The Crucial Role of our Patriarchs & Matriarchs

Rabbi Israel Chait

Rabbi Reuven Mann zt”l  

Rabbi Morton Moskowitz zt”l

Written by a student

Paraphrasing Rabbi Israel Chait, unlike other philosophers and philosophies, God’s Torah does not instruct man with ideas alone: God included stories of uniquely intelligent personalities—the patriarchs and matriarchs—how they intelligently managed all aspects of their lives: determining truth and morality, education, religion, the mundane, family, justice, politics and all areas from troubles to success. Torah provides these models of intelligent and healthy personalities, as theoretical advice alone doesn’t allow one to identify with a human model. Identification provides the much needed emotional support to help man better appreciate how certain decisions helped others succeed practically, saved them from evil and earned them God’s help. Appreciating examples of Torah’s models enjoying better lives and God’s providence, provides the Torah reader with more formidable and convincing support and motivation to choose and live realistically and successfully. 

Rabbi Moskowitz said as follows:

Now, if the purpose of the commands is just to keep Torah, what difference is it if we are Israelites or another nation? Why must Torah observers be descendants of the 12 tribes? Why can’t Torah observers be any people who keep Torah? We also must ask what or who are the patriarchs? The patriarchs and matriarchs did not have Revelation at Sinai and therefore they did not keep the commandments (mitzvos). They perfected their souls by coming in line with God’s will without commandments. They had that ability to relate to God directly through their minds. Most people cannot do this and require a system (Torah) to attain perfection. Torah’s purpose is not merely commandments, but to help mankind attain the level of the patriarchs. Thus, Israel’s mission must always be attached to the patriarchs to show that the life of the patriarchs embodies the essence of the commands. If we lose the attachment to the patriarchs, that would separate the patriarchs from the commandments, and people will just keep the commandments as an end themselves, without using them as a means of attaining the perfection of the patriarchs.

The Torah system includes the patriarchs to impress this idea that perfection is not only the commandments, as the patriarchs had no commandments or halacha. Now, if halacha [and commandments] were the essence, the patriarchs didn’t have the essence! Our nation must always connect to the patriarchs to represent that idea. The patriarchs surpassed our perfection, probably greater than you could ever reach, and they did so without halacha. Why are gentiles prohibited to observe laws outside of civil laws? It is due to our mission. If gentiles kept the Torah, it would confuse the world to believe that all that is required is keeping the commandments. But this would forfeit the Jews’ mission, that the essence is perfection of the soul, embodied in the patriarchs. As gentiles are not connected to the patriarchs, only the descendants of the patriarchs can teach this lesson. [Therefore those who represent Torah’s objective—the perfection of the patriarchs—they alone most observe the commandments to teach that the commandments isolated from the patriarchs is not God’s will, and is not human perfection].

Rabbi Reuven Mann's essays frame the patriarchs as living proof that the human mind, unaided by divine command, can independently discover God and ethical perfection. Living roughly 400 years before Sinai, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob each arrived at monotheism through their own intellectual inquiry rather than inherited tradition, which is why the liturgy names each one separately and why each successive patriarch added new understanding (reflected in their increasing frequency of prayer). Rabbi Mann emphasized that Judaism, unlike most religions, has no single founder or concept of sainthood — the patriarchs' preserved fallibility keeps ultimate devotion focused on God rather than on human figures — and that Abraham's central mission, aligned with Maimonides' view, was uprooting idolatry and establishing rational monotheism in its place. Functioning as prophets, teachers, and parents at once, the patriarchs and matriarchs each contributed a distinct trait to the nation's moral character (Abraham and Sarah kindness, Isaac and Rivka disciplined strength, Jacob's family their integration), forming a cumulative moral architecture rather than repeated lessons — which is ultimately why Genesis opens with their biographies before any law is given, establishing them as models of the Torah's core claim that reason alone can lead man to truth.