Unscrolled Toldot: Living Water

Reading Genesis, it can seem as though Isaac isn’t a main character in his own story. Dwarfed by his father Abraham and defined mainly by his experience as a passive offering on the altar, he holds little narrative weight and becomes lost to the grander narratives that precede and follow him.

This is even true in Parashat Toldot, the portion that is purportedly dedicated to telling the history of Isaac. The spotlight in Toldot is repeatedly stolen by Isaac’s sons, Jacob and Esau. Even when Isaac is the subject of the story, it seems as though he is merely acting out a script left to him by his late father.

Toldot follows Isaac as he sojourns in the desert city of Be’er Sheva, digging up wells that his father had once dug and rededicating them.

The work of re-digging Abraham’s wells feels like a repetition. It’s easy to see why. This portion is an uncanny redux of the Abrahamic story cycle. The same wells are dug. The “sister-wife” narrative of Abraham and Sarah is repeated almost verbatim, and the city of Be’er Sheva is named, as if for the first time, but actually for the second time.

The story is only a repetition, however, from our perspective as all-seeing readers of the text. We shouldn’t forget that from the perspective of Isaac, it is a story of discovery. Not a story of novelty, but one of newness nonetheless.

In the show “Six Feet Under,” the character George Sibley describes just such an experience of newness. After buying a house built over a stream, he had decided to put in a new floor. He pulled up the linoleum and then finally made it down to the original boards. When he lifted them up, there was the stream coursing underneath the home.

“I’d always known it was there,” he says, “but there it was … There it really was. This live, sparkling water flowing right underneath my house.”

No show has ever succeeded so much in capturing the mystical dimension of the ordinary as “Six Feet Under” and it is with such an eye that we should approach the tale of Isaac digging old wells and finding “living water.”

Yes, this well is not new. Yes, this story is not new. Yes, we “always knew” that the water was there. But now it is time for Isaac to discover it for himself, to see the “live, sparkling water” with his own eyes.

Yes, this story is not new. Yes, we “always knew” that the water was there. But now it is time for Isaac to discover it for himself, to see the “live, sparkling water” with his own eyes.

This is the story of every Jew who comes to the Torah to dig. This is the story of every Jew who goes to the holy land to explore. This is the story of every Jew who decides to learn the history of his or her family, community, people.

In 2009, when I was studying abroad in Jerusalem, Isaac’s wells acquired new relevance for me. Twenty years old, visiting Beer Sheva with new friends, I felt dizzied by the idea that those wells could be anywhere. We didn’t know much about the city. We wandered around a bit and got lost, finally stopping into a bowling alley to play a few rounds and drink some beers. It was a Friday night.

We stumbled out of the bowling alley later in the evening and asked a cab to take us back to the bus station so that we could head back to Jerusalem. He informed us that there were no buses because it was Shabbat, but that he could take us himself for an exorbitant cost.

We were new in the country and had no idea we would be stranded because of the sabbath. We deliberated what to do when someone nearby approached us and offered to help.

He was a young man, a student, who lived in town. He mentioned that we could come over and have dinner with him and sleep in his living room. We leapt at the offer.

His apartment was small and cozy. I remember the delicious dinner he cooked for us. I remember that he worked as a guide on nature tours for at-risk youth out in the desert, and that the taxidermy falcon on his bookshelf was a creature he had found out there with his group. I remember laughing. I remember that we were listening to the album “Gently Disturbed” by the Avishai Cohen Trio, which still evokes that sweet, unexpected night every time I listen to it.

I remember also the strange and captivating feeling that I had found myself, quite suddenly, living in the unfolding story of the Torah.

Like Isaac, I had traced my forefathers’ footsteps to the city of Beer Sheva and had uncovered living water.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020). He is a rabbinical student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.