Rav Brevda in his sefer Lehodot UliHalel (on Chanukkah) quotes a Berieshit Rabba (2:4) on the pasuk is (1:2) "... And the darkness is on the Tehom" The midrash explains "'and the darkess'" means the galut of the Greeks that darkened the eyes of the Jews with their Gevairot..." In the footnotes Rav Brevda quotes an amazing Mesillat Yesharim (3rd perek) "In the darkness of night there are two types of mistakes a person's eyes can make. 1) That it is so dark that the person cannot see anything at all. 2) That the person mistakes a pillar for a man and a man for a pillar. This is the pleasures in this world, the darkness of the night for the person's mind, which causes these two mistakes. The first one causes the person not to be able to see the stumbling blocks in front of him and he will trip up a lot. The second one is much more difficult than the first. He is so convinced that he is seeing clearly that he is confident that the bad is really good and that the good is really bad and he will work very hard to convince himself that what he is doing is correct."
Nowadays, we live in this galut. We are so used to the way we live that we have convinced ourselves that it is how it is supposed to be. Meanwhile, the true good is still hidden from us.
In this week's parsha we know that Yitzchak is blind. It is possible to say that this blindness is not just a physical blindess but also a blindness of the truth. The pasukim say (25:27-28) "... Esav was a man who knew hunting, a man of the field... and Yitzchak loved Esav because of the meat in his mouth." Rashi explains in (25:27) that Esav knew how to trick his father, Esav would ask him 'Father, how do I give Ma'aser for salt and animal feed?' So his father thought that he was very strick in mitzvot."
Yitzchak was so blind he could not tell that his own son was lying to him. We know that the Ramban throughout these parshiot say that every thing the Avot did was a sign that we would do it in the future. So the Ramban shows how every act that Avraham did was a sign for either a war or a sin that the Jews were involved in. So Yitzchak is a hint for the time of the Galut were we are living in the darkness. We must know how to know between was is good and what is not. If we allow our emotions to get in the way then we may end up going after the bad.
So we can learn from Yitzchak from the way he lived to know how we can survive this darkness. Throughout the parsha Yitzchak does almost the exact same actions that his father, Avraham did. First during the famine he tried to go to Mitzriam but Hashem told him he could not go. Then when he went to Grar he told the people that Rivkah was his wife, just like Avraham had done for Sara. Then he dug wells and the pasuk (26:18) even says "... and he dug the wells that were dug in the time of Avraham his father.
We see from here the trick on how to survive the galut. Since we live in a time when the Torah learning is not as great as earlier generations and our mitzvot are not as good as earlier generations we do not really have any idea what we are doing. The only thing we can do is look back at what the earlier generations did and hope that by following in their ways we will be able to get out of the galut.
This shows us the importance of Mesorah and that is exactly what Yitzchak was showing us by following the path of his father. But now we can ask a question, if we are supposed to follow everything the last generation did then why was Yiztchak told not to go down to Mitzriam? The reason is because mesorah is not just simply following the exact movements of the previous generations, it is much broader than that. Mesorah requires us to understand how the people of the earlier generations lived. Once we can understand why they did things than based on how they reacted we must know how to asset the situation and get a result that makes sense for our times. But how does one know what to do and what not to do, how do we know what the earlier generations would do? The answer is to find yourself a rebbe we has a mesorah back to Har Sinai. Once, you have that then you know that everything he tells you is straight from Mesorah.
These are the lessons we learn from our Av, Yitzchak, in times of darkness one must be careful about what he believes and one must know that what he is doing fits into the realm of Judaism. If we convince ourselves that the bad is good then we will only notice after it is too late.
This explains why, it was only after Esav tells his father that Yaakov had stolen both the Bechor and the bracha that Yitzchak realized how wrong he was. He realized that Yaakov was the better son and that Esav was not really as good as he seemed. But then why did he give him a bracha? If you look at what the bracha is it is quite revealing. The bracha is that Yaakov should rule over Esav, but if Yaakov sins then Esav will be able to control him. This is showing us yet another lesson. As long as the Jews follow the Torah the evils of the galut will not be able to touch them, but once they begin to allow the darkness in they will begin to mess up what is good with what is bad.
As long as we keep the Torah and the mitzvot nothing will be able to hurt us.
Have a great Shabbat!
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