(This is a small part of a class given-over on the parsha every week by my Rebbe and my teacher, Rav Mordechai Elon).
The Maharal of Prague, on Pirkei Avot, says that all five chapters of the Tractate correspond to the Five Books of the Torah (the sixth chapter of Avot is not an original, organic part of the Tractate). The first chapter that discusses the passing-down of Torah through the generations corresponds to Genesis. The second Mishna in that chapter is: "Shimon the Tzaddik would say: The world stands on three things; Torah, Avodah (service and sacrifices), and acts of kindness." These three things that the world stands on, without which, according to R. Ovadia from Bartenura, the world would have no basis for its existence, are Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov. Avraham introduced and perfected the midah (quality) of Chesed, of kindness, in the world. How does Avraham serve God? Through connecting to people by planting the "eshel" in Beer-Sheva and calling out God's name (the "eshel," according to different Midrashim, is a place where Avraham used to receive guests and travellers, and provide them with food, rest, etc., and tell them about God). Avraham is exactly the opposite of receiving the Torah.
At Har Sinai, Moshe goes up the mountain, and everyone else stays at the bottom, not coming near. Then everything is hidden in a cloud. Moshe receives something that comes down from Heaven and gives it to the people. Avraham, on the other hand, is maybe the only Jew who has no father, no teacher, to show him what God gave to man. Avraham doesn't reveal what is in heaven to what's down on earth - Avraham shows that what is down on earth is truly, deeply connected to what is in Heaven.
The Midrash says that Avraham's teachers were his own two kidneys. Avraham reveals to the world that the soul of man is, in its essence, good and full of kindness. The Netziv of Voloshin, in his introduction to Genesis, calls it "being yashar (straight)." The simple straightness of moral goodness, of kindness. Avraham can't believe that there could even be a city in the world where there aren't at least SOME people who have simple human goodness!
Yitzchak, on the other hand, is the opposite. If kindness, chesed, is what connects me to people, Yitzchak shows to the world how to serve God through seperating from people and from the world, and seeing nothing but God. Avodah is the korbanot (sacrifices), and Yitzchak is the ultimate sacrifice. He gives up everything in the world, even his life, to sacrifice to God. He teaches us the essence of what korbanot are, in that really, it should be US on the altar, and not an animal. Avraham and Yitzchak are the only ones who see God on the mountain at the Akeidah. Then they must separate from the boys who stay with the donkeys (Chamor, the word for "donkey," equals chomriut, "physicality").
But, maybe the most unbelievable thing is what happens AFTER the Akeidah. Avraham comes down alone. Yitzchak can't come down to be with the youths; after something like the Akeidah, he couldn't come back down into the world. But Avraham - after being in the Akeidah - was able to come down again and go with the youths to the extent that the Torah says, "And they arose and they went together," just like Avraham and Yitzchak were able to walk together on the way to the Akeidah.
So where did Yitzchak go? Chazal call it, "going to the Yeshivot of Shem and Ever." But the next time we see Yitzchak is where? Unbelievable - at Be'er Lechai Roi - with Yishmael (who, according to the Midrash, was one of the "youths")!!! He was bringing Yishmael back to Avraham, helping him do teshuvah. Yitzchak, through his own way of serving God, also needs to be able to bring God into the world.
Ya'akov is Torah, truth, emet… As the verse says, "Give truth to Yaakov." When we were little, we knew how to draw on paper in two dimensions - length and width. But as we got older, we began to see how a third dimension is built from out of the first two - depth. That depth of reality, of truth in the world, is Torah, is Ya'akov's midah. It is a combination of being in-the-world and of being removed from it, in order to bring Godliness into it, which is the ultimate truth.
The Maharal brings down that up until Avraham, the world had been sinning through the three lowest forms: idol worship, immoral behavior and murder, like the generation of the Flood. These are the antithesis of what Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya'akov are trying to bring into the world. Murder is the antithesis of kindness; idol worship is the antithesis of Avodah, of holy service of God; and incest, misdirected sexuality, is the antithesis of Torah. The essence of Torah is that man can connect to something spiritual, some kind of higher truth, and misdirected sexuality is man's sinking into his basest, most material and physical desires. Avraham, in this week's parsha, marks the beginning of tikkun, the beginning of the three things on which the world can stand.
Rav Yehoshua showed me a beautiful S'fat Emet this week, in which he asked the question: who was Avraham that God should call him? How is it that he comes in out of the blue, with no record of past deeds? The S'fat Emet brings down an amazing Zohar that Avraham's merit is "Lech Lecha" itself. God is always calling out "Lech Lecha" to every person at every time, but only Avraham chose to hear it. May we all have the courage and the strength to listen to God calling from inside of us and answer "Hineni, Here I Am," and start building the world. Shabbat Shalom.