Questions for the Shabbat Table: Lech Lecha
A printable study booklet: one question per page, the Rav’s answer, its source, and a lesson to discuss as a family.
Avraham has just escaped the furnace and set out for the Promised Land, where he begins to spread faith in a Creator and the morality that this faith demands. Two forces immediately rise against him: Lot, who troubles him from within his own household, and Pharaoh, who attacks him from without. The lecture sets out from the confrontation in Egypt, but only to show that Pharaoh, defeated in the moment, prevails in another way — through his daughter, who becomes a maidservant and then a concubine in Avraham’s house. The heart of the lecture therefore concerns what is born of this: Ishmael, and the very particular nature of the danger he represents.
Rav Raphaël Benizri begins by distinguishing the two methods. Nimrod sought to do away with Avraham by fire; Pharaoh, for his part, does not attack the man but his wife, so as to channel Egyptian culture through that womb — so that the descendants would be, in the eyes of the law, children of Avraham, and in spirit, Egyptians. He fails, yet he comes up out of Egypt with Avraham in the form of his own daughter.
The lecture then follows Hagar and her son: the midrash of the two masters on the road, the angel who sends her back to her mistress, the name given to the child, the abandonment in the desert and Heaven’s answer. It compares Ishmael to the four kingdoms and shows that he is not one of them, develops the double meaning of the word that denotes both circumcision and the spoken word, and closes with questions from the audience about a practice that has become mechanical and about the coexistence the Rav knew in Morocco.
What this lecture teaches
Two dangers frame the beginning of Avraham’s journey. From within, a member of the family, Lot, who can also lay claim to a share of the heritage, since he is Avraham’s disciple and asserts his own virtues. From without, Pharaoh, master of a great empire that has imposed its culture on the entire world and that cannot tolerate the appearance of a man who does not recognize himself in that culture. Both look with deep disfavor on Avraham’s settling in a land, and both wish to strip him of the mission he took upon himself from his earliest childhood: to be a partner in the work of creation.
Pharaoh proceeds not by fire but by the womb. He does not seek, as Nimrod did, to throw Avraham into a furnace and be done with it. He goes after his wife, and means to pass Egyptian culture through her: Sarah’s descendants would then be, in the eyes of the law, children of Avraham, but their civilization, their spirit and their identity would be Egyptian. His is a project of inner substitution, not of elimination.
He fails, and yet he succeeds. Sarah resists him firmly, and a Providence watches over Avraham, who comes up out of Egypt with great wealth — but above all with Pharaoh’s daughter, whose father judged it better that she be a maidservant in that house than go on growing up in the palace. What Pharaoh could not achieve himself, he obtains through her. The Rav underlines the paradox: this daughter, regarded as a daughter of the house, never ceases to assert her belonging to Egypt, to its culture and its instincts, even after she has adopted Avraham’s faith.
A midrash makes a sage weep on the road to Jerusalem. Two masters are walking together, and one of them begins to weep. He explains: Sarah was barren, she could not have a child, and for a moment the whole of Avraham’s work was put in jeopardy by the presence of Hagar. She becomes Avraham’s concubine, Sarah accepts it, Avraham consents, and from this Ishmael is born, who carries Pharaoh’s design forward.
Avraham loves this son and cannot imagine parting from him. He goes so far as to ask G-d that Ishmael might live before Him and be his heir. At G-d’s command he will agree to break off contact — but this son goes on being called the son of Avraham, and he lays claim to his father. It is precisely this asserted sonship that creates the difficulty later on.
The midrash lists the misfortunes Ishmael has in store for Israel. The first: not to yield a single inch of the Land of Israel to the descendants of Yitzchak. The second: to turn the site of the Temple into a pen and a dump, without anyone daring to say a word, and to build his house above the place reserved for the Holy of Holies. Added to this: claims will be pressed in the name of the children without any justice being done them, and he will weigh on the world’s currency through oil. The Rav concludes with the situation that results: a people unable to vindicate any right to the land that was promised to it.
The maidservant turned mother believes herself mistress of the house. She is carrying a child while her mistress, for all her pleading and all her prayers, has obtained nothing, and from then on she claims the foremost place. When Sarah sends her away, she becomes the object of a providential manifestation: an angel tells her to return to her mistress and to accept suffering there, and announces to her a son whom she will call by a name that bears the Name of G-d.
Two peoples bear the divine Name within their name, but in one of them it is silent. Israel and Ishmael are the only two of which this is true. The difference, says the Rav, is that in Ishmael this Name does not resound. He adds that Bilaam, once his mission of cursing had been overturned, announces that at the end of days a people will arise capable of imposing its law on Israel and making it suffer — and that the cry he then utters appears only twice in the Torah: concerning Moav, descended from Lot, and concerning Ishmael.
Ishmael’s particular danger is the danger of the word. Esav fulfills himself in the world of making and of technology; Ishmael, whose name speaks of hearing, is the people of the word. Yet it is Israel that is the bearer of the word and its spokesman. The Rav ties this point to circumcision through a Hebrew wordplay: the same term denotes the act and the spoken word. Once you have cut the air of your mouth by forming a sentence, it is over; you can no longer take it back or manipulate it — like a cut flower that can never again be attached to its branch.
Ishmael prides himself on having consented to circumcision at an age when he could have refused it. He points out that he underwent it at thirteen, whereas Yitzchak was only eight days old and chose nothing. Yitzchak answers him that if G-d asked him to sacrifice his life, he would do so. And it is at that moment, the Rav notes, that he is taken at his word and put to the test. Both sons, then, came close to offering their lives.
Hagar remains the Egyptian, and the text reminds us of it every time. She has not renounced her origins. When the child is thirsty, she does not want to witness his death and leaves him: take him back, she says in effect. It is Heaven that hears the voice of the child — and the text takes care to specify that he is judged where he is, here and now. Ishmael deserved it: he is a boy, he has done nothing wrong, and so his cries must be answered. The Rav insists on this rule of judgment in the present.
Two place names answer one another. The mother, witnessing Providence taking charge of her child, calls the place by the name of the Living One who sees her; Avraham, on the mountain where he brings his son, says that there G-d is revealed. Both are touched by a vision through their child, and the Rav lets the symmetry speak for itself.
Ishmael is not one of the four kingdoms. Four exiles correspond to four stages in the development of the Jewish people: Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome — and on Yaakov’s ladder one sees them climb and then come down again, the last one lingering. But where is Ishmael? The Rav answers that he is not a power like the others: the four sought to take Israel’s place and will succeed for a limited time, whereas he is an entity created independently of them, who grew up in Avraham’s house and claims his share of it there. He lays claim to the birthright, and hence to a double portion, and above all to a continuity of faith.
He is a man of faith and prayer without morality and without structure. This is how the Rav describes him: someone who can believe, practice his faith to the very end and do everything in G-d’s name, without its being bound to any morality or subject to any structure. A man hungry for freedom and for immediate pleasure, for whom faith is one thing and the world below the object of every possible pleasure. Faith, here, obliges to nothing.
The verb that prompts his expulsion has several readings. Sarah demands his expulsion because she saw him “laughing,” in the present tense. The commentators read in it idolatry, debauchery, or bloodshed. One master disputes these readings and maintains that he was laughing at the sight of the children of Israel clinging to a land: what concerns him is not territory, but the question of where Avraham’s faith truly resides — with him or with Yitzchak. And it is for this reason that he does not want to let Yitzchak put down roots anywhere at all.
He is called a wild man, and it is the word “man” that is to be feared. A beast is limited by its make-up, by the tendencies it expresses, by the image it reflects; one can master it as soon as one grasps its weaknesses, and an ox one day old is already an ox — it will not evolve. Man, however, is at once drawn from the earth and able to bear the image from on high: he follows a development, he is its subject, and one can neither fully grasp him nor condition him. That, says the Rav, is Ishmael’s danger: from his mother he keeps the identity of the wild one, and from his father the identity of a man.
There are two ways of having descendants: through the organ and through the word. Circumcision concerns the organ that determines our progeny; education is the other path, and it passes through language. Hence the demand the Rav formulates: the cut must be made simultaneously in the flesh and in language, without remaining at the stammering of a merely inward circumcision. This is what gives the act its full dimension, and what makes it possible to bring others in and win them over — as it is said of Avraham and Sarah that they “made souls.”
To reduce the act to a sign of identity is to place oneself on Ishmael’s level. This is the warning on which the lecture closes. If Israel seeks its identity only in a practice of convenience, entrusted to a surgeon rather than to a man of the tradition, then the identity it puts forward is of the same nature as Ishmael’s — and he can rightfully call himself an heir on the same footing. Yet the inheritance has two titles, the land and the Torah: this is why the struggle takes on the character of a religious war far more than a national one.
Full transcript of the lecture
Good evening, everyone. We are going to continue last week’s reflection on the trial that Avraham undergoes at the very moment when, having escaped the blazing furnace of Nimrod, he sets out for the land promised by Hashem. He arrives, and he begins in effect to use it as a space for spreading faith in the Creator of the universe, and in the morality that this faith requires for preserving the balance of this world. But now he is disturbed from within by a member of his family named Lot, and from without by Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And both, in a sense, would like to take from Avraham this strength he gave himself — or rather this mission he imposed on himself from his earliest childhood: to be a partner in the work of creation. Both look with deep disfavor on Avraham’s settling in a land. The one would like to have his share: after all, he too is a disciple of Avraham; he can just as well claim his own virtues and, in the name of those virtues, take center stage. And on the other side —
— we have Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the master of that great empire, who has imposed his culture on the entire world and who would on no account tolerate being disturbed by the appearance of a man who does not recognize himself in that Egyptian culture. That is why Pharaoh will not do as Nimrod did — seek to throw Avraham into a blazing furnace and be done with it. No: he will instead go after his wife, and through her womb pass on this Egyptian culture, in such a way that, from the standpoint of the halachah (Jewish law), all of Sarah’s descendants would indeed be children of Avraham, but from the standpoint of civilization, of spirit, of culture, they would have an Egyptian identity. That is what Pharaoh aspires to. But he did not succeed. There is strong opposition from Sarah, and there is a Providence watching over Avraham. And indeed, when Avraham comes up out of Egypt, he comes up with a great treasure — but above all with Pharaoh’s daughter; Pharaoh’s daughter, of whom he said: I would rather she be a maidservant in this family of Avraham than go on growing up and flourishing in this Egyptian palace. But in reality, what Pharaoh could not achieve himself, he wants to achieve through his daughter. And paradoxically, he succeeds. He succeeds. Let me take this opportunity to tell you that this daughter who comes up with Avraham, and who is regarded as a daughter of the house, never ceases to assert her belonging to Egypt, to Egyptian culture, to its instincts — even once she has adopted the faith of Avraham.
The Midrash tells us that Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Chiya were walking toward Jerusalem when suddenly Rabbi Chiya began to weep, and Rabbi Yossi asked him why. He said: I am weeping because Sarah was barren, she could not have a child, and the whole of Avraham’s work was, for a moment, put in jeopardy by the presence of Hagar. For Hagar became Avraham’s concubine; Sarah accepted it and Avraham agreed, and Ishmael was born — who in a sense carries forward that design of Pharaoh’s. And Avraham loves his son dearly; he cannot imagine parting from him for a single instant. He even goes so far as to ask G-d: “Lu Yishmael — if only Ishmael… could Ishmael not be my heir? Could he not live before You?” He accepted, at G-d’s command, to separate from his son, from all contact with him — and yet this son is still called the son of Avraham.
Ben Avraham, the son of Avraham — and the son lays claim to his father. And Rabbi Chiya wept. Why, he says? The Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer cites it: there are fifteen misfortunes that Ishmael has in store for the people of Israel in the future. The first is that he will not yield a single inch of the Land of Israel to the descendants of Yitzchak. The second is that he will turn the Temple Mount into a pen for grazing flocks and a refuse dump, and no one will dare say a single word to him. In full view of everyone, he will build his house above the place set apart for the Holy of Holies. When the children come forward to press their claims, they are granted no justice; there is no law that answers to their rights.
He holds, he weighs upon the world’s currency, since […] it too depends on oil. And so this people — the people, the children of Israel — cannot vindicate any right to the Promised Land: this people that was protected by the Holy One, blessed be He, protected by G-d. But let us remember all the same that the maidservant became the mistress of the house because she was carrying a child, whereas her mistress, to that day, had not been able to have one. Despite all the pleading, all the prayers, all the intercessions, she had not been able to have a child — and so the maidservant claims the foremost place in Avraham’s house. And when Sarah sends her away from her house, behold, she becomes the object of three providential manifestations — three angels.
An angel of G-d says to her: Return to your mistress, accept suffering under her hand — but do not worry: you will have a child, you will call him Ishmael; you will call him Ishmael, and he will bear the Name of G-d. Just like Israel: two peoples are bearers of the divine Name, Ishmael the Egyptian and Israel. The only difference is that in Ishmael the divine Name is silent, while in Israel it resounds. And take note: Bilaam, that great prophet who tried to call upon every deity to bring down a curse on the Jewish people, on the people of Israel, ends his mission once he has been, let us say, confounded by the reality of a people that advances, that endures, and that was making its way toward its land. He says: “Let me tell you: I did not succeed in harming this people, but at the end of days a people will arise that will manage to impose its law on this people and make it suffer.”
And he groans, saying: “Oy, mi yichyeh misumo El — woe, who shall live when G-d does this?” You see, the word “oy” appears twice in the Torah. The first time it concerns Moav — and Moav is the descendant of Lot. And the second concerns Ishmael: there will come a moment for this people, which has bound the Name of G-d, and its destiny, to its reality, just as Israel has. And whether we like it or not, in terms of religious practice, in terms of commitment to faith, he has a solid footing in this domain. He presents an enormous danger. Which one? The danger is that of the word. Whereas the world of Esav lies in the realm of asiyah (action, making), of technology, where he fulfills himself completely, Ishmael — no — Ishmael is in the yishma: Yishma-El, G-d hears. He is the people of the word. But it is the people of Israel that is the bearer of the word — it is Israel that is the spokesman. And by what is this spokesman distinguished? By circumcision. What is circumcision? Milah.
How do you say “a word” in Hebrew? Milah. Why? Because once you have cut the air of your mouth in forming the word or the sentence, it is over; you can no longer put it back, you can no longer manipulate it. It is over. It is as if you had cut a flower: just try to stick it back onto its branch. That’s it, it’s finished — so it is with speech. The milah is performed on the organ through which humanity reproduces itself, through which a people is born — in the milah. Ishmael practices the milah; Ishmael even prides himself on having consented to undergo the milah at thirteen, whereas Yitzchak was only eight days old when he had his milah.
So Yitzchak says: Listen, it is true that you had your milah, and is that what you take pride in? If He asked me to sacrifice my life for Him, I would do it. And it is at that very moment — “veha-Elokim nisah et Avraham,” “and G-d tested Avraham” — that he is taken at his word and put to the test: will he indeed be sacrificed, will he let himself be carried onto the altar in the name of G-d? Yes, both of them indeed came close to offering their lives. But Hagar, the Egyptian mother — for she is always called so, Hagar ha-Mitzrit, Hagar the Egyptian — has not renounced her origins. She casts off her child when he is thirsty; she does not want to witness his death, so she leaves him. She says to G-d, as it were: Well, gather him up now — here he is, take him back. And we know full well: “Vayishma Elokim et kol ha-na’ar” — G-d heard the voice of the boy; He took pity on him, “ba’asher hu sham,” as he is there. For at the moment He took compassion on him, Ishmael deserved it. It is true: Ishmael deserved it.
And again the question is raised: is he, at this moment, truly deserving of condemnation, or does he have merit? I judge him in the present, as he is — ba’asher hu sham — here and now. And here and now, he is a boy, he has done nothing wrong; consequently, I must answer his cries. Paradoxically, the mother, who witnesses Providence taking her child in hand, calls that place Lachai Ro’i, “the Living One who sees me.” And what does Avraham call the place on which he offers up his child? “Behar Hashem yera’eh” — on the mountain, G-d is revealed. Both are touched by a vision through their child: on Ishmael’s side, Lachai Ro’i; and Behar Hashem yera’eh — that is Yitzchak’s.
And our Sages ask: what, in the end, gives Ishmael such importance in the history of the people of Israel, to the point that he appears […]? You know very well that there are four exiles, corresponding to four stages in the development of the Jewish people — in its havayah, its reality, its existence, […] its very being. There is that of Babylon, that of Madai, of Persia, that of Greece, and that of Rome. And on the ladder of Yaakov, he sees these four powers climbing and climbing — but they come down again. The last one, Rome, lingers. And when Yaakov sees this, he is reassured: do not worry — even if you set your nest atop the rock, “im tagbiah kanesher… misham oridcha,” “though you soar like the eagle… from there I will bring you down.”
But then, where is Ishmael? Where is Egypt? Where is Ishmael? The Maharal of Prague answers the question and says: the four — the four powers, represented by four animal forces: the lion, the bear, the leopard, and then […] — all these other animal forces, all these other forces […], they were there trying to take Israel’s place, trying to say: I am Israel, I will take the kingship of Israel. They will succeed, but it will be limited in time. But the one who will break out of these limits is Ishmael. Ishmael is not a power like the others. Ishmael is a force, an entity that was created independently of these other powers, and it grows up in Avraham’s house and claims its share in that house of Avraham.
Of course, he says: very well, I am willing to accept Yitzchak as a younger brother, but I am the elder; I am entitled to a double portion at the very least. And above all he claims this faith of Avraham. He is a man of faith, a man of prayer — from morning to morning he is in prayer. That is true; but it is bound to no morality, submits to no structure; it has no humanity. Ishmael is someone who can believe, can practice his faith to the very end and do everything in the name of G-d — without humanity, without the slightest morality. He is a man who is hungry, hungry for freedom and for immediate pleasure. For him, well, faith is one thing, but the world here below is the object of every possible pleasure.
Sarah demands Ishmael’s expulsion from her house only because she saw him metzachek. Metzachek — he is laughing. Laughing in the present tense. He laughs. What is this laughter? No — our Sages interpret it otherwise. Metzachek: avodah zarah, the practice of idolatry. Metzachek: no, it is arayot — debauchery, perversion. Metzachek: he is a murderer, his hands are stained with blood. All of this is contained in metzachek. We saw the word again with Rivkah, because, in sum, the trials that were imposed on Avraham were lived through once more with Avimelech, king of the Philistines. He too has this impulse to pass the culture of his country through the Jewish womb, just as the religions have tried to do.
Metzachek is connected with intimate pleasure, with intimate life, which is folded away in total discretion, in total privacy — through the organ of the milah. The organ of the milah is the one that makes you a strong man […]. It is the man who uses the other as an object — an object of his pleasures. To use the other as an object of one’s pleasures: that is gilui arayot. That is between man and his fellow. Avodah zarah is between man and himself — that is avodah zarah. And between man and the Omnipresent: the image of G-d in man, the contempt displayed toward this creature of G-d — that too is lived through the milah.
Then Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai says: Yes, my masters, that is what they say — but I maintain that he is laughing; he laughs at the sight of the children of Israel, through Yitzchak, clinging to a land. For him that is not what matters; what matters to him is where Avraham’s faith truly resides. Is it his, or Yitzchak’s? And for that reason alone he would not let Yitzchak put down roots in any territory whatsoever; Yitzchak must always remain subject to his way of seeing things, of fighting them. And he is a pere adam — pere adam: a wild one, an onager. An onager, yes — but he is adam, a man, and that is the most dangerous thing. Because, you know, a beast is limited in its make-up, by what it represents, by the tendencies it expresses, by the image it reflects back to man. And we can master it: once we grasp, however slightly, its weaknesses, then we can indeed master it — that is always so. And why? Because “shor ben yomo karui shor,” an ox even one day old is called an ox. There it is; it will not evolve; it will not develop any nature other than the one it has. Whereas man — we speak of adam, and take note, the word holds two opposite poles: he is adamah, a product of the earth, but he is also “adameh la’Elyon,” “I will be like the Most High”; he can aspire to bear the image of G-d, the image of the Most High. He will follow a development, he will be the subject of a development, and you cannot grasp him, master him, or condition him. No. And there lies the danger of Ishmael. Ishmael remained the son of Hagar ha-Mitzrit. Indeed, his name is not mentioned in the entire chapter of his birth; he is simply referred to either as the son of Avraham or as the son of Hagar. Thus he is the fruit of a union that remained at the level of ish and ishah, man and woman — and at the level of ish and ishah, each kept his own genes. And we have a product of this love in which the woman remained a maidservant by her very nature, by her essence, by her origins — and one who is called adam, who is Avraham: “atem keruyim adam, ve’ein umot ha’olam keruyim adam,” “you are called adam, and the nations of the world are not called adam.”
Adam — Avraham is adameh la’Elyon, the one who seeks truly to resemble the Most High, to share with his Creator the designs of the Most High. So here is Ishmael, with this double identity: the wild identity of his mother and the adam identity of his father. How then are we to combat him — how are we to prevail over such a man? I said a moment ago that it is through the organ of the milah that we reproduce, did I not? We perpetuate […]; it is the organ that determines our future, our progeny. And there is another way of having progeny: that of education, which is carried out through speech, whose object is the milah, the word. You remember this association in the word milah, in which there is a cut, and a suction by the mouth. For at the same time as the cut is made in the flesh, it ought to be made at the level of language too, so that we do not remain at the level of stammering, at the level of a circumcision of the heart alone. No — in this circumcision we must be able to accomplish both things at once, and realize that at the same time as we perform this [circumcision of the flesh], we are performing a circumcision at the level of speech, of the word, of transmission, of communication, of knowledge — in such a way that, like Sarah and Avraham, “Avraham megayer et ha’anashim, ve-Sarah megayeret et ha-nashim,” Avraham converting the men and Sarah the women, one can convert, one can bring in, many people.
That, then, is the strength — the strength of a people that, when it practices its milah, gives it this dimension, this substance, this virtue. But for one who contents himself with the milah simply as a sign of identity […], it is not enough. With Ishmael, it stayed at that. As long as he was in Avraham’s house, all was well; once he left it, once he developed differently, we know very well what his deviations are. […] The Baal HaTurim here points out something remarkable. There are four occurrences of the word vekarat, “and you shall call” […]. So, four times we find the word vekarat in the whole of Scripture. Where?
The first is “vekarat shemo Yishmael,” “you shall call his name Ishmael.” You know that we have noted there were three people whose names were given before they were born, before they came into the world. Who are these three people? And a fourth — Ishmael, whom we have just seen, but he is mentioned last in the midrash. First there is Shlomo — sorry, first there is Yitzchak, who was named before he came into the world. There is Shlomo, and there is Yoshiyahu. And why were these three singled out? Because all three evidently marked a stage in the history of Israel. Yitzchak, through his sacrifice — olah temimah, a perfect burnt-offering — consecrated the place of the Holy of Holies. King Shlomo gave that place its full expression: he built the Temple, saying it would be “a house of prayer for all peoples.” But he already knew, as he built the Temple, that this Temple would be destroyed. What did Yoshiyahu do? Yoshiyahu dug the underground passage that would shelter, at the time of the destruction of the Temple, the Holy Ark, Aharon’s staff, the flask of manna and the anointing oil, which did not reappear afterward. But our Sages add that Ishmael too wants to benefit from this.
What did they mean to say? An important message. If the people of Israel begins to seek its identity only in a pseudo-milah, in a pseudo-marriage that does not conform — why “kedat Moshe ve-Yisrael,” according to the law of Moshe and Israel? We’ll have the milah done by a surgeon — why? Why always a mohel? Why? We’ll have a surgical operation if need be. — Beware: in that case, the identity you are putting forward is of the same nature as Ishmael’s. And then he can say: I am an heir on the same footing as you are. I am an heir to the land, an heir to the inheritance of Israel. Now, we have seen that this inheritance has two titles: morashah, which is the land, and morashah, “kehillat Yaakov,” which is the Torah. And so Ishmael’s relentless struggle against Israel will take on the character of a religious war rather than a national war.
I will stop here to leave you time for questions. — I have a few small questions, if that’s possible. Can you hear me? — Yes. — The first question I wanted to ask you: when you say that Hagar was a shifchah (maidservant) at the level of her desires, at the level of […] — at what level, in fact, was she a shifchah? — She was Pharaoh’s daughter. — Yes, but she was Avraham’s wife. — She became… she accepted the role of shifchah in Avraham’s house. Afterward she was raised to the role of wife. Afterward, yes, Sarah placed her trust in her; she said: I will be built up through her, from her. — So in fact she did not rise; she remained at that level, she did not…
— Absolutely. — There is also a question: you spoke of the milah, which has two meanings, so it is the milah that leads, in the end, to pere adam. But when we look at Judaism, there are still a good number of our coreligionists — without wanting to speak lashon hara — who perform this act in a somewhat automatic, mechanical way, and who do not even grasp its meaning. So how is it that the Jews do not become pere adam while the Muslims do, given that there are Jews too who give it no meaning? What is the difference? — The difference is very simple: when Ishmael performs the milah, he has exhausted all its meaning in it. It is over and done. Take someone who performs a mitzvah and considers: but I have studied, I have given tzedakah, I have done, I have done. — No! You were performing the milah, and you are still in the midst of performing it. When we study Torah, we are in the process of studying; when we are keeping Shabbat, that does not mean we have already done it completely — we are in the midst of it. That is why Yitzchak does not laugh in the present: Yitzchak will laugh in the future. […] He will laugh: “Az yimalei sechok pinu ulshonenu rinah… beshuv Hashem et shivat Tzion” — when G-d brings back the returnees of Zion, then our mouth will be filled with laughter. So it is in being in the process of doing that the whole spirit of the thing lies.
— So the Jew is in fact alive in his development, and the Muslim is dead in his development: he is simply there scoring points, but he has not finished. Within that framework, I have trouble connecting this with what you always tell us about the good coexistence in Morocco in the old days, in your youth, with the Muslims. Given the framework of the pere adam we are speaking of now, how was it in fact possible that there was a period of coexistence that I would call peaceful, harmonious? — Yes, but it was a coexistence, a coexistence all the same, which remained — I remember, I said it earlier — we were dhimmis, we were…
What Ishmael has is that he respects the person who devotes himself to a faith, who practices his faith — but under his protection. He is respectful of the other’s religion, but only as long as the other is in the state of dhimmi, that is, of a protected person. He can never claim equal rights — no, that is not possible. That’s how it is. And it is a fact that Ishmael — “mishtachavim la’avak ragleihem.” What is “mishtachavim la’avak ragleihem”? They bow down to the dust of their feet: wherever they walk, wherever they go, they impose their law, their sharia, their way of practicing. That is what it is. And they are conquerors. Pere — the word says it: there are no limits for them, there are no borders; everything is a desert, the world is a desert, and he wants to conquer it for his part. It is not I who say it; it is the text.
Thank you very much. Until next week — may we hear good news, and may all go well in Israel. — Thank you, until next week, goodbye. — To all of you.
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