By Jacob Berkson
Bio: Jacob is a bad Jew or at least wants to be such. He has a background in full dress analytic philosophy and is currently studying law. He wants to see a world without borders.
The wells of Abraham and Isaac
Isaac and Abraham both spend their days wandering a wilderness in a land that had been promised to them but was not yet theirs. They both have and resolve, albeit differently, a dispute with the local king Abimelech over the ownership of, or at least access to, wells that they have dug.
Abraham, it would appear, dug a number of wells in the Negev desert. He also appears to have asserted some sort of title over them. We know this because Abraham complains that Abimelech’s followers have violently seized one of the wells. From this we learn 2 things: that Abraham did not give up the well without a fight and that the locals are not very happy about a stranger digging wells in their land. You suspect that the latter might have something to do with this interloper’s claim that the territory had been promised to him by the only true God.
Abraham and Abimelech have already sealed some sort of peace treaty that restores the well to Abraham’s control in return for sheep and oxen when Abraham sets aside 7 ewe-lambs. This surprises Abimelech, but those baby sheep are the price he is prepared to pay for explicit acknowledgement that he dug the well.
Isaac will have none of it. He claims no rights to stay in the land or title to any well. If there is space for him, he will stay. If not, he will move on. This radically non-proprietorial attitude is rewarded:
And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not. And he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said: ‘For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land (Bereshit 26:22 ).
Abimelech even shows up to sue for peace. Isaac neither offers nor demands anything in return. He does provide the king with a feast, but this seems to be an expression of hospitality, not part of any peace treaty.
Where does that leave us? Pirkei Avot 5:13 tell us that:
There are four character types among people. One who says, ‘What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours’ is of average character, and some say, this is the character of Sodom. [One who says] ‘What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine’ is unlearned (lit., [of] the people of the land). [One who says] ‘What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is yours’ is pious. [One who says] ‘What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is mine’ is wicked.
Abraham’s bargaining for his well is told between the destruction of Sodom and the sacrifice of his son. It all takes place in Parashat Vayeira, a parsha deeply concerned with hospitality. Let’s take the mishna seriously. Sodom is destroyed because the men of Sodom attacked Abraham’s brother Lot’s house, in an attempt to rape Lot’s guests. Lot, accepting his duty of hospitality, pleads with the men of Sodom not to act wickedly. He offers up his virgin daughters instead. This enrages the locals:
And they said: ‘This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs play the judge; now will we deal worse with thee, than with them’ (Bereshit 19:9).
The Sodomites will let Lot stay in the city, but they will not allow him to practice hospitality. Worse yet, when Lot accuses their society of immorality both Lot and his guests must be destroyed. The Sodomites are the ultimate neoliberals: what’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours. You don’t owe nothing to no one. It is an immorality that can only be upheld through violence.
It’s clear that we should not be wicked and claim everything for ourselves, nor can we be expected to be pious and renounce all title to possessions. What about being the simpleton? It involves a kind of sharing. If what’s mine is yours but what’s yours is mine, then everything belongs to everyone. But even this position remains problematic. The problem is in the logic of property. Not everything can be owned.
Abraham and Lot both follow the logic of property. They were both prepared to give freely even to the level of sacrificing their children for the benefit of others. But what is so grotesque about their actions is that their children are not theirs to give away.
What of poor Isaac? Isaac appears to have acquired a profound distrust of ownership from his ordeal. In a way, this is a profound distrust of the Abrahamic project. He will not contend with anyone for land or water. He is the only one of the patriarchs never to leave the land, yet he seems profoundly uninterested in it. He has no quarrel with his brother. His daughters-in-law are a source of bitterness to him, but he is the only biblical character who ‘sports with’ his wife (Bereshit 26:8).
The cave at Machpelah
The whole of chapter 23, bar the first 2 verses, is given over to the description of the bad faith negotiations that Abraham enters into, ostensibly for a cave in which to bury his dead, but in reality, for a piece of the land, a field and all the trees that are in it. Not only are the negotiations full of subtle evasions, a sure sign that each party is aware that land is inalienable and that what they are doing is wrong, but they take up 18 verses, whereas the death of Sarah and Abraham’s grief get just two. The narrator wants us to know that Abraham has his priorities all wrong.
Land cannot be bought and sold because no one has title to it. It is the space of our life. Abraham, shattered by being made to take a knife to his son’s throat and the consequent rejection by his wife (she dies on being given the news), gives up on a project that he never fully understood. The promise of the land is not the promise of registered title. It cannot be fulfilled through purchase, let alone through dispossession and displacement. The horror of what is unfolding in the land right now is precisely what is wrong with Abraham’s acceptance of the logic of property.
The promise is unfulfilled and unfulfillable. There is no way of apportioning resources as mine and yours. Yet, just as the ram in the thorn bush does not solve Abraham’s problem, we can’t all dig in the valley and strike living water. We should leave behind Sodom and the logic of property, but neither radical hospitality nor a rejection of possession takes us out of the wilderness.
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[1] Bereshit is the first of the five books of Moses. ‘Bereshit’ is the first word of the Torah, usually translated as ‘in the beginning’. But interestingly, according to Rashi – in my view the greatest Biblical commentator of all time who made his daughters Rabbis in the 11th Century – it is in a form that marks possession, so ‘in the beginning of’. The problem is that the next word ‘Bara’ is a verb: ‘created’. So, there is no simple reading of Bereshit 1:1.
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