Yitzchak, What Were you Thinking?

Avraham tells his servants that they both are going to go up and they BOTH are going to return

How come only Avraham comes back. The text makes it seem that Avraham came back alone and then he and his servants left and went to Be'er-Sheva.

Where is Yitzchak and why didn't he go with Avraham?

It says that Avraham had to come to Sarah to mourn her and eulogize her so where was he when she died? Why wasn't he with her?

Also if Chazal say that Sarah dies when she heard of the Akeida and Avraham wasn't there when she died than it must have been Yitzchak who told Sarah the news. which implies that indeed Avraham and Yitzchak went their separate ways after the Akeida.

Also once Avraham came, we don't see Yitzchak? Why is Yitzchak not at the burial and why isn't he there with his father to mourn her?

Avraham and Yitzchak now have a ruined relationship, they literally cannot be in the same room together and it drastically effected their relationship to the point where they hardly even had a relationship anymore.

Right after Sarah dies, Avraham is insistent on finding a wife for Yitzchak. which makes sense because as soon as Sarah dies they no longer have a buffer between the two of them and they needs that. So a great solution to that is to get Yitzchak married.

Why is Yitzchak in בְּאֵ֥ר לַחַ֖י רֹאִ֑י and not in Chevron with Avraham?

Avraham then dies and out of no where, Yishmael come to bury him with Yitzchak. Why couldn't Yitzchak bury Avraham alone?

• ok yes, Yishmael was beloved by Avraham and it is very possible that he came because he was close with his father as well but maybe part of it is because Yitzchak still couldn't be alone with Avraham even when he died.

For Yitzchak to have loved Rivka at this point (right after they met) it pretty much would be love at first sight, which is so not real love. If we look at their relationship - Yitzchak and Rivka don't communicate at all...why not? What is their issue?

I think here is one of the first times we see Yitzchak's distorted concept of love. This is his first actual relationship after the Akeida and we see that it is connected to his mothers death. The love is almost conditional, he loves because she comforted him in his mothers death. Yitzchak essentially is using Rivkah to replace his mother.

The text juxtaposes his love with death to show that Yitzchak now associates love with survival/continuation of life. He loves Rivka bc she a) continues the life of Sarah and b) helps his own survival by giving him support system which is a human need for survival. We are social being and we need to have people we can count on.

Makes sense bc his relationship with Avraham changed when he tried to end his life

Why does it give a reason for why Yitzchak loved Esav but no reason for why Rivka loved Yaakov? And why is that the reason?

• I think they both loved both of their sons but here is another place were אהב means prefer.
• Just like we saw with Yitzchak loving Rivka was a associated with moving on from death/continuing life - we see his reasoning for loving Esav more has to do with Esav feeding him aka: sustaining Yitzchaks life and providing basic survival needs.

More showing that he associates love with life. Esav was more physical survival while Rivka was more spiritual survival.

Yitzchak also seems more attached to Esav because he admires his active personality. During the Akeida, Yitzchak didn't try to save himself. His life was being threatened and whether he tried to fight back or not he was bound physically or by God and didn't have the ability to take action to save himself. He was going to die and he knew that. Esav has this active and strong personality that Yitzchak never had. He sees in Yaakov the same quality in him that almost got him killed.

Yitzchak did a lot of the things Avraham did and similar challenges (barrenness, famine, dug wells, pact with Avimelekh).

he was the successor, continuation, solidified.

• Alligns with psychology. Modern psych has observed that often times PTSD patients hold on to real tangible things that are either in the moment or very predictable to keep them grounded so they don't get lost in their imagination which can often happen. If we look at Yitzchak many of his actions and challenges were similar to Avraham There were all things that were "safe" because they had happened before.

How was Yitzchak able to move on from this. How was he able to maintain belief and follow in his fathers footsteps after what he had done to him?

"Those who have a 'why' to live, can bear with almost any 'how?'" - Victor Frankl

• Yitzchak had a "why" and it was a different "why" than his father's. While his father was focused on creating, influencing, and introducing monotheism into the world, Yitzchak's role was to maintain that. He focused on strengthening our connection to the land and really building roots here.
• Yitzchak used his trauma from the Akeida to create his "why." He used the fact that he had to stay grounded and focused and turned that into his mission to maintain the mesorah of his father. He was the successor and Yaakov and everyone after him would not have been able to move on raise the 12 tribes had Yitzchak not solidified the lifestyle that Avraham had created.

Message for us: Yitzchak took an awful event in his life that would stay with him forever and used it for good. He had the opportunity to simply view this as a negative event that happened to him but he used it to make him one of our fore fathers

We too have the ability to take the negative events in our lives and find the positive. But I think what Yitzchak is teaching us goes a little deeper. We can take our negative events or traumas or challenges and not only see the good but use them for our Avodas HaShem.