Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal

Tomorrow morning, I will be giving the D’var Torah (a sermon) on Genesis chapters 25:19-28:9. I am honored to have been asked. Below is the text.

Derasha: Tol’dot, 22 November 2025

The words of the Torah are like fragments of colored glass pieced together to create a stained-glass window of lives lived and events through which the Divine Light shines, illuminating and shaping our lives, our values. A friend once remarked that we are a people of discussion and debate. To borrow from the Book of Job, we desire to understand “every precious thing” that we can answer the question, how then shall we live.^[1] 

We have this question in common with the patriarchs and matriarchs.  Each of us had our youthful dreams, hopes, and expectations of how our lives would turn out, what we would become as a person― our careers, and family lives. In our middle years, our attention shifts.  We begin to acknowledge the narrowing door of opportunities. In our later years, we must decide whether to carry the heavy burden of regrets or commit ourselves to new dreams and hopes. Despite our dimming vision, we are granted the opportunity to see life anew, to perceive what we have overlooked or ignored in our youth and middle age.

What dreams did Abraham have for his future as a youth gazing into the Mesopotamian night sky? In contemplating the nature of creation, he pondered its origin and the creative force, the natural laws that govern what he saw.^[2] He perceived something different from what others had.

Maimonides viewed Abraham as an active rationalist rebelling against the dominant paganism.^[3] As an observer, Abraham perceived a God of order, a creator who is neither contained within nor a part of nature. Now married to Sarai, whose name would be changed to Sarah, he heard a voice in the warm night air, “Go forth from your land and from your birthplace and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you.^[4]” He became a nomad sensitive to the rhythms of the natural world and the forces of nature.

He became a stranger, a lonely man of faith, living beyond the normative values of society, which were, and still are today, carelessly accepted. He constructed altars to a God who often bewildered him, but to whom he was obedient. But who is this God drawing his heart to Him? The Divine name was not revealed to Abraham. He knows the Divine as the “Eternal God,” and “the God of the Mountain,” El Shaddai. Elohim. 

Abraham and Sarah established a community. They were teachers, as Rashi writes in his commentary on Genesis 12:5, “The souls which he had brought beneath the sheltering wings of the Shechinah, Abraham converted the men and Sarah converted the women and Scripture accounts it unto them as if they had made them.”^[5]

With the birth of their son, Isaac, Sarah becomes mother-teacher, Abraham father-teacher. They instruct Isaac in the laws of nature (or metaphysics) and a law of ethical behavior, as revealed to them on their journey by God in a covenant of faith. Abraham and Sarah also instructed Isaac in agricultural and business skills― a work ethic.

What dreams and expectations did Isaac have for his life as a young man? The Torah tells us little about his personality, other than that he is tām, an ordinary man devoted to his mother, and he followed his parents’ example of faith. He married Rebekah. We know more of Rebekah’s personality than that of other women in the Torah. She is beautiful, modest, self-assured, nurturing, clever, clear-eyed, strong-willed, and intuitive.

With Sarah’s death, Abraham’s authority in the covenant community is passed to Isaac. And Rebekah takes Sarah’s place. The Torah tells us little about them. They live in relative obscurity, guided by the faith of the Abrahamic covenant.

When Esau and Jacob are born, Rebekah becomes mother-teacher, and Isaac father-teacher, instructing them in the values learned from Abraham and Sarah.

Although each parent has their favorite, both children are loved. Isaac and Rebekah know their children, their strengths and weaknesses, who is responsible and more dependable. They are aware that Esau is impatient, quick-tempered, uncouth, and prone to seeking self-gratification. He barters his birthright for a bowl of stew. Jealousy will motivate him to go so far as to consider killing his brother. He follows and conforms to the norms of the Canaanites. Esau’s marriage to a Hittite is a source of bitterness for Isaac and Rebekah. He will not preserve their spiritual identity, their faith. In contrast, Jacob is a dreamer, a visionary, obedient, yet sly and mischievous. He follows his parents’ example of righteousness.^[6] But has he made righteousness his own?

This understanding of her children leads Rebekah to a decision.^[7] Rebekah, compelled by her faith, knows her oldest son must serve her youngest.^[8] Jacob must carry the Abrahamic faith forward.

Isaac, though old and blind, is neither senile nor dying, but he is aware that he is approaching the age of his parents’ deaths.^[9] He sends Esau to hunt game for a stew. Rebekah prepares Jacob to impersonate Esau. Jacob cannot disguise his voice, as Nachmanides (Ramban) points out.^[10]

Rabbi Gunther Plaut observes in his commentary, “…no amount of play-acting, false skins, and goat-disguised as venison can really deceive Isaac.”^[11]

I agree with this understanding, which raises the question of whether Rebekah and Isaac collaborated to deceive Jacob.^[12]

Regardless of whether the deception was made in collaboration with Rebekah or by Rebekah alone, Jacob is the victim of deceit.

Jacob has his moral weakness as he plays the role of Esau rather than responding truthfully to his father’s question, “Who are you?” It is a question that Jacob must contend with, along with “What type of person am I?” on his journey. These are the same questions we have been asked, and ask of ourselves, as well as of our children and grandchildren, and they will ask of themselves and of us.

Families, as we learn from Isaac and Rebekah, are broken apart by deception. 

We sometimes manipulate our children (and others), make decisions for them with the best intentions. We have our expectations. We miss opportunities, time with those we love. In our busyness, we often fail to listen to and hear their voice, their dreams and hopes, and what they are truly saying to us. Our children are not extensions of ourselves. Our duty is to guide them to become who they are. And regardless of how successful they are in becoming themselves, we will have our regrets. We share this in common with Rebekah and Isaac.

Rabbi Morris Adler, whom many of us will recall was a scholar, educator, and civil rights activist who was assassinated in 1966, wrote of Isaac, “Nothing spectacular happened to Isaac. He made no particular contribution, no addition to the tradition he received from Abraham…. What, then, did Isaac do? He preserved a tradition; he held on to it; he received it, and he was loyal to it.”^[13]

We stand between our forebearers and our children and their children as preservers and teachers of our faith, just as Isaac and Rebekah. Our lives may seem obscure to us. Future generations may know little of our life stories. However, in our faith, the word “parent” refers to a teacher or educator. Each of us, as members of the congregation, regardless of our relationship to the young people in the community, is a teacher shaping the identity and values of our children as Jews in how we have answered the question, “How then shall we live?” We daily remind ourselves of our responsibility in the recitation of the Sh’ma, “These words that I command you this day shall be taken to heart. Teach them again and again to your children…” ^[14]

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[1] Job 28:10, Pesikta Rabbati 14;13

[2] Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Idolatry 1:3.

[3]  Maimonides, Mishnah Torah, Hilkhot Avodat Kokhavim, see also The Guide of the Perpelexed III. 51

[4] Genesis 12:1.

[5] see also Genesis Rabbah 39:14

[6] Tanhuma, edited by S. Buber, Toledot 67b, [Rabbinic Anthology, 345}

[7] Genesis 27: 5-8 ff

[8] Genesis 25:23

[9] “Joshua the son of Korcha said: When a person approaches the age at which his parents died he may well be anxious five years before and five years after. Isaac was then one hundred and twenty three years old and he said, “Perhaps I shall only reach the age of my mother who died at the age of 127 and I am now within five years of her age: therefore, I know not the day of my death —I may only reach the age of my mother or it may be the age of my father.” Genesis Rabbah 65:12.

[10] In his commentary on Genesis 27: 22 Ramban (Nachmanides) concludes: “The straightforward sense is simply that Isaac recognized the voice as Jacob’s.” quoted by Rabbi David J. Zucker, https://www.thetorah.com/article/isaac-knows-he-is-blessing-jacob-who-is-really-being-deceived.

[11] W. Gunther Plaut quoted in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 190.

[12]  Genesis Rabbah 65:12 we read, “They (Isaac’s eyes) become dim just in order that Jacob might receive the blessing.” Can we interpret this as Isaac using his poor eyesight as part of the deception? This is a question for rabbinic and scholarly debate for deeper understanding of the Genesis Rabbah text. 

[13] Morris Adler quoted in The Torah: A Modern Commentary, Union of American Hebrew Congregations, New York, 182,

[14] Siddur Lev Shalem; Sifrei Devarim 34.