seemed to give up and Yitzchak expressed what seems almost like relief, that Hashem visited him (when he went to Ber-Sheva) at night and said, “I am the God of Avraham, your father. Fear not, for I am with you, and I will bless you and multiply your seed for the sake of Avraham, My servant." (26:24).
This is the message that we must hold fast to. Their claims, their entitled declarations, mean nothing because Hashem has made a promise to the descendants of Avraham.
There is one more section in the Torah that is important to note: “And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were displeasing to his father Yitzchak. So Esau went to Yishmael, and he took Machalas, the daughter of Yishmael, the son of Avraham, the sister of Nebaios, in addition to his other wives as a wife” (28:8-9). Esau, wanting to try to set the world right by his own understanding of it, married into Yishmael.
Right now, we see news reports have stated that while it appears that the majority of people in the “West” support Israel, that is reversed among youth. The young face of Esau, bold and impetuous and thinking that they understand how to fix a world, has made the mistake of marrying themselves to Yishmael. But look closely at the name of Yishmael’s daughter: Machalas. If one translates this word into modern Hebrew one finds that it means disease. This joining of Esau and Yishmael is a disease upon the world…and the only cure is truth, emes.
We state that refuah lifnei hamacah, that Hashem prepares the cure before the illness. Bnei Yisrael knows the truth, and while the Palestinians seem to be masters at manipulating the media, their manipulation will, imertz Hashem, be their undoing.
May truth win swiftly, and may Klal Yisrael and the world know peace.
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