The ageless palimpsest of the Jewish people — the book of Genesis — leaves me with two new mysteries as I read through it week by week.
At critical junctures in the lives of Abraham and Isaac, when all that we know about their relationships with their children cries out for response, Abraham and Isaac fall silent. Mysterious silences.
Abraham instructed his faithful servant Eliezer to travel back to his birthplace to find a wife for his son and spiritual heir Isaac. Abraham issued very specific instructions and made Eliezer swear to follow them. Eliezer did so, dotting every i and crossing every t. His mission was successful. He brought back Rebeccah who, upon first seeing Isaac, fell from her camel, overwhelmed by his sense of holiness. Isaac and Rebeccah marry. The household of Abraham and Sarah will continue. The mission of teaching the existence and rulership of one G-d will continue.
Based on the importance of Eliezer’s mission and the detailed instructions he received, would it not be expected that Eliezer would deliver a report to his master, Abraham? Based on the importance to Abraham of Isaac marrying the right woman, would not Abraham want to meet her? Would not Abraham want to speak to his son Isaac and Isaac’s wife Rebeccah? In Abraham’s eyes, were they fit to carry on the mission to which he devoted his life? Did he have any teaching or advice to offer?
To all these questions there is only silence in the biblical record. Mysterious silences.
Isaac blessed his sons Jacob and Esau. Jacob received the blessing that Isaac intended for Esau and Esau was outraged. He planned to kill Jacob, who fled. He was away from home 36 years, 14 of them in Torah study, says the midrash; and 22 of them under the thumb of Laban. For 14 of those 22 years he worked to earn two daughters of Laban as wives, Leah and Rachel. Jacob sired 13 children, including the 12 tribes of Israel. Then he decided to return home and, on the way, had an encounter with Esau, which he feared greatly, but which passed peacefully. Whereupon he proceeded to various locations until he finally reached his father. “And Jacob came to Isaac his father at Mamre, Kiryat Arba. This is Hebron, where Abraham and Isaac dwelled” (Genesis 35:27).
What does Isaac say to Jacob? What does Jacob say to Isaac? What an eventful life Jacob has lived! He has so much to share — 36 years to share, including the death of his wife Rachel. Isaac has so much to share, including his feelings after the death of Jacob’s mother Rebeccah. What an emotional and manifold reunion looms! After Jacob comes home, Isaac and Jacob live together for another 21 years. Would not Isaac want to know how his fugitive, impoverished son Jacob came into so much wealth and such a huge family? Would not Jacob want to know the spiritual journeys of his awesome father Isaac?
To all of these expectations, there is only silence in the biblical record. Mysterious silences.
Silent Places: Landscapes of Jewish Life and Loss in Eastern Europe is a book of eerie, evocative and anguished photos by Jeffrey Gusky. Jewish gravestones cut for use as building materials. Bifurcated rails leading to the unloading platform at Auschwitz. Shattered synagogue window. Idyllic illusion. Former Jewish street viewed from desecrated synagogue. Faded Yiddish sign of prewar Jewish haberdashery. Shower head in gas chamber complex, Majdanek.
To all of the questions that these images raise — silences.
Mysterious silences.
Other cemeteries, right here in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, with Jewish stars alongside crosses on gravestones, project the end points of the rape of Judaism by the Inquisition. It murdered masses of Jews and had others silence their Jewish expression until, generation after generation, only a Jewish artifact or a non-understood practice, such as lighting Friday night candles by faithful members of the Catholic Church, remained. Why? Why an Inquisition? Here, too — mysterious silences.
The interstices of the biblical text, the absences in the lives of Abraham, Eliezer, Isaac and Jacob, bequeathed an underground teaching, a paradigm of silence, of mute response to persecution, whose mysteries would persist throughout the history of the biblical mission of monotheism.
It would be too easy, I believe, to explain the mysterious silences in the lives of biblical figures this way: The Bible tells us only what we need to know. If the search for a wife for Isaac is presented in great detail, this means that the detail is important. If the Bible is silent on what happens as a direct result of this search, this means that we do not need to know. This approach does not explain; it explains away. Perhaps we may suggest another meaning to the biblical paradigm of silence at critical junctures.
Perhaps the silences challenge us to speak — to ourselves. Perhaps the mysteries at these critical junctures are placed there to compel us to look within. Not just to imagine, what would Abraham say to Rebeccah? what would Jacob say to Isaac?
No, to ask ourselves more than that: to reimagine the texture of their relationships, tensions, loves, options, decisions, as they emerge within our own lives. Perhaps the silences in the Biblical text say this: do not be an armchair biblical reader. The lives in Genesis are set forth not only for instruction or exegetical endeavor. The lives in Genesis are intended to teach us by compelling us to translate their silences into the words that should arise in our own relationships, tensions, loves, options and decisions. Genesis is more than a book; it is a partner.
Rabbi Hillel Goldberg may be reached at hillel@ijn.com.
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