January 2, 2023|ט' טבת ה' אלפים תשפ"ג Yaakov's fear of his children going OTD - and what he does about it By Rabbi Jonathan Muskat

The father desperately wants his children to stay frum, but he’s nervous about the surrounding environment and the surrounding culture. What is the father supposed to do? How does the father best equip his children so that they don’t go off the derech when he is no longer around to guide them? This is not only a question in 2022 and 2023, by the way. This is a Parshat Vayigash question. This is a question with which Yaakov grappled when he is told that Yosef is alive and that he can provide for Yaakov’s family if they all come down to Egypt. Yaakov is over the moon when he hears that Yosef is alive, but he is nervous about leaving the land that was promised to his ancestors. He is nervous about Egyptian culture and its impact on his children and on his family. So what does he do before journeying to Egypt? He does something that is rather peculiar. "Vayizbach zevachim leilokei aviv Yitzchak." He offers sacrifices to the God of Yitzchak his father. He doesn’t just offer sacrifices to God, but he offers sacrifices specifically to the God of Yitzchak his father. To who else could he have offered sacrifices? Maybe Avraham, the founder of the religion? Why offer sacrifices to the God specifically of Yitzchak and not Avraham?

The Maharsham, Rav Sholom Mordechai Schwadron, suggests that Avraham and Yitzchak chose two different paths to find God in their lives. According to a number of midrashim, Avraham found God when he was older, at the age of forty or even fifty, after much “chakirah,” or investigation. Avraham challenged and questioned and probed. Eventually Avraham found God on his own using his intellect. Yitzchak’s path to God was radically different. It was through emunah peshutah, or simple faith. Yitzchak inherited his faith from his father. Yitzchak experienced the Divine in the home where he was raised. His faith was based on his religious experiences and he never wavered.

Before Yaakov starts his descent to Egypt, he makes a decision about how to raise his family in Egypt. Will he recommend following his grandfather’s footsteps or will he recommend following his father’s footsteps? What’s the best way to ensure that his kids stay frum? And the answer, says Yaakov, is Yitzchak’s path. He prays for the God of Yitzchak and not the God of Avraham. He prays for the path of the God of emunah peshutah, of simple path, rather than the path of the God of derech chakirah, of philosophical and scientific exploration, of questioning and probing. What sustains our faith in dark times, in times of galut, in times when God may seem distant or gone, is not the faith of Avraham but the faith of Yitzchak.

Why do we have faith in God nowadays? Why do we believe that God created the world and gave the Torah to our ancestors thousands of years ago and this Torah is a blueprint for meaningful living? In the summer, I delivered a shiur about different approaches to answering the following question. Are the arguments for the existence of God and the revelation at Sinai more compelling than other alternative explanations such that they would convince me to live a completely Torah observant lifestyle? I discussed different types of arguments. I discussed arguments from science, like a world can’t create itself so there must be a creator, or the intricacies of creation are such that there must have been an intelligent creator who designed these intricacies. I discussed historical arguments, like the Sinai revelation in front of a nation of millions of people could not have been made up or the existence of the Jewish people after all these years simply defies logic. These are all Avraham-type arguments. Obviously, Avraham could not have used the historical arguments because he predated the Sinai revelation and a Jewish nation, but these arguments are “derech chakirah.” They represent intellectual arguments. There was a third category of arguments that I also discussed and those relate to religious experience. I feel connected to God. You can say that these feelings are psychological, but I can point to intellectual giants like Rav Soloveitchik and Rav Aharon Lichtenstein who asserted that these feelings are real. These feelings are real when I live a halachically committed life and these feelings are real when I explore the depth and breadth of Torah. This category of arguments is a Yitzchak-type argument. It is not intellectual. It is emunah peshutah. It is simple faith. It is based on my religious experience. I can’t explain why I believe. I just do. It feels right and it feels real and this is the faith that nourishes me during the dark times.

This past week I read a fascinating statistic. Ukranians’ online engagement with the Bible rose by 55% after the country was invaded by Russia in February, according to YouVersion, creators of the popular Bible app and Bible.com. Apparently, their favorite verse was from Sefer Yeshayahu:

אַל־תִּירָא֙ כִּ֣י עִמְּךָ־אָ֔נִי אַל־תִּשְׁתָּ֖ע כִּֽי־אֲנִ֣י אֱ-לֹהֶ֑יךָ אִמַּצְתִּ֙יךָ֙ אַף־עֲזַרְתִּ֔יךָ אַף־תְּמַכְתִּ֖יךָ בִּימִ֥ין צִדְקִֽי׃

"Fear not, for I am with you, be not frightened, for I am your God. I strengthen you and I help you. I uphold you with My victorious right hand."

Emunah peshuta, simple faith in God, is what has given comfort to countless Ukranians over the past year. Emunah peshuta, experiencing the word of God, religious experience, is generally the way that we fortify our commitment to God.

And Yaakov did something else to help guide his family in this new country. Before he journeyed to Egypt, he prayed to the God of Yitzchak, and then when he arrived in Egypt, he walked into Pharaoh’s palace and blessed him. Why did he do that? Is it common courtesy? Immediately before Yaakov visited the palace, his sons appeared before Pharaoh. The conversation with Pharaoh revolved around their opportunity for accomplishment and advancement in Egypt, how their exile might not be such a curse after all because the king of the exile who fashioned himself as a god announced that, “eretz Mitzrayim lefanecha he, b’meitav ha’aretz” – the entire land of Egypt is available for the brothers to settle and they should settle in the best districts in the land. Pharaoh announced to Yaakov’s children to get ready for a glorious exile.

Then Yaakov came to the realization that yes, we must prepare for the darkness of galut with emunah peshuta, but we must also prepare for the allure of exile. Yaakov must remind his children that exile isn’t glorious, Pharaoh is not a god and their historic mission is not to become successful shepherds in Goshen. Our mission is to be servants of God.

So, Rabbi Riskin explains, when it’s time for Yaakov to meet Pharaoh, Yaakov was uninterested in receiving the blessing of an Egyptian idolater so he blessed Pharaoh. Pharaoh, of course, was dumbstruck and probably thought that Yaakov was old and senile and that is why he was disrespectful and had the audacity to think that he could bless Pharaoh, who considered himself to be a god. Therefore, Pharaoh asked Yaakov how old he is. Yaakov realized why Pharaoh asked this question so Yaakov defiantly insisted that he was younger than he looked. He only looked to be 130 years old but the reason why he looked even older was because of the difficult life that he had led. To prove that Yaakov was, indeed, of sound mind and body, that he intended to bless Pharaoh, Yaakov blessed Pharaoh again. And in blessing Pharaoh, Yaakov was sending a message to his children, a message of Jewish pride. Don’t think that the exile is so glorious, that Pharaoh is your king and the one who will bless you in this land and that you have no need for God. We don’t get blessed by other nations. We bless other nations. We are the source of blessing for the world.

The father desperately wants his children to stay frum, but he’s nervous about the surrounding environment and the surrounding culture. What is the father to do? How does the father best equip his children so that they don’t go off the derech when he is no longer around to guide them? Yaakov does two things. Yaakov understands that it’s the emunah peshuta, the simple faith, that will keep us committed, the faith generated through religious experience, through routine mitzvot done again and again in a meaningful way. Yaakov understands that we keep our children grounded in faith through religious experiences and not just when their little. When they get older, we must find more and more religious experiences for our children. We must learn with them, we must daven with them and we must do chesed with them, and we must make these mitzvot exciting and meaningful. And Yaakov understands that we need to convey to our children the sophistication of Jewish practice. We are neither ashamed nor embarrassed by the Torah in relation to outside culture. We do not judge Torah through the prism of outside culture. We judge outside culture through the prism of Torah. We are not looking for the world to bless us. We bless the world. We view our nation as a source of blessing to the world, not in an arrogant fashion, but because we were given the gift of Torah. Yes, Yaakov was about to travel with his family to exile, but in doing so, he prepared us with two key ingredients in grounding our faith and the faith of our children even thousands of years later – religious experiences and Jewish pride.