Shabbos Parashas Toldos - 5775

Shabbos Parashas Toldos - 5775

Rabbi Hal Miller

Wishing a refuah sheleimah to one of the members of this mailing list, who was among the wounded in Har Nof yesterday.

All the wells that his father's servants had dug in the days of Avraham his

father, the Philistines stopped up, and filled them with dirt. [Bereishis 26:15]

Language can be very powerful. In this one simple verse, we can easily ask

eight questions. Why does the Torah tell us 'all'? What does telling us 'wells' here

come to exclude? Who were "his father's servants? Why are we concerned

with what they did rather than what Avraham himself did? Why does it have to

specify that these servants dug the wells in Avraham's days--isn't that obvious?

Who were the Philistines and why are they involved here? What does 'stopped up' mean? Why does the verse then add "filled them with dirt" after telling us that the wells were "stopped up"?

All of these, though, bypass a really obvious question. Why would anyone stop up wells in the first place?

Rashi suggests, "Because they said, 'they are an obstacle for us because of the armies who come against us'." Certainly, anyone planning to escape from an attack would like clear terrain to run through. but does Rashi's answer hold when

we add in the fact that the same Philistines attacked other nations through this land at the same time?

Rashbam gives two additional reasons. It was to prevent others "from using the water, or to prevent Yitzchak and his children from gaining a hold in the land." Rashbam's first answer is hard to accept, as it makes no sense for people living in the desert to

take such drastic action to ensure nobody ever finds water again, including themselves.

But, his second answer begins to make sense. The Philistines were not making much use of the land, but they did not want Avraham and his family to move in. Why did they

suddenly do this now? They respected and feared Avraham. While Avraham was alive, they assumed he would return, so they were careful to do nothing to upset him. Once he was certainly not going to return, they were able to take action against Avraham's descendants without the same level of fear. But why take action against Avraham's descendants at all? Why stop up wells they could have made use of themselves?

Sforno tells us, "Fearing to harm Yitzchak (directly) because of Avimelech's orders, they stopped up the wells because of envy and animosity." In Sforno's opinion, it was not Avraham that these people feared, but their own king. Further, but for that fear, it

appears that they would have acted sooner, "because of envy and animosity." What

did Yitzchak do to them to cause envy and animosity?

Nechama Leibowitz addresses this. "What did the Philistines mean by stopping up the wells? Surely they were cutting off their nose to spite their face. But in addition to stopping the wells up, they filled them with dirt so that no one would be able to know that there had been a well at that spot. Why did they wish the land to be desolate?"

Leibowitz then answers this unanswerable question. "The Philistines were not pleased with these wells and did not wish to see the desert made fertile. The Torah itself tells us briefly why this is so: 'And the Philistines envied him.' [26:14]. Was this reaction characteristic only of the Philistines, three and a half thousand years ago, when Yitzchak dwelt in his tent and wells were dug with primitive instruments, or can it not be paralleled in every generation?" Rabbi Nachshoni states it as clearly as possible. "The major factor in the argument about the wells was simply sinas Yisrael--anti-Semitism--which has been characteristic of all arguments and disputes between Israel and other nations, from those times to the present."

Avraham arrived in this area so poor that the king, Avimelech, put out an order of pity, telling his subjects to leave Avraham alone. By the time Yitzchak returned to the land, the family had great wealth, and now the king orders Yitzchak out, saying, "Go from us because you have become much wealthier than us." Neither position makes sense. The issue is not one of economics. The issue is that the family of Avraham represents G-d on earth, living by His commandments, demonstrating faith in Him. The other nations fear the retribution they know is coming from G-d someday. They cannot strike back directly at G-d, as they found out in the Tower of Bavel incident. The only thing they can do, other than teshuvah, is to strike out at those who represent Him. Our verse is a prime example of the axiom that whatever

occurred to the Patriarchs was a foretelling of what would happen to their descendants.

So, just as Yitzchak refused in the face of anti-Semitism to stoop to the level of the Philistines, so too must we remain strong in our faith and mitzvah observance.