What’s so funny about Yitzchak?
Shabbat Shalom to all our readers.
Yitzhak, or Isaac as he is known in the English-speaking world, is at the heart of this week’s parasha. Various commentators have asked –how could the name Yitzhak, meaning laughter, be at all appropriate for one whose life was filled with anything but laughter, and whose character is usually associated with fear and awe, as in the well-known expression “Pahad Yitzhak”?
While we may remember that both Abraham and Sarah laughed when they heard that they would bear a child in their old age (Sarah at 90, Abraham at 100), it still does not explain how Yitzhak’s name characterises his personality or primary attribute. A name, after all, is considered to be both a blessing and a hope, a prayer and intention for actualisation throughout one’s life.
Isaac’s life was anything but the lightness of being, or a fancy free flow of laughter and joy. Yet, his name tells us otherwise, revealing something about him and offering a profound lesson applicable to our own lives.
The term “Pahad Yitzhak,” appears twice in Bereishit. When Jacob signs a covenant with his uncle Laban, Jacob swears in the name of his “Father Yitzhak’s Fear”. (Bereshit 31:53)
What does this mean? Ibn Ezra, a 12th-century Spanish commentator, explains that “Fear of his father” means “the One whom his father feared”. He adds that, others say, this alludes to the day when Jacob’s father, Isaac, was bound on the altar. When we think of Isaac, one of the first images that come to mind is of a son tied down to the altar, looking up at his father holding a knife over him. That image alone might make your blood pressure rise, as I am sure it did for Isaac.
While making a comparison between Isaac’s fear and trauma coming off the altar and trying to make a go of life again, and the way that we may be experiencing fear and anxiety coming out of lockdown and into the uncertainty of a world filled with a deadly virus, may seem outrageous, I think there is something we can learn from this comparison.
Do we ever find elsewhere in the Torah the Hebrew root “tz’ch’k” the root of Yitzhak’s name and of the word laughter? We do, in fact, come across this verb once in the Torah, in our Parashat Toldot, in relation to Yitzhak and Rivkah doing something together. Looking out the window one day, Abimelech, king of the Philistines (who thought that Rivkah was Isaac’s sister rather than his wife), saw Isaac “metzachek” his wife Rivkah (Bereshit 26:8). What were they actually doing? Was it laughing? Rashi, the medieval French commentator, suggests this means they were having sexual relations. Chizkuni, also a medieval French commentator, prefers to state that they were only engaged in foreplay. God forbid that the King should see something more intimate! I only mention Chizkuni as his interpretation implies a playfulness between Yitzhak and Rivkah, as in the related Hebrew word “L’sachek, to play”. Indeed, joyful love and deep connection seem to have characterised the relationship between Yitzhak and Rivkah, which was at the centre of Yitzhak’s life following his binding.
From this we learn that, though Yitzhak’s life was filled with fear and trauma, he overcame that fear through “tz’chok” not simply laughter, but the joyful love affair that characterised all that was meaningful in his life – his love for Rivkah.
May we all find our way out of anxiety and move back into the world with the strength and support of our own “tz’chok” – love, passion, fun and laughter shared with those closest to us.
Yonatan Sadoff is rabbi of Kehilat Nitzan.
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