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.