A Moment of Torah with Rabbi Neil Sandler

Parshat Toldot

Last week, I received my Covid booster vaccination. How can any of us receive these life – saving vaccinations and not express gratitude for the trailblazing individuals who created them in such a brief time? We bless these life savers and thank them for their committed and successful efforts.

We are also grateful for the efforts of people like the pharmacist who administered my booster last week. He was very nice and engaged me in conversation so that I wouldn't think too much about the needle he was about to stick in my arm. This man was no trailblazer. He simply used the tools that others had created to keep me and others healthy. In that sense, he serves as a link to a better future for all of us.

In our parsha, Toldot, Isaac is hardly a trailblazer. Unlike his father, Abraham, and son, Jacob, Isaac neither travels a new path with the Holy One nor gives his new name, Yisrael, to an entire people. In comparison to Abraham and Jacob, Isaac appears to be passive. However, in what many have viewed as a symbolic act, Isaac is an inextricable link to a Jewish future.

Isaac and his family had gone to Gerar at a time of famine in the Land of Israel. When they eventually departed to return to the Land, we read:

Isaac 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; and he gave them the same names that his father had given them (Gen. 26:18).

Commentaries suggest that digging the wells anew and giving them the same names Abraham had given them was a symbolic act of assuring continuity. By stopping up the wells, the Philistines had metaphorically sought to bring an end to Abraham's unique contributions. By digging those wells anew and giving them the same names his father had given them, Isaac reclaimed more than the wells. He was acting to assure that the new paths Abraham had created would be maintained and become of benefit to others. As Rabbi Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus framed it, "(Isaac) understands the need to reclaim his father's traditions and to ensure their survival."

No, Isaac was not a trailblazer, but he still made an invaluable contribution.

Few, if any, of us will be trailblazers. Yet each of us makes a difference in so many ways. Among those ways, each of us can "dig anew" some of the traditions of earlier generations, maintaining and perhaps giving new meaning to them. In whatever ways we may choose to do so, may our efforts bring blessings.

Shabbat Shalom.