Taking a stand, by not taking a stand

Sometimes, you have to be willing to take a stand, even if your goal is just to keep standing.

I don’t remember what it was that Barak had done that had so angered our sadistic first sergeant, but I have a vivid memory of the dressing down he was receiving, in front of the whole company. It was Friday afternoon, we were stuck on base for Shabbat in the middle of advanced tank crew training (Tzamap) and Barak was enduring a dressing down the likes of which would have caused most men to wilt. But, incredibly, he just stood there taking it, with a smile on his face. 

Realizing his screaming was not having the desired effect, the sergeant ordered Barak to run and get the 05 machine gun off of his tank. Moments later, he made Barak lift it over his head and begin to run. Now, the 05 is an enormously heavy gun, and running with it is extremely difficult; running with it held high over your head is next to impossible. But Barak would not break.

Shabbat was coming and I guess he realized they could not run him past sunset and he was determined to hang on. Incredibly, as they ran him around the tanks again and again, he never let the smile leave his face. Eventually, the sergeant realized he had lost the gambit and a different commander came out, maybe 20 minutes before Shabbat, and dismissed all of us, including Barak. 

We all made it back to our barracks where Barak collapsed on his bunk; he spent the rest of Shabbat recovering. (In the IDF there are no army maneuvers on Shabbat.) 

But he had taken a stand, by not making a stand.

All of which leaves us wondering about the wisdom of Yitzchak’s behavior in one of the more challenging series of events in his life, found in this week’s portion of Toldot.

There is, once again, a famine in the land of Canaan, and Yitzchak journeys to the coastal region of Gerar (probably today’s Gaza strip area), to king Avimelech (likely a Philistine title such as Pharaoh in Egypt and was not the actual name of this ruler).

Although the natural thing to do in a severe famine would have been to follow in his father Avraham’s footsteps and head south towards Egypt, G-d tells him not to go to Egypt (Bereishit 26:2-3), so he stays in Gerar.