NOVEMBER 24 • 2022 | 43

son, so that he can bless him in a mood 
of focused love.
It is the end of the story, though, 
that really conveys the depth of feeling 
between them. Esau enters with the 
food he has prepared. Slowly Isaac, 
and then Esau, realize the nature of 
the deception that has been practiced 
against them. Isaac “trembled violently.” 
Esau “burst out with a loud and bitter 
cry.” (Gen. 27:33-34)

A LESSON IN PARENTHOOD
It is difficult to convey the power of 
these descriptions: Much is lost in 
translation. The Torah generally says 
little about people’s emotions. During 
the whole of the trial of the Binding 
of Isaac we are given not the slightest 
indication of what Abraham or Isaac 
felt in one of the most suspenseful 
episodes in Genesis. The text is, as 
Erich Auerbach said, “fraught with 
background,” meaning, more is left 
unsaid than said. 
 The depth of feeling the Torah 
describes in speaking of Isaac and 
Esau at that moment is thus rare and 
almost overwhelming. Father and son 
share their sense of betrayal, Esau 
passionately seeking some blessing from 
his father and Isaac rousing himself to 
do so. The bond of love between them 
is intense. So the question returns with 
undiminished force: Why did Isaac love 
Esau, despite everything; his wildness, 
his mutability and his outmarriages?
The Sages gave an explanation. They 
interpreted the phrase “skillful hunter” 
to mean that Esau trapped and deceived 
Isaac. He pretended to be more 
religious than he was. 
There is, though, quite a different 
explanation, closer to the plain sense of 
the text, and very moving. Isaac loved 
Esau because Esau was his son, and 
that is what parents do. They love their 
children unconditionally. That does 
not mean that Isaac could not see the 
faults in Esau’s character. It does not 
imply that he thought Esau the right 
person to continue the covenant. Nor 

does it mean he was not pained when 
Esau married Hittite women. The text 
explicitly says he was. But it does mean 
that Isaac knew that a father must love 
his son because he is his son. That is 
not incompatible with being critical 
of what he does. But a parent does not 
disown their child, even when the child 
disappoints their expectations. Isaac 
was teaching us a fundamental lesson in 
parenthood.
Why Isaac? Because he knew that 
Abraham had sent his son Ishmael 
away. He may have known how much 
that pained Abraham and injured 
Ishmael. There is a remarkable series of 
midrashim that suggest that Abraham 
visited Ishmael even after he sent him 
away, and others that say it was Isaac 
who effected the reconciliation. He was 
determined not to inflict the same fate 
on Esau.
Likewise, he knew to the very depths 
of his being the psychological cost 
on both his father and himself of the 
trial of the Binding. At the beginning 
of the chapter of Jacob, Esau and the 
blessing the Torah tells us that Isaac 
was blind. There is a Midrash that 
suggests that it was tears shed by the 
angels as they watched Abraham bind 
his son and lift the knife that fell into 
Isaac’s eyes, causing him to go blind 
in his old age. The trial was surely 
necessary, otherwise God would not 
have commanded it. But it left wounds, 
psychological scars, and it left Isaac 
determined not to have to sacrifice 
Esau, his own child. In some way, then, 
Isaac’s unconditional love of Esau was 
a tikkun for the rupture in the father-
son relationship brought about by the 
Binding.
Thus, though Esau’s path was not that 
of the covenant, Isaac’s gift of paternal 
love helped prepare the way for the 
next generation, in which all of Jacob’s 
children remained within the fold.

UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
There is a fascinating argument between 
two mishnaic Sages that has a bearing 

on this. There is a verse in Deuteronomy 
(14:1) that says about the Jewish people, 
“You are children of the Lord your God.” 
Rabbi Judah held that this applied only 
when Jews behaved in a way worthy of 
the children of God. Rabbi Meir said 
that it was unconditional: Whether Jews 
behave like God’s children or they do not, 
they are still called the children of God. 
(Kiddushin 36a)
Rabbi Meir, who believed in 
unconditional love, acted in accordance 
with his view. His own teacher, Elisha 
ben Abuya, eventually lost his faith 
and became a heretic, yet Rabbi Meir 
continued to study with him and 
respect him, maintaining that at the 
very last moment of his life he had 
repented and returned to God. 
To take seriously the idea, central to 
Judaism, of Avinu Malkeinu, that our 
King is first and foremost our parent, 
is to invest our relationship with God 
with the most profound emotions. 
God wrestles with us, as does a parent 
with a child. We wrestle with him 
as a child does with their parents. 
The relationship is sometimes tense, 
conflictual, even painful, yet what gives 
it its depth is the knowledge that it 
is unbreakable. Whatever happens, a 
parent is still a parent, and a child is 
still a child. The bond may be deeply 
damaged, but it is never broken beyond 
repair.
Perhaps that is what Isaac was 
signaling to all generations by his 
continuing love for Esau, so unlike him, 
so different in character and destiny, 
yet never rejected by him — just as 
the Midrash says that Abraham never 
rejected Ishmael and found ways of 
communicating his love. Unconditional 
love is not uncritical, but it is 
unbreakable. 
That is how we should love our 
children — for it is how God loves us. 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This 

essay was written in 2016.

