Yitzchak: Deconstructing the Right to Life

On the surface, the life of Yitzchak appears to be nothing more than a replay of the life of his father Avraham. Consistently, in one event after the next, their life stories match: A period of childlessness, two sons in conflict, refugees of famine, prophetic promises of Israel, wife charades as sister, terrific financial success, water rights contested, treaties with Avimelech… Just in case we missed the point, Yitzchok redigs his father’s wells and gives them the same names that his father gave them! In sync with the uncanny rerun of circumstances and challenges, Yitzchak is determined to live his father’s life.

At one point, however, G-d says no. When a dry spell causes a food shortage, Yitzchak, as expected, sets out to walk in his father’s footsteps. He heads south for the fertile land of Egypt, just like his father did so many years earlier when the last famine hit. But G-d stops him:

G-d appeared to him and said, “Don’t go down to Egypt... Live as an immigrant in this land.” (Bereishit 26:2)

Avraham can escape to Egypt but Yitzchak cannot?! Everything else in Yitzchak’s life matches Avraham’s quite nicely; why can’t he go to Egypt like his father? Why must Yitzchak suffer through the famine?

Back in parshat Lech Lecha at the Covenant between the Halves, Avraham received a prophecy that foretold a great national exile:

Know that your descendants will be foreigners in a land that is not theirs… for 400 years. (Bereishit 15:13)

A 400 year exile? The Jews weren’t in Egypt for 400 years, just 210 (Pirkei D’Rebbi Eliezer 48). How do we get the number 400? Well, if you count backwards 400 years from the Exodus it takes you to the birth of Yitzchak (Rashi Bereishit 15:13). (It works out exactly to the day. Yitzchak was born on the 15th on Nisan in the year 2048 and the Exodus was on the 15th of Nisan in the year 2448; cf. Rashi Bereishit 18:10.) The divine prophecy that Avraham’s “descendants will be foreigners in a land that is not theirs” must therefore begin with Yitzchak.

There’s an obvious problem here. Yitzchak was born in Israel and never left. How can he be considered a foreigner in a land that was not his if he never left home? Wasn’t Israel his homeland?

The answer is discomforting, but inescapable. Yitzchak was a foreigner in his own land.

G-d tells Yitzchak “Live as an immigrant in this land. Not “settle,” but, "live as an immigrant," be a ger, a stranger. This is the fullfilment the prophecy of "Ger yihiyeh zaracha." Even when Yitzchak is at home, he is not at home.

Yitzchak is doomed to lead a lifelong exile, but it is not of the usual type. It is not an exile from Israel, nor is it an exile from G-d. (In the very same sentence that G-d tells him to be a ger, a stranger, G-d promises to be with him; cf. 26:3.) So what kind of exile is this? It is an existential exile – Yitzchak simply does not belong. This kind of exile is far more acute when experienced in your own home. This is why Yitzchak may not leave Israel.

Why is this Yitzchak’s fate? Why must Yitzchak forever be the foreigner? Because he has no right to life.

Yitzchak should never have been born. His mother was sterile and his father was old – they laughed with incredulity at the suggestion that they would have a child. Even after his miraculous birth, Yitzchak should have died at the Akeida. This is why his name is “Yitzchak,” laughter. His very existence is laughable. He has no place in this world.

This is what the Zohar means when it describes Yitzchak as the personification of din, strict justice. Life relies on the constant flow of G-d’s kindness and compassion for its survival. As the Psalmist said, “He gives bread to all flesh – because His kindness is infinite” (Psalms 136). In contrast, G-d’s attribute of justice provides for no one. Can anyone claim that they deserve life? A world of strict divine justice, the world of Yitzchak, simply cannot exist (cf. Rashi Bereishit 1:1). Avraham, the exemplar of divine kindness, is free to go find food in Egypt. But Yitzchak, the paradigm of strict justice, has no permission to escape the famine.

Maybe now we can understand why Yitzchak does not receive anything on his own merits. When G-d informs Yitzchak that the land will belong to him and his descendants, and later when G-d blesses him, both times G-d makes a point of saying that these gifts are in the merit of Avraham – a point G-d does not make when speaking to Yaakov (cf. 26:3-5, 26:24; compare 28:13).

Yitzchak is din. It does not matter how holy he is, he will always deserve nothing. This is why Yitzchak’s life is virtually identical to Avraham’s. Everything Yitzchak experiances in life must flow directly from his father’s merits – it has no other source. Yitzchak can produce no life of his own; he can only receive and relive his father’s life.

In “Contemporary Halachic Problems” (vol. II pg. 191), Rabbi J. David Bleich describes the feelings of a Jew visiting Hebron today:

One experiences the dichotomy existentially. “This is all mine. Yet if it is mine, why do I feel as a ger? Why is it that I feel that I am a stranger?” There is ambivalence and a tension in the air which foster antithetical emotions…

In our times, the Jewish nation seems to be in Yitzchak mode. Like Yitzchak, we look back at our origins and see a continuous string of miracles. Like Yitzchak, we should have been destroyed in the holocaust. We are incredulous at our own existence and we feel that we do not belong. But yet, G-d gifts us with Israel and obviously desires that we remain there. Like our father Yitzchak before us, we are doomed to be foreigners in our own land.

In Israel and in exile at the same time. Strange indeed, but this was Yitzchak then and this is the Jew of today. May the redemption be soon!