Tuesday, October 22, 2013

family and friends

1) At the end of the parsha, after the akeidah, the Torah tells us that Avraham got news about the growth of Nachor’s family and his many wives and children.  This is the first mention of Avraham’s family back home since "lech lecha."  It is the first renewal of contact Avraham has had with them.  You would have thought that Avraham, the man who attracted followers from all over, the man who taught so many others about belief in Hashem, would have at some point reached out to his family in Charan and tried to be mekareiv them.  Yet, apparently this was not the case. 

The Netziv suggests that the command of “lech lecha” forced Avraham to stay away.  It wasn’t until after the akeidah, until Avraham passed this final test and reached the pinnacle of tzidkus, that he was able to re-establish his relationship with Nachor and family.

Perhaps this is not just a technical din – the issur of “lech lecha” needed the matir of the akeidah – but rather is a psychological truth.  It’s sometimes easier to deal with strangers than to deal with one’s own.  While others saw greatness in Avraham, his family back home, whose recollection of Avraham may have been colored by their memory of little “Avi” in diapers, may not have been able to see him in quite that same way.  Perhaps Avraham’s family in Charan would and could push his buttons and influence him in ways that outsiders could not, creating enormous difficulties.  There are plenty of real world example of people who are called “HaRav haGaon” and accorded tremendous respect by outsiders, but whose words don't carry the same weight by those who can simply call them Aba/Tatte/Dad.  This is the way of the world.  Avraham faced the same difficulty (albeit with further removed family).  The fact that it was only after he passed the akeidah that he was able to go back shows just how difficult this challenge is.
 
2) Rashi explains that the purpose of this long list of children born to Avraham's family is to introduce us to Rivka, the future bride of Yitzchak.  The akeidah brought Avraham to the stark realization that had Yitzchak been killed, he would have been left with no lineage to carry on his message --Yitzchak was unmarried and had no children of his own, and therefore Avraham had no grandchildren either. 
 
The Shem m'Shmuel asks: what's the point of looking back at what might have been?  There was not going to be another command to do an akeidah -- the test was over and we know Yitzchak's life was never really in danger.  It sounds like Avraham was moved by regret over not having married off Yitzchak earlier to have grandchildren, but post-akeidah the point was moot. 
 
The Shem m'Shmuel reads Rashi as follows: Avraham thought to himself that it was the promise that he would be blessed with descendents that prevented the akeidah from actually taking place.  Had Yitzchak been married and had he had children, meaning, had there been descendents to carry on Avraham's legacy, then Hashem would not have had a reason to stop the akeidah from actually being completed  b'poel.  This was Avraham's regret -- that his choice to not marry off Yitzchak caused the akeidah to be stopped short. 
 
If it was anyone else, they would have been breathing a sigh of relief and dancing with joy at having been spared completing such an enormous test.  Avraham Avinu, however, so desired to carry out Hashem's will that he was filled with regret thinking that something he had done caused the test to be aborted before being fully completed.

8 comments:

  1. a) interesting analysis of the Netziv's point. I thought of it much more simply: because of emotional, historical, and perhaps even genetic ties, families can have a great effect on you - negative or positive.

    b) a similar point is stated regarding the petirah of Sara when the satan told her that Yitzchok was almost shechted. She died from the pain of the "almost".

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    1. Or as a great philosophic tract once stated: "Of course your parents can always push your buttons. They installed them." [Drabble comic strip, over a decade ago]

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  2. a) I don't think I was saying too much more than what you put perfectly in one sentence.
    b) Interesting take. I think I saw somewhere that she died from being overcome with simcha, not sadness, which would fit exactly with what you wrote.

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  3. IIRC, the Netziv says that Avrohom was not even supposed to inquire after his family. Apparently, to protect himself from spiritual challenge, he had to expunge them from his mind totally - airbrush them out of the picture, as it were. It seems that even for Avrohom, at the pre-Akeidah level, there was a danger in "homesickness", even without direct contact.

    Something that has to be taken into consideration with ba'alei teshuva, very carefully, and with consideration of all the emotional turmoil involved.

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  4. Re the Netziv- there is a difference between being mekareiv strangers, whom you can keep at arm’s length and view critically and dispassionately, and contact with your own relatives who have middos megunos, as the Bais Halevi says in Toldos (Breishis 32:12) in “hatzilaini noh miyad achi miyad Eisav.” Although I'm not sure they had middos megunos- poisoning your father is not nice, but they must have been, generally, nice people. After all, Avraham sought them out for a shidduch.

    Jack Rajchenbach (past pres of Torah U'mesora etc) told me that from what he’s seen by people in kiruv, this is not a kashe in the first place. World changers sometimes neglect their own families.

    I saw a vort from R’ Elya Meir Bloch here in 18:19, where Hashem decides to tell Avrohom about the punishment of Sdom because he is the Av Hamon Goyim and he will teach his family to do good; he says that for many people, being an av hamon goyim would have swallowed the person up and caused him to disregard his family. But Avrohom was different, and he remained a dedicated father and teacher to his own family, as well. As R’ Elya Meir brings from the Chovos Halevovos, “Hachossid yosheiv bechevras bnei odom umisbodeid im kono.”)

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    1. the patricide was what is known is Israel as a "work accident." they wanted to poison Eliezer [nothing wrong with that] but a malach switched plates.

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  5. Yet the Netziv in this week's parsha writes on "Hashem beirach es Avraham ba'kol" that because Avraham had lots on his plate therefore he had to send Eliezer in his stead to find a shidduch for Yitzchak. It does not sound like he means this as a criticism (neglect is prob too strong a word to describe the situation), just that's the way it is - he had to delegate what I think most of us would regard as a family matter to Eliezer because he was hands on busy with everything else.

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  6. Maybe Yosef did not contact his family for the same reason.

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