NOVEMBER 16 • 2023 | 47

CONDITIONS THAT GIVE 
RISE TO ANTISEMITISM
There is more. Another pro-
found insight into the conditions 
that give rise to antisemitism 
was given by Hannah Arendt 
in her book The Origins of 
Totalitarianism (the section has 
been published separately as Anti-
Semitism). Hostility to Jews 
becomes dangerous, she argued, 
not when Jews are strong, but 
when they are weak. 
 This is deeply paradoxical 
because, on the face of it, the 
opposite is true. A single thread 
runs from the Philistines’ reac-
tion to Isaac and Pharaoh’s to the 
Israelites, to the myth concocted 
in the late 19th century, known 
as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. 
It says that Jews are powerful, too 
powerful. They control resources. 
They are a threat. They must be 
removed.
Yet, says Arendt, antisemitism 
did not become dangerous until 
they had lost the power they had 
once had: “When Hitler came to 
power, the German banks were 
already almost Judenrein (and it 
was here that Jews had held key 
positions for more than a hun-
dred years) and German Jewry 
as a whole, after a long steady 
growth in social status and num-
bers, was declining so rapidly 
that statisticians predicted its 
disappearance in a few decades,
” 
she writes.
The same was true in France: 
“The Dreyfus affair exploded not 
under the Second Empire, when 
French Jewry was at the height of 
its prosperity and influence, but 
under the Third Republic when 
Jews had all but vanished from 
important positions,
” she writes.
Antisemitism is a complex, 
protean phenomenon because 
antisemites must be able to hold 
together two beliefs that seem 
to contradict one another: Jews 
are so powerful that they should 
be feared, and at the same time 
so powerless that they can be 
attacked without fear.
It would seem that no one 

could be so irrational as to 
believe both of these things 
simultaneously. But emotions 
are not rational, despite the fact 
that they are often rationalized, 
for there is a world of difference 
between rationality and rationaliza-
tion (the attempt to give rational 
justification for irrational beliefs). 
So, for example, in the 21st cen-
tury, we can find that (a) Western 
media are almost universally hos-
tile to Israel, and (b) otherwise 
intelligent people claim that the 
media are controlled by Jews who 
support Israel: the same inner 
contradiction of perceived pow-
erlessness and ascribed power.
Arendt summarizes her thesis 
in a single, telling phrase that 
links her analysis to that of Amy 
Chua. What gives rise to antisem-
itism is, she says, the phenome-
non of “wealth without power.
” 
That was precisely the position of 
Isaac among the Philistines.

THE NATURE OF HATE
There is a second aspect of our 
passage that has had reverbera-
tions through the centuries: the 
self-destructive nature of hate. 
The Philistines did not ask Isaac 
to share his water with them. 
They did not ask him to teach 
them how he (and his father) 
had discovered a source of water 
that they — residents of the place 
— had not. They did not even 
simply ask him to move on. They 
“stopped up” the wells, “filling 
them with earth.
” 
 This act harmed them more 
than it harmed Isaac. It robbed 
them of a resource that would, 
in any case, have become theirs 
once the famine had ended and 
Isaac had returned home.
More than hate destroys the 
hated, it destroys the hater. In this 
case, too, Isaac and the Philistines 
were a portent of what would 
eventually happen to the Israelites 
in Egypt. 
By the time of the plague of 
locusts, we read: “Pharaoh’s offi-
cials said to him, ‘How long will 
this man be a snare to us? Let 

the people go, so that they may 
worship the Lord their God. Do 
you not yet realize that Egypt is 
ruined?’” Exodus 10:7
In effect, they said to Pharaoh: 
You may think you are harming 
the Israelites. In fact, you are 
harming us. 
 Both love and hate, said Rabbi 
Shimon bar Yochai, “upset the 
natural order” (mekalkelet et 
hashurah). They are irrational. 
They make us do things we 
would not do otherwise. In 
today’s Middle East, as so often 
before, those intent on destroying 
their enemies end by doing great 
harm to their own interests, their 
own people. 
 Third, Isaac’s response remains 
the correct one today. Defeated 
once, he tries again. He digs 
another well; this, too, yields 
opposition. So, he moves on and 
tries again and eventually finds 
peace.
How fitting it is that the town 
that today carries the name Isaac 
gave the site of this third well, 
is the home of the Weizmann 
Institute of Science, the Faculty 
of Agriculture of the Hebrew 
University and the Kaplan hospi-
tal, allied to the Medical School 
of the Hebrew University. Israel 
Belkind, one of the founders of 
the settlement in 1890, called it 
Rechovot precisely because of the 
verse in our parshah: “He named 
it Rechovot, saying, Now the 
Lord has given us room and we 
will flourish in the land.
”

ISAAC: A LINK IN THE CHAIN 
Isaac is the least original of the 
three patriarchs. His life lacks 
the drama of Abraham or the 
struggles of Jacob. We see in this 
passage that Isaac himself did 
not strive to be original. The text 
is unusually emphatic on the 
point: Isaac “reopened the wells 
that had been dug in the time of 
his father Abraham, which the 
Philistines had stopped up after 
Abraham died, and he gave them 
the same names his father had 
given them.
” 

Normally, we strive to individ-
uate ourselves by differentiating 
ourselves from our parents. We 
do things differently, or even if 
we don’t, we give them different 
names. Isaac was not like this. He 
was content to be a link in the 
chain of generations, faithful to 
what his father had started. 
Isaac represents the faith of 
persistence, the courage of con-
tinuity. He was the first Jewish 
child, and he represents the 
single greatest challenge of being 
a Jewish child: to continue the 
journey our ancestors began, 
rather than drifting from it, 
thereby bringing the journey to 
an end before it has reached its 
destination. And Isaac, because 
of that faith, was able to achieve 
the most elusive of goals, namely 
peace — because he never gave 
up. When one effort failed, he 
began again. So it is with all great 
achievements: one part originali-
ty, nine parts persistence.
I find it moving that Isaac, who 
underwent so many trials, from 
the binding when he was young, 
to the rivalry between his sons 
when he was old and blind, car-
ries a name that means, “He will 
laugh.
” 
Perhaps the name — given 
to him by God Himself before 
Isaac was born — means what 
the Psalm means when it says, 
“Those who sow in tears will reap 
with joy” (Ps. 126:5). Faith means 
the courage to persist through all 
the setbacks, all the grief, never 
giving up, never accepting defeat. 
For at the end, despite the 
opposition, the envy and the hate, 
lie the broad spaces, Rechovot, 
and the laughter, Isaac: the seren-
ity of the destination after the 
storms along the way. 

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (1948-

2020) was a global religious leader, 

philosopher, the author of more than 

25 books and moral voice for our time. 

His series of essays on the weekly 

Torah portion, entitled “Covenant & 

Conversation” will continue to be shared 

and distributed around the world. 

