Although parashat Toldot opens with Isaac’s marriage to Rebekah and his subsequent pleading with Gd to bless her with children, soon thereafter (Genesis 26:18) there is an unremarkable insertion of the story of Isaac re-digging the wells his father Abraham dug, the ones the Philistines “stopped up” after Abraham’s death and ultimately naming them the same names Abraham had previously given them.
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On the surface, well-digging was a prized desert skill, recognized and appreciated by everyone around. A person who could find water was honored by neighbors and kings alike. Wells meant larger herds and greater wealth. They also meant safety, standing, and the freedom to move across the land. No wonder the Philistines envied Isaac, and no wonder Abimelech eventually came seeking a treaty.
But a well offers something deeper than the surface. Lakes and oceans are open to everyone and easy to see, yet they cannot quench one’s thirst or sustain a herd. Well water has been filtered through layers of earth, and what emerges is clean and life-giving. That is the metaphor Isaac embodies.
Abraham was the great listener, welcoming strangers and negotiating with his neighbors. Isaac took that skill and filtered it. When the herdsmen quarreled over Esek and Sitnah (26:20-21), Isaac did not fight. He moved on and dug again, until he reached Rehovot, “for now Gd has made room for us” (26:22). Isaac was a quiet leader, a man of few words, some would even say an introvert, with a great capacity to hear other people’s voices and distill them toward common understanding. The result was a covenant of peace and a well at Be’er Sheva.
I thought of Isaac this week in Washington DC, where Scholar-in-Residence, Rabbi Ingber, shared his wisdom of Torah, and where ten of us from Greater Naples joined 2,500 Jewish leaders from across North America at the 2026 General Assembly. The programs were excellent, but two conversations particularly stood out to me: former Secretaries of State Antony Blinken and Mike Pompeo, and Eliana Johnson, Editor-in-Chief of The Washington Free Beacon, and David Axelrod, CNN political consultant and former Senior Advisor to the President. These were seemingly opposite voices presented at two different sessions, where their conversations were candid and sincere.
Each discussion filtered personal visceral, echo-chamber ideas we all carry, the surface water we drink every day without thinking. In their place we tasted the ideas of smart, experienced, informed, and opinionated people. It was satisfyingly quenching, not because we agreed with everything we heard, but because the water was clean.
This conversation does not end in Washington. The Jewish Federation through our Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) will be participating in an interfaith dialogue and community-gathering process led by Resetting the Table (RTT), recently named a 2026 Breakthrough Fund grantee by New Pluralists, one of seven organizations working to bridge divides. RTT is bringing its Courageous Neighbors Initiative to Southwest Florida, building a network of unlikely allies across class and ideology to act on shared concerns, from hurricane recovery to economic strain to rapid change, alongside regional partners including Maroon House and the Center for Christian Thought & Ethics. Like Isaac and Abimelech, neighbors who once quarreled over water discover what they can build together.
We will also turn that work inward. The Federation will partner with RTT to bring its skill and experience in facilitating opposing views within the Jewish community to our own Greater Naples community, helping us grow together as we address both geopolitical and local topics on which we differ. The goal is not uniformity. It is a deeper source, a well of trust and mutual understanding that all of us can draw from, even when we see the world differently.
Isaac reminds us that the skill we inherit is not only digging but listening. This Shabbat, perhaps each of us can dig one proverbial well: listen to the other side, not necessarily to accept it, but to ask why we believe what we believe, what shapes what we claim to know, and where our “news” comes from. The deepest water is rarely on the surface but agreeing to disagree and listening to one another when we do disagree filters out the hate and animosity… because we are Stronger Together.
Shabbat Shalom,
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