The open, closed, open/closed state

Kabbalah teaches, that the three Forefathers, were the ultimate paradigms “archetypes” of how to live life; but as in everything God does (for in order to truly integrate, not simply meditate, cogitate and fantasize information, it must come in bite-size digestible portions) they are, three steps, from beginning to completion.

Abraham represented the way we are born, with hearts wide open, loving everyone, as the saying “if you’re not a liberal, by the time you’re twenty you have no heart (and if you’re not a conservative by the time you’re thirty you have no head.”)

Abraham really epitomized unconditional love, opening a free hotel for wayfarers, giving his time money and soul to assisting, teaching – what we would call the paradigm of virtue.

Now Isaac was a different kind of virtue, he was what can be called the stern, self-disciplined, A type personality, always doing good, but never accepting evil – harsh, both inwardly and outwardly.

Now, though it hopefully and obviously seems that Abraham is the kinder of the two, things are not that simple, for as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Did not Abraham have Yishmoel, whose kindness was selfish; whose narcissism was legendry, who as the Bible predicts “will rob from all and all will rob from him in return;” For love being an emotion – unchecked, it easily gets corrupted.

And hence flipping to Isaac’s paradigm of stern self-discipline, it also has its drawback – for did not Eisav, a hunter who as the Bible teaches, would make a living through his sword, the paradigm of the person who has issues – the harsh A type personality, who cannot see anything but his version of the truth and is ready to kill for it, come from him?!

So both Abraham and Isaac (though they themselves were perfect) their styles lacked the counterbalancing approach.

Without going too deep into this very profound point, upon which thousands of Kabbalistic texts are written, it boils down to, Abraham is consumed by love, hence is open to all – Isaac is consumed by fear of sin, hence is effectively harsh, both inwardly and outwardly.

But then along comes Jacob and somehow synthesizes these two approaches – Jacob as the Bible teaches, “A simple guy, who studied Torah” – now what’s the benefit to that? – wouldn’t it be better to passionately love, or passionately have high standards?

The answer is of course not (for the reasons mentioned above.)

In fact, the Torah is the balanced approach – it looks at what is the most balanced, fair, as well as compassionate approach in every given situation.

It’s easy to allow our emotions to grab hold of our heads; mix our hearts with our egos and declare ourselves the holders of truth – but the truth is never black or white, it’s always shades of grey!

Hence Jacob demonstrates a normal life, a life of highs and lows, a life of successes and difficulties, a life in which based on God’s wisdom, he knows when to be loving and knows when to be tuff.