Great men sometimes let their successes get to their head. They begin to think of themselves as superior beings. As beings who have no business mingling with ordinary people.
Avraham and Yitzchak evinced the exact opposite attitude. After passing the greatest test man had ever faced, Avraham “returned to his young men…and they went together to Be’er Sheva” (Genesis 22:19). Writes Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch:
“In all other circles of humanity, after such a soaring into the proximity of G-d, after such elevation above everything earthly, an Abraham and an Isaac would have been so full of ‘I, myself,’ or of the ‘Divine,’ that they would have been lost for ordinary earthly life, and for ‘ordinary’ human beings.” They would have “look[ed] down on other people as ‘common mortals,’ and avoid[ed] contact with them.”
But Avraham and Yitzchak were truly great men. “Just after they had achieved the very loftiest deed that could be made on earth, they return to the attendants they had left at the foot of Moriah and go yachdav with them, feel themselves no whit higher than anybody else…as if they had done nothing special at all.”
For to “the true son of Abraham, everybody is equally respected in their vocation; he finds no difference between himself and the lowest hewer of wood or servant.”
Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888) - head of the Jewish community in Frankfurt, Germany for over 35 years - was a prolific writer whose ideas, passion, and brilliance helped save German Jewry from the onslaught of modernity.
Elliot Resnick, PhD, is the author/editor of 10 books, including “The Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch Dictionary.”