Alienated. Feeling
alone and disconnected from the people who used to provide connection and a
sense of belonging. Perhaps there is a vicious cycle - feelings of alienation
in an individual alienate the people they might otherwise connect with. Don’t
we like to hang out with happy people? Surely, the alienated one needs to get
over it! Look on the bright side! Which also means don’t dare look at what
feels wrong and misaligned. Turn a blind eye, mate. That’s the winning
strategy. Perhaps it is.
I wonder about the merits of focusing on the positive to such a degree that we stop seeing disturbing facts or fears. I want to explore this by looking at the metaphoric hints in our teachings about Isaac’s blindness.
Isaac is one of Judaism’s three patriarchs. He was literally blind[i], but Isaac also seems to have been blind to the true evil[ii] nature of his oldest son, Esau[iii], who he wanted to bless at the end of his life[iv] rather than his good son, Jacob.
The meaning of Isaac’s blindness is hinted at in various teachings of the Midrash. One approach is that God brought blindness down on Isaac as a way of shielding him from the shame of Esau’s behavior. Easu abducted married women and raped them. If Isaac would walk in the marketplace, people would ridicule him as the father of that scoundrel. By making Isaac blind, God caused Isaac to stay at home and thus avoid the experience of shame[v]. This seems to endorse the proposition that one way to deal with shame is to avoid exposure to it and escape from it.
I read a charming articulation of this approach from the Breslov school of Chasidism. “You may remember … from the early childhood of some little person in your vicinity, that closing one’s eyes was a strategy often employed to ward off the threat of seeming doom. It may not have always worked, but then again you might not have known how to do it properly.” [vi]The Breslov approach emphasises seclusion and talking to God like one would to a friend.
The Rebbe Nachman stated 'And if things get very bad, make yourself into
nothingness.’
I asked him, 'How does one make himself into nothingness?’
He replied, 'Close the mouth and eyes – nothingness!’
They advise, “One has to hide inside the house to keep himself from feasting his eyes on this world. The walls of the house serve as blinders.”
An alternative view is that Isaac’s blindness was a consequence of his experience being offered as a human sacrifice by his own father[vii]. At the time the angels wept, and their tears entered Isaac’s eyes and eventually blinded him[viii]. The angels could not bear the injustice of a father’s cruelty to his son. Isaac tuned into the outrage of the angels to such an extent that his mind was closed to any form of parental rejection of a child. He could not see that Esau was an undeserving son, unworthy of the blessings he wished to give him[ix]. Following this interpretation, turning a blind eye is unwise.
Still another approach links Isaac’s blindness to the experience of bitterness of spirit[x] caused to him and Rebecca by the idol worship of Esau’s wives. This made Isaac angry, which led him to become blind[xi]. Anger, sometimes caused by being confronted with something we really wish we could pretend was not there[xii], can cause us to not ‘see things clearly’ and significantly distort our perception of reality, rendering us emotionally ‘blind.’
I am not sure exactly what guidance to draw from all this. However, a few things are clear to me. A lot of the time, it is useful to look away and tell ourselves that the time is not right for exploring depressing matters[xiii], on condition that we do look at them from time to time. If we never deal with painful issues, denial is likely to end in tears when reality crashes through and needs to be dealt with. Despite turning a blind eye, we still have some awareness of the problems we are choosing not to see so the emotions of anger, resentment and shame bubble away in the shadows, and in the subconscious and can’t be addressed. The suppressed rage and fear seep out in unspoken ways, through tone and body language and cause distress to people around us and to ourselves. Perhaps, the answer lies in mixing blindness with clear-eyed exploration of the painful things we wish to avoid.
[i]
Genesis 27:1
[ii]
Midrashic sources, Midrash Rabba and others
[iii]
Lamm, N. 2012, Derashot L’dorot, a commentary for the ages: Genesis, OU press,
p. 114
[iv]
Genesis 27:4
[v]
Bereshit Rabba 65
[vii]
Genesis 22:1-12
[viii]
Bereshit Rabba 65:5
[ix]
R. Ezra Bick, https://www.torahmusings.com/2013/10/the-blindness-of-yitzchak/
[x]
Genesis 26:35
[xi]
Midrash Tanchuma toldot 8
[xii]
Toldot Yaakov Yosef, I don’t remember the exact reference
[xiii]
R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, Tanya,
chapter 26
