As he grows old, Isaac loses his sight; in his diminished state, he begins to worry that he is about to die. He decides to seize the moment and bless his favorite son, Esau, while he still can. But Rebecca and Jacob take advantage of his blindness and fool him into blessing Jacob instead.
Blindness leaves Isaac vulnerable and alone, a tragic figure at the mercy of others.
Several Midrashim connect Isaac’s blindness to a failure of judgment regarding his sons. Isaac had long favored Esau and turned a blind eye to Esau’s wickedness. Seforno adds that the same was true of Eli, the High Priest at the beginning of the Book of Samuel, who did not properly rebuke his children. Isaac’s physical blindness is a metaphor for his inability to look honestly at Esau’s failures.
I find these Midrashim disturbing; they blame Isaac for his physical frailty, and rationalize the bad behavior of Rebecca and Jacob.
What is striking is that almost all biblical and rabbinic texts portray blind people in another light. The blind sage often sees more than those with perfect vision. Jacob loses his eyesight at the end of his life and, much like his father, turns to offer a blessing to his grandchildren Ephraim and Manasseh. But Jacob knows exactly what he is doing: He deliberately crosses his hands, and when Joseph objects, he answers, “I know, my son, I know.” The blind prophet Ahijah can identify Jeroboam’s wife, who has disguised herself. Bava ben Buta, a blind sage, does the same with Herod.
The Talmud relates the following story about Rav Sheshet, who was blind:
“Once, when everyone went out to greet the king, Rav Sheshet got up and went along with them. A heretic came across him and said, ‘Whole jugs go to the river; where do the broken ones go?’
Rav Sheshet replied, ‘Come and see that I know more than you do.’”
The Talmud then describes how Rav Sheshet, based on his knowledge of the Tanakh, recognizes the king’s arrival before the scoffing heretic does.
Blindness is a formidable disability; navigating the world without being able to see is enormously difficult. That is why the Torah’s metaphor for misleading advice is “You shall not place a stumbling block before the blind” (Leviticus 19:14).
But the example of Rav Sheshet and the others reminds us how much of life goes beyond what the eyes can see. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry put it best when he wrote: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Authors who write about their own experience of blindness often make the same point. They see their loss of vision as having opened their minds to a deeper understanding.
John Milton started to go blind at age 35 and was completely blind by age 43. In some of his writings, he expresses great bitterness about this loss.
But Milton slowly reconciled himself to his condition. In one sonnet he fears that blindness has made his gift useless, and then answers his own fear: “They also serve who only stand and wait.” Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein was a Milton scholar. When Rabbi Lichtenstein confronted his own father’s blindness, Milton’s example, and this line in particular, comforted him.
After going blind, Milton wrote some of his greatest works, including “Paradise Lost.” He would compose and memorize dozens of lines overnight; the next day, he would dictate them to a secretary.
Milton recognized that his blindness opened the door to a deeper vision.
Milton recognized that his blindness opened the door to a deeper vision. He wrote:
“So much the rather thou celestial Light
Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers
Irradiate, there plant eyes, all mist from thence
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell
Of things invisible to mortal sight.”
Milton prays that, with his outer eyes closed, the celestial light will shine inward, enabling him to see “things invisible to mortal sight.”
The blind sage in the Tanakh and Talmud is not some mythical character used for a convenient lesson. Nor is Milton unique. Many others who have met the challenge of this disability find themselves transformed by the experience. In his memoir, “Hello Darkness, My Old Friend,” Sanford Greenberg describes going blind in college because of poor medical care, and how he then built a life filled with extraordinary achievements, including a PhD, a groundbreaking invention, and a distinguished career as an entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was determined that no one should pity him or see him as disabled.
When he reflects on how blindness changed him, he notes that the absence of visual distractions allows him to focus. At the same time, his imagination is boundless, because he doesn’t have “the same sense of boundaries shared by people impaired with sight.” Greenberg considers both to be gifts of his blindness.
So why is Isaac different? Why does blindness bring this great man’s life to a troubled end?
But maybe Isaac isn’t different. To understand why, we need to carefully reassess this episode in his life.
Rashi cites another Midrash about why Isaac went blind:
“When Isaac was bound upon the altar and his father Abraham was about to slaughter him, at that moment the heavens opened and the ministering angels saw and wept. Their tears came down and fell upon Isaac’s eyes. And that is why his eyes grew dim.”
It is the Akeidah that leads to Isaac’s blindness. At that moment, Isaac had seen the inner workings of heaven. Another Midrash offers a related account: Isaac went blind because he saw the divine presence directly.
No human is meant to look directly upon the divine world above. To witness the angels crying is to catch the Almighty when He is less than mighty. It exposes a tear in the fabric of our own mundane reality, which simply cannot contain truth and justice. To see the divine presence directly is to know what the world should be, and that makes the world we see much more difficult to bear.
Yet Isaac saw all of that. He is not merely a blind man with insight; he is a blind man who has seen beyond this world.
And that is why Isaac wants to bless Esau, even when the text itself seems to scream out that he shouldn’t. Rebecca rushes to ensure Jacob gets the blessings.
Malachi will declare, “I loved Jacob, but Esau I hated” (Malachi 1:2–3).
But Isaac knows something they don’t. A passage preserved in the Yalkut Reuveni, an anthology compiled by the seventeenth-century Prague kabbalist R. Avraham Reuven HaKohen Sofer, offers a striking mystical reading of why Isaac loved Esau:
“A wondrous explanation, sweet to the soul, of the verse ‘And Isaac loved Esau, because game was in his mouth’ (Genesis 25:28): the righteous man’s love was bound to that son because Esau was destined to purify himself and the entire world.”
Isaac carries a messianic vision. He understands that at some point in God’s plan, Esau will repent. Isaac imagines that by blessing Esau, he can make that happen now. The blessings might change Esau for the better, and that would bring harmony between the two brothers, Esau and Jacob.
Counterfactuals are difficult to explore. We don’t know what might have happened had the blessings not been stolen. But this we know: The blessings only brought Jacob misery. Could it have been any worse had they been given to Esau?
This is a far richer portrait of Isaac: a man who almost gave his life for God, who saw angels cry and looked directly at the divine presence. He may not see with his eyes, but his soul has glimpsed the secrets of the universe.
He wants to bless Esau because he dreams of fixing the world. Unfortunately, this mundane world is not ready for Isaac’s plan. Esaus don’t change overnight.
But Isaac’s example is still important. He reminds us what unconditional love for a child looks like; he reminds us how to imagine the best in even those who are not remotely the best; and he reminds us that we must always have a positive vision for the future, no matter how bad the present is.
Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.
