The story of this week’s Parsha is a familiar one-the story of Jacob and Esau, the loss of a birthright and the trickery of a son who desires to get the blessing of the firstborn over his brother. Amid the descriptions of the parental favoritism and all of issues involving the relationship between Esau and Jacob, we encounter an act of Issac’s, the father of these two clashing personalities, which is powerful in its simplicity and challenging in its commentary on contemporary life.
Just after Esau gives up his birthright to Jacob in exchange for pot of stew, we read how Issac, like his father Abraham is confronted with a famine. He is told by God, just as his father Abraham was told, to go to a land that God will show him, and that the land will be assigned to all of Issac’s ancestors. Like his father Abraham, Issac lies about his wife Rebecca saying she is his sister as an attempt to save his life, and then finally Issac is blessed with good crops and becomes rich, so much so that the Philistines, upon whose land he lives are envious of him. They stop up Issac’s wells and fill them with dirt. And then we see how closely Issac’s story is woven into the story of his father’s:
“Issac dug anew the wells which had been dug in the days of his father Abraham and which the Philistines had stopped up after Abraham’s death; he gave them the same names that his father had given them” (Gen. 26:18).
There is of course a very practical side to redigging these wells. In an arid area such as the land where Issac was wandering, the wells were a necessary source of water. We know from both archeologists and from contemporary nomadic communities that the wells are often dug in dry river beds and lined with stone, they were made to last for some time, if not to fully permanent. When the floods came, they would be filled with silt and have to be cleaned out, and the stones surrounding them would often need to be rebuilt. Keeping the wells clean and working took some effort, yet the Philistines purposely filled them with dirt hoping to make them unusable. In a sense, the wells were one of the few physical reminders that Issac had of his father Abraham. Abraham’s own hands, or at least those of his servants, dug the wells and now they were made to disappear into the earth-filled with dirt where they were not only unusable but also hidden from view. Yet this obviously left the Philistines too unable to use the wells, and for a people always in need of water this seems to be an act which could only cause suffering, and it would only be hurting themselves. Sort of like knocking down your enemies water faucet in the desert.
So why did they do it? The commentators felt that there must have been another purpose for filling the wells. If it didn’t make sense on the physical level, that the Philistines were only hurting themselves by getting rid of Abraham’s wells, then there were instead doing something just as painful, trying to rid the land of Abraham’s spiritual legacy. For the rabbis, these wells symbolized the faith and values of Abraham, literally the life that Abraham brought into the world.
A midrash associated with this story explains that Issac in fact dug five wells, each one symbolizing one of the five books of the Torah. This “spiritual source” had been covered up, and now Issac wanted to reclaim it. Issac was expressing his loyalty to the spiritual values that his father held. While he could have dug new wells, or at least given them new names, he chose to take the same path as his father. While Abraham went out to change the world, by building a relationship with God, creating monotheism and later arguing with God’s power—Issac’s powerful act was to do the same thing as his father. He did not need to create something new by digging new wells, he instead simply needed to keep them fresh—in a sense uncovering the holiness in what his father had already created. As the Sfat Emet, one of the great Hasidic commentators says, Issac, through his digging, can be model for us to uncover the Godliness, the holiness in the physical world. It is through learning from our past, and redigging and examining the wells dug before us that we can raise ourselves to a higher level, a level of true connection with the past, present and with God.
We live in a world where the focus of life is often on creativity and making change—we want our lives and the products that we fill them with to be ever better and always new and improved. There is of course a genuine need for change. We need change in society, in politics and our interactions with other people, and we can’t do acts of tikkun, of fixing if we are not able to makes serious changes in the structure of our world. Yet, can we feel settled and rooted in a world where everything is always changing, and where we are told that everything needs to be improved? How do we decide what part of our lives, what part of ourselves to keep the same and what to change? Especially when it comes to traditions and values—ideas and concepts that can’t always be simply put on paper, this often becomes even more difficult.
In our spiritual lives, it becomes even more challenging. All too often it seems difficult to fully reconcile traditional beliefs and practices to fit our modern day lives. Why should we come together on a regular basis to light Shabbat candles or say the same prayers that have been said for generations? What are the values that bring us here, what are the wells that we are pulling from by coming together as a community? We all have our reasons. Yet, it is the regularity of Jewish ritual, the power of an ancient tradition that can give us something to fall back upon and support us as we work through the challenges of a contemporary world that says to move beyond the past and work to always create change.
So much of the basis of Judaism is to look honestly at the traditions and the rituals of our ancestors and continue to gain strength from them, even when the meaning for these traditions might have changed over time. This is one of the key concepts of being a Progressive Jew, that we must acknowledge the building blocks we have inherited from our past, but also must understand that they are now ours to use and continue to build upon. Like Issac, we might not find it necessary to build new wells or give them new names, but we must always clear out the dust and rebuild when needed to make these sources of tradition relevant and meaningful for all of us. We need these wells to give us the strength and the inspiration from our past, but we also need to teach each other how to find them and keep them filled for future generations. This is our task, and this is our blessing.
