GEN1136 With ten trials was Abraham our Father proved, and he stood firm in them all; which informs [us] how great was the love of Abraham our Father [for God]. Pirkei Avot V:4  In the previous mishnah, our first Patriarch is introduced as Abraham, and at it conclusion he is “Abraham our father.” Abraham achieved this title by a lifetime of virtue and righteousness; he did not have it at the beginning of his career. But since the previous mishnah established his title of distinction, this mishnah calls him so throughout.   As psychoanalysis has learned, a father is of far-reaching importance to a son. Not only is he a first teacher, whom the boy generally admires and seeks to emulate. Far beyond this, the very image of his father – his perception, he way of being in the world, his way of meeting and understanding life – all flows into the son and becomes an indelible part of his psyche. Paradoxically, psychoanalysis itself often assumes that the son must free himself from this father image’s authority over him – perhaps because practitioners and patients have largely absorbed pain and conflict from unacceptable parents Hand-in-hand with this thesis generally goes a blanket denunciation and rejection of ancestral religion. Thus, if we read Freud’s biographies with care, we can detect considerable unconscious conflict about his father, and by extension, about the Jewish people, which is not unrelated to his aberrant, wholly unscientific Moses and Monotheism.   Scripture records instances enough where idolatrous Hebrew kings scorned the ways of pious fathers, and vice versa. But where father and son were sound in religious knowledge and character, there was no such conflict or upheaval. Thus, on their way to bind Isaac and offer him up as a sacrifice, the Writ states twice of Abraham and him that “they went both of them together,” [this verse, Genesis 22:6] in unison, toward worship of the Creator. We read, “These are the generations of Isaac, Abraham’s son: Abraham begot Isaac (or, was the father of Isaac)”; the Midrash interprets the second part –apparently superfluous – to mean that Isaac utterly resembled Abraham. Genesis 25:19. Midrash Tanhuma, Tol’doth 6; ed. Buber, Vayyishlach 25; Aggadath B’reshit xxxvii; Yalkut Machiri, Psalms §61 More than physical resemblance is connoted: Zohar states, “Now that Abraham was dead, his image remained in Isaac, and whoever saw Isaac said, This is Abraham!” Zohar I 135a  In piety, the character of the son became a continuation of the father’s.   Where the father is truly, soundly religious, without inner conflict or contradiction, his image becomes the core of the son’s piety. In this vein, the Sages teach that under the ceaseless seductive efforts of Potiphar’s wife, Joseph the servant was about go yield to temptation at last, when he suddenly beheld the image of his father, and he maintained his resistance thereafter.  Talmud, Sotah 36b; Jerusalem Talmud Horayoth ii 5; Midrash Rabbah, Genesis lxxxvii 7; xc 20; Tanhuma, Vayyeshev 9; Midrash Shmuel v; Pirke d’R. Eli’ezer xxxix; Yalkut Machiri, Proverbs §29,3.   Freud taught that our perception of God is “no more than a father-image,” to be discarded as a neurotic aberration. Judaism teaches that the father-image forms the prefiguration and configuration of the Supreme Being that has existence beyond all existence, that a person later knows as God. Hence we read in the Midrash: When the Holy, Blessed one [first] revealed Himself to Moses [at the scene of the burning bush in the wilderness] Moses was a tyro, utterly inexperienced in prophecy” [as of little power, hence of little significance]. What did He do? He revealed Himself with the voice of Moses’ father.   Happily, Moses thought, “My father is alive! He has come from Egypt!” and he responded, “Here am I. What does my father wish?” Said the Holy One, “I am not your father; I am the God of your father. I have manifested Myself gently to you, that you should not be frightened.” Midrash Rabbah, Exodus iii 1; xlv 5; Yalkut Machiri, Proverbs 25; Tanhuma, Sh’moth 19; ed. Buber, 16 (see Exodus 3:4,6)   Moses stood, unknowing, at a turning point in his life, when he would learn to receive the word of God, more directly than any other human being or since. He first heard it as the voice of his father.   These are the dimensions of meaning that traditional Judaism finds in the concept of father. Hence in the traditional Jewish family the roles of father and son fit together as in the join of a master mechanic; The father is bidden to provide his child with a thorough knowledge of the the son is obliged to respect and honor his parent; and when he attains maturity and can appreciate his forefather’s worth and achievements, he is to say, “When shall my deeds equal theirs?” Deuteronomy 6:7: “you shall teach them [the words of Torah] diligently to your children.” Exodus 20:12; Leviticus 19:3. Seder Eliyahu Rabbah xxv (standard eds.).  In profound awareness of the meaning of “father,” our tradition bestows the title above all on Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.   Though we have never known them personally, their influence permeates the continuing generations of Jewry. Starting from Abraham, as each father rears his son along the royal road of the Hebrew faith, his image is absorbed into t he psyche of the son, to become part of the very fibre of the son’s being: all his values, the fruits of the father’s maturing experiences, reflections, and hard-won inner certainty become the son’s own. In the next generation the son becomes the father, and the process continues.   Therefore, after the Almighty identified Himself to Moses at the burning bush as “the God of your father,” He added, “the God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob.” No matter how removed in time and space Moses was from these ancestors, he yet knew of them in the depths of his being.   We study the lives of these Fathers, in Bible, Talmud and Midrash, over and over, trying to understand their trials and achievements, that we may the better emulate them, if only in some small degree. In our daily prayers we begin the central sh’moneh esreh with the benediction, “Blessed art Thou, our God and God of our fathers, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, and God of Jacob …” For as we remind our Maker in the preliminary morning prayers, “we are They people, the children of Thy covenant, the children of Abraham Thy loving Friend … the descendants of Isaac his only son … the community of Jacob They firstborn …” Before heaven we affirm them as our fathers, our Patriarchs, the archetypes of the Jewish soul.   Do we inherit something of their qualities through genes and chromosomes, biologically? Or through an unbroken continuity of family environment? Of this we are certain; the traits of these Fathers, their values and norms quicken our spirit and inform our striving. “A righteous man walks in his integrity – fortunate are his children after him.” Proverbs 20:7 Sometimes we see Jews far removed from traditional Jewish life and values, suddenly espousing a Jewish cause with fervor and enthusiasm. Such were the many young men, completely dissociated from any formal, overt Jewish interest, who joined the Israeli army in the war of liberation and made the supreme sacrifice to give their people back their historic homeland. Their background, their upbringing, can hardly explain why they should have suddenly risen to the defense of their people. When the moment called, through a higher, transpersonal self, the heritage of the Patriarchs moved them. In our own midst, ever so often a young man or woman raised in a totally non-Jewish home—with never a whisper of Torah or traditional, ancestral observance to warm it – turns to our age-old faith, for a lifetime of loyalty. They too are children of Abraham; because their spirits were attuned, some chords of the music of faith that their primordial ancestor played in his lifetime could arouse a sympathetic vibration, a Divine melody in their souls. For yet in Haran did Abraham know how to “make souls,” [Genesis 12:5] drawing them near to their Father in Heaven.  SINAI3 19-22