The Story of the Akedah

Janet Hadda

Once upon a time, in the old country, there was a magid, an itinerant preacher, who went from shtetl to shtetl making his living with his spellbinding rhetoric.  This magid was unusual, though, in that he only had one drash: the story of Korakh.  A rebel against Moses and Aaron’s authority, Korakh was punished by God when the earth split and literally swallowed him up, together with his followers.  Over and over again, the magid told this story, expounding on the need to respect authority.  As you might imagine, the magid’s fans eventually started to get bored.  So, they tried to distract him and they encouraged him to find fresh material.  All to no avail.  One day, they, like Korakh, rebelled, demanding that the magid think of something new to say.  The magid agreed to present a drash on another subject.  He worked and worked and was finally ready to deliver his talk.  Filled with anxiety, he took out a handkerchief to wipe his sweating brow.   But his hand shook and the handkerchief fell onto the muddy ground.  In rage and frustration, he swore at the handkerchief: Ayngezunken zolstu vern! [May you sink into the earth!]  Then he paused for a moment, brightened up, and continued: Azoy vi es handlt zikh vegn ayngezunken vern, lomikh redn vegn koyrekhn [As long as I’m talking about sinking into the earth, let me tell you about Korakh].

It’s the second day of Rosh Hashana.  Once again we daven, mostly the same as yesterday.  Again we think about the awesome days that comprise this time of year.  Again we read about the Akeyda.  And again, Janet Hadda will talk to you about the emotional side of yontev. As I stand before you today, I hope I won’t remind you of that magid.

So why do we read the story of the Akeyda?  The drama of Avrom and God jumps out as central: God tests Avrom in perhaps the most extreme manner possible:  Kill your son to prove that you love me, God demands.  And Avrom sets out to comply.

Surely, there can be no more powerful lesson for us in this monumental trial.  We must, we learn, face God’s will and God’s commands with total and unquestioning obedience.  From this perspective, Tshuva is about confirming our commitment.  Each year, we must return because, inevitably, we have erred and transgressed.   Tshuva is always necessary because we are imperfect.

But the Akeyda also teaches that God will provide, that there is a divine presence watching, considering, deciding, and even helping out, whether with a ram or with rakhmones.  As we read today’s Torah portion, we recall that God decided the fates of both Avrom and Yitskhok during the dramatic events of the Akeyda.  Security flows from accepting the order of God’s universe.

Avrom, as the parent and the one who knows the score, is usually taken as the subject of the story.  He is certainly easier to consider than Yitskhok, the Akeyda’s unprotesting object.   Avrom grabs our attention because of his terrible dilemma.  And because he acts: he gets on with dong what God commands him to do.  He is fully aware of his conflicting responsibilities and of his perceived lack of choice.  In this reading, Yitskhok’s presence merely allows Avrom to fulfill his mission; Yitskhok is neither the moral nor the spiritual center of the drama.

Avrom’s giant stature notwithstanding, I can’t help thinking of Yitskhok as the central figure in this demonstration.  How would it feel to be taken by a silent father on a puzzling journey into unknown territory?  How would it feel for Yitskhok to recall that this father had already sent one son into the wilderness, where, short of the miracle that we read about yesterday, he would certainly have died?  We might agree with Kierkegaard that Avrom made the leap from the ethical demand that he not murder his son to the religious demand that he be willing to sacrifice this son.  But where does that leave poor Yitskhok?

I put to you that Avrom did, indeed, sacrifice Yitskhok, but not in the way that Richard Friedman has argued in Who Wrote the Bible? Friedman starts with the idea that our current Bible is actually a combination of four documents.   And he draws attention to the fact that, in the E, or Elohim, document, Yitskhok never appears after the Akeyda.  The notion that the sacrifice actually took place is intriguing, especially since our text reads: vayashav Avraham el-naarav va-yakumu vayelkhu yakhdav el ber sheva “Avrom then returned to his servants, and they departed together for Beer-Sheva.”   Where’s Yitskhok?  I put to you, however, that the sacrifice of Yitskhok lies not in his literal death, but in the sort of life he led from the moment of the Akeyda on.  And that life suggests how we might understand today’s reading in the context of the yamim noraim.

Already at the time of the Akeyda, Yitskhok reveals that he may know more than he lets on.  For starters, Biblical scholars have pointed out that the Hebrew words for knife, slaughter and bind that are employed in the story are more appropriate for ordinary murder than for sacrifice.  Ma’akhelet, the knife, is used elsewhere in connection with human dissection and as a parallelism with “sword.”  The verb lishkhot means “to butcher.”  The Hebrew stem ayin kuf daled, from which the Akeyda gets its name, appears nowhere else in Biblical ritual vocabulary.   Yitskhok certainly understood that something untoward was happening on this errand.  Therefore, when he asks about the fire and the wood, and the lack of a sheep, but pointedly omits mention of the knife—or, more likely–cleaver, he evades the looming awareness that this is no sacrifice as usual.    Yitskhok is widely thought of as the passive patriarch, and his behavior during this scene is the prooftext for his subsequent reputation.

Let’s look at Yitskhok’s life post-Akeyda.  We learn that Avrom initiates finding a wife for him from among Avrom’s own family in Ur–Rivke is actually mishpokhe.  She is Yitskhok’s first cousin once removed.  The events transpire during what Robert Alter has termed a betrothal type-scene, complete with travel to a foreign land, a fateful meeting at a well, and the future bride’s hurry to announce the stranger’s arrival at home.  Yitskhok’s own son, Yaakov, for example, meets his beloved Rokhl under these circumstances.  But, in Yitskhok’s case, it is a representative, his father’s servant, rather than Yitskhok himself, who meets the future bride at the well.  Yitskhok appears to be completely uninvolved in the planning and execution of the shidekh expedition.   We learn, too, that Yitskhok is comforted by Rivke after the loss of his mother, Sore.   But at the time of Sore’s death, Yitskhok remains on the sidelines as Avrom buries his wife alone.  Imagine barely escaping murder at the hands of your father, only to lose your mother almost immediately thereafter, as the Torah’s chronology seems to suggest.

Later, when Yitskhok and Rivke find themselves in the midst of Abimelekh and his people in Gerar, Yitskhok fears that he will be killed because the local men will desire Rivke.  Like his father before him, Yitskhok passes off his wife as his sister, in order to protect himself.  Yet, the context of Yitskhok’s deception is different than that of his father, for—unlike Avrom– Yitskhok has not just witnessed the sexual depravities of Sdom.  And Avrom, unlike Yitskhok, did not have the threat of murder as an active memory.  Avrom fears the results of corruption.  Yitskhok fears being snuffed out on a whim.  While in Gerar, Yitskhok must negotiate over wells, as his father had done before him.  Yet, in high contrast to Avrom, Yitskhok flees confrontation, preferring instead to dig in a new spot rather than stand firm in his claim.

Still later, Yitskhok is famously “fooled” by the presence of Yaakov disguised as Eysev.   Even though he recognizes Yaakov’s voice, and even though Eysev, the earthy hunter, is his favorite, Yitskhok does not dare to give credence to his doubts.  He is still the same person who avoided the incriminating question at the Akeyda.   He is blind in that bedside scene, but is he any more blind than he was as a lad, when he could not see a cleaver in his father’s hand?  And is he tone-deaf as well?

Yitskhok’s fate in life is to exist on the margins and with half a heart.    We cannot know whether his behavior is catalyzed by his experience at the sacrificial altar or merely crystallized there after he has already witnessed the murderous banishment that Ishmael and Hoger endured.  But we do know that Yitskhok lives out his days trying not to get killed, trying not to be the object of controversy or conflict, trying to pretend that he is not about to be betrayed at the end of his life as well as at the beginning.

Given his experiences as pawn of both God and people, is it any wonder that Yitskhok eschews the world of spirituality, leadership, and patriarchy in favor of more simple and reliable pleasures, that he favors the undistinguished and rustic Eysev over the ambitious and crafty Yaakov?  At the same time, is it not tragic that this patriarch has been so reduced by his human and superhuman trials that many of us today cannot look to him as a spiritual, ethical, or philosophical guide?

The unfortunate example of Yitskhok has something to teach us as we contemplate renewal and repentance.  What would Yitskhok’s life have been like if he had noticed the cleaver, had mourned his mother, had chosen his own wife, had confronted the men of Gerar, had seen through Yaakov’s ridiculous disguise?  In order to act decisively, he would first have had to acknowledge such troubling feelings as anger, fear, sadness, and disappointment.  But since he did not actively engage in his own emotional existence, he was unable to protect himself and to thrive.

Next Sunday night and Monday, we will recite our sins again and again.  There are many of these to atone for, as you well know, but expressions of anger, fear, disappointment, sadness, and other straightforward emotional reactions are not among them.  Nonetheless, and in contrast to our ritual confessions, many of us chastise ourselves for revealing  — or even having  — these most basic and natural feelings.  Why?  Perhaps we learn shame and abnormal restraint because of early experiences where these expressions were uncomfortable or even intolerable to others.  How often do we hear a parent tell a child not to cry, not to be angry, not to be afraid?  We were all once those children.  And how often do we say such things to our own children because we cannot bear to see them saddened, frustrated, frightened, or disillusioned?

These ten days are awesome and also awful.  How can we not feel terrified during the aseret yemey tshuva?  We are asked to contemplate our deaths and to consider all the ways our death  — and the deaths of those we love  — might occur.  And how can we not feel sadness, disillusionment, anger, and horror as we realize what the last year has brought in terms of carnage and destruction?  And it is not simply the last year: the 20th and 21st centuries have been marked by global violence, unspeakable barbarity, desperate strife, and gross inequalities.  We have been shaped by these world events and we may feel personally scarred by World War II, the Shoah, the Vietnam War, the Intifada, or 9-11.  Although we are inevitably molded by our past, just as Yitskhok was, if we remain at the mercy of past fears, angers, and disappointments, our human capacities are diminished.

Anger unexpressed at its source can lead to sinat khinam, [causeless hatred] and khozek yad [violence]. Unexpressed fear can lead to khakhash and khazav [denying and lying] and honaat rea [wronging our neighbor]. Unexpressed sadness can lead to kashiyut oref [stiff-neckedness] and timhon levav [confusion of mind]. These are the underpinnings for the befuddled, unenlightened behaviors for which we must, and do, atone.

And in every case, the landscape of disclaimed emotion is our thicket.

If the Biblical ram was the external substitute for Yitskhok’s internal sacrifice, then the thicket is the tangle in which Yitskhok’s emotions caught him and held him captive.   Poor Yitskhok was not replaced by the ram; instead, he remained forever ensnared in a thicket of constricted behavior and thought.  Because he was unaware of what he felt, he could not react to his predicaments with vigor and vision.

In today’s Torah reading, the word, hineni, signals Avrom’s presence for God and also his presence for Yitskhok.  Today, and throughout the Holy Days, our sheliekh tsibur begins Musaf by saying hineni…bati la’amod…lefanekha…”Here I am.  I have come to stand before You….”

Hineni means “I am here.”  I take the word to mean as well, “ I am completely present, I can pay attention and feel, I can think clearly and evaluate what I am about to experience.”   Hineni is the opposite of being caught in the thicket.  It is a clear, direct, and simple, although profound, state from which to look inward and outward, in solitude as well as in community.  When we hide in consternation over our natural responses, when we struggle to ward off frightening realizations about our most basic human selves, we cannot be present.

Yes, we must protect ourselves in a world that can be treacherous and frightening.  But if we cut ourselves off from what we feel, we are unable to distinguish between danger and safety, betrayal and loyalty, or hate and love.

We cannot predict what this coming year holds for us.  But if we are mindful of what we are called upon to know, if we dare not to hide, not to feel shame, not to chastise ourselves for our human reactions, we will be prepared to say hineni with an open heart throughout the coming year.  Shana tova umetuka.

Your one wild and precious life

Rabbi Chai Levy

As many of you already know, when you lose a parent or another loved one, everything changes. As I discovered this year, with the death of my father and of so many in this community, you realize how short life really is. It’s not that you didn’t know before that we humans are mortal and that everyone dies, but when you come close to death, when you bury in the earth someone you love, you realize how you did actually assume that they and all of us would always be here, and you realize just how temporary this whole being alive thing is.

And on Rosh Hashana, we say that the book of life is open, and we pray that we are written in it. And we also know, more and more so each year as we grow older, that we won’t always make it into the book of life. We see how fragile life is, and how we have just a little time here. As terrifying as this realization is, the high holidays invite us to face this reality and to allow it to inspire us and move us.

Today we read once again the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, and once again, we’re rattled by the story. Why did God have to test Abraham in such a horrific way? Does the Torah really want us to learn that Abraham passed the test by being willing to sacrifice his own son? His beloved son for whom he waited so many years?

What could we learn from this story if we asked different questions? What if we asked not: how could God demand such a test? And did Abraham do the right thing? But instead we asked: how does this story actually reflect the reality of our lives – the reality that our lives, like Isaac’s, are hanging by a thread, that whether we live or die lies with that same unpredictable Voice that says “take your son” and then says “stop, don’t do it.”? What if we read the Akeda not as a test of faith and submission but as a test of how we respond to that capricious quality of life?

If we read the Akeda this way, it goes from being a story of “what would you do?” to a story of “what do we do?” Fortunately, most of us will not face the kind of test of faith that Abraham faced, and if we did, I doubt many of us would pass the test the way Abraham did. But all of us face the other test of the Akeda: that is, how do we live knowing that we live in that moment where there’s a knife held above us? That moment where we wait for the call from our doctor who will say “malignant” or “benign”? That moment where we’ll survive the accident or we won’t? My dear friend, who was expecting now to be celebrating the birth of their first child but who is instead mourning a stillborn, writes: “The distance between heaven and hell is like a strand of hair.” How do we live with this truth? For me, that is the question of the Akeda.

Immediately following the Akeda, the Torah reports that Sarah dies. It doesn’t say how she dies, but the rabbis fill in the details in a midrash. It was the almost-sacrifice of her son that killed her. Even though Isaac is spared in the end, the very knowledge that he could have been killed is too much for her. As Avivah Zornberg teaches it, the Akeda toppled Sarah’s faith in God’s providence and in the world’s coherence. As with other near misses – like when one person escapes a terrorist attack because they happened to be running late that day, but another doesn’t, or when one survives a heart attack but another doesn’t – Isaac was saved by just a hair’s breadth, and this reality is unbearable for Sarah.

The rabbis were very wise in their understanding of the human experience. Centuries before Elisabeth Kubler-Ross described the five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance), the rabbis characterized, through Sarah’s response to the Akeda, that stage we go through when we say: why bother living when we’re just going to die anyway? Why bother working, caring, doing anything, when life is absurd and random and sometimes even cruel?  Okay, so we have those moments, those moments of responding the way Sarah did, but that’s not the only possible response.

Unlike Sarah, Isaac survives the traumatic experience of almost being killed, but according to a rabbinic midrash, his blindness later in life is the result of the Akeda. According to the rabbis, when Isaac was bound on the altar and Abraham was about to kill him, the heavens opened and the angels saw what was happening and cried. Their tears descended and fell into Isaac’s eyes and caused his blindness. Not only does Isaac lose his vision, but if you pay attention to his character throughout the Torah, it seems that he’s generally shut down after the Akeda.  Unlike the other patriarchs, Abraham and Jacob, Isaac is a passive and fairly minor character. It has even been suggested that the covenantal lineage goes more through the character of Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, than through Isaac himself.

Isaac demonstrates another response to the question of: how do we live our life knowing how very precarious it is. We can shut down, close our eyes, not engage, and let life pass us by because it’s too scary, too much trouble, too difficult. Nowadays, we might not be blinded by angels as a way to cope, but we might escape into television, food, alcohol, work, or just mindlessly going through the motions until something wakes us up.

Abraham offers a different response to the Akeda.  Now you might say, “Sure: he was the abuser not the victim,” but the truth is: Abraham experiences the same erratic God and the same life upheaval as Sarah and Isaac. The difference is he continues on, living fully, facing life’s challenges but staying fully present, as he did ever since God sent him on his Lech-Lecha journey years ago. In the Akeda story alone, Abraham three times responds Hineni, “Here I am” when called upon by God, by Isaac, or by an angel.  He says this word, Hineni, which is the Torah’s way of saying: I’m fully here, conscious, ready to serve, ready to face the truth.  Somehow Abraham is able to hold the contradictions of the Akeda – that he must sacrifice his son and believe in God’s promise for the future. Somehow Abraham is able to live with life’s contradictions that include pain and hope, loss and faith and not give in to despair like Sarah or to avoidance like Isaac. And after the Akeda and the death of Sarah, he continues on, looking to the future, fully engaging in life. He finds a wife for Isaac and he himself remarries and has more children.

In this way, Abraham did pass the test of the Akeda after all, but not just in the way we usually think of it, that is, by proving that he was willing to submit to God’s command. Rather Abraham passed the test of being able to experience the volatility of God and the incoherence of life and death, while keeping his spirit intact, along with his hope for the future and his ability to live life fully. Even with everything he had been through, the Torah says that Abraham was “blessed in everything,” (Gen 24:1) And when he died at the age of 175, the Torah says that he was at a good old age, old and full, b’seyva tova zaken v’saveya (Gen 25:8) – full, complete, sated, content.

Like Sarah, Isaac, and Abraham, we, at some point or another, all get this test in our lives. I know there are some people in our community who are in the middle of it right now. I’ve been through it several times in recent years, in part because I have the “luck” of getting lumps that need to be biopsied. Each time there is the two week or so wait from finding the lump to getting for the result of the biopsy. Fortunately, they’ve all been benign, but until I find that out, I know I’m in that hair’s breadth between heaven and hell; I know I’m on that altar like Isaac, suspended in that frightening moment between will I live or will I die?

And just in case we don’t get the test enough in the course of our lives, every year we have these very days, these high holydays, to remind us. One of the central prayers of Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur is Unetaneh Tokef: “On Rosh Hashana it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed. Who shall live and who shall die?” Why do the High Holydays need to scare us like that? Don’t we face this question enough in normal life? Why is it necessary to face our deaths on these holiest days of the year?

Because each year, we need to wake up from our slumber, to realize how short life is and how precious life is. Because we need to decide now to treasure each moment and to live our lives with the full awareness that life is so fragile. So that we can be like Abraham and say Hineni and be present even with life’s uncertainties. We sound the Shofar to wake us up: people, we don’t have that much time here! This is your life! Live it consciously! Live it fully!

What would we do differently if we lived with the awareness that we don’t have forever? Recently, someone I know who was getting through a life-threatening illness came up to me out of the blue and said: “I want you to know that I love you and you’re an important part of my life.” The person continued, “I know people don’t usually say things like that to each other, but when you’ve had a near-death experience like I’ve had, you tell people how you feel about them and you don’t hold back.”  Here’s a person who has been seriously tested by life but who came through like Abraham, saying Hineni, Here I am. This is how life’s unpredictability, which we emphasize on these days of awe, can motivate us to say and do the things that we might otherwise hold back.

When we know we don’t have much time left, we say the things now that need to be said. I’ll never forget one of the last things my father ever said to me. On the last day before he was moved into the intensive care unit where he would be intubated and unable to speak again, he called me up and said: “I owe you a big apology. I’m sorry. . . I wasn’t able to properly acknowledge your birthday.” “Dad, it’s ok,” I said, with tears welling up, “you were so sick in the hospital, I didn’t expect you to do anything for my birthday.” And I really hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t sent a card or anything. After all, he was critically ill with leukemia. Nevertheless, the apology meant the world to me. See, my dad had not been the kind of man who would apologize for things. I don’t recall him saying “I’m sorry” much throughout his life, even though there were many things I wanted him to apologize for. So I knew that his saying “I owe you an apology, and I’m sorry” wasn’t so much about missing my birthday, rather it carried a lifetime’s worth of healing and forgiveness.

Rather than wait until the end of our lives to say the things that we truly want to say, the high holydays invite us to say those things now. And they invite us to do those things that we truly want to do. People have started writing lists, inspired by the movie The Bucket List, where two terminally ill men try to fulfill a wish list of to-dos before they “kick the bucket.” Lots of people list things like skydiving, travelling the world, or being a contestant on Survivor. I guess it’s almost what the high holidays are about. At least they’re kind of on the right track.

The high holidays ask us to wake up, realize that life is short and decide not necessarily that it’s time to jump out of an airplane, but rather decide how we want to live, how we can better manifest the values that are important to us, and what kind of legacy we want to leave.  I have the honor of delivering eulogies at funerals, and to prepare those eulogies, I ask the family members questions like: “what was his greatest joy? Or what values did she most want to pass down to you? What did you love and admire about him?” This time of year invites us to consider: What do you want to have said about you? How might you make changes in your life so that those things will be said about you?

People who work in hospice talk about “quality of life” for their patients who are dying. But shouldn’t we think about the quality of our lives now? The high holydays remind us to consider the subtle changes that improve the quality of our lives: maybe it’s being more loving to your spouse, doing more volunteer work, spending more time with friends, being more compassionate and not getting so irritated at that person who drives you crazy. What do you have in mind when you hear the sound of the Shofar calling you to wake up, saying life is short, what do you want to change now?

I have in mind Felicia Shpall, a friend of mine from when I lived in New York. At the time, she was studying to be a rabbi, and she was also an incredible singer, actress, Jewish educator, and mother of young children. Her singing was so deeply soulful and powerful, she’d make you cry and knock your socks off at the same time. When I met Felicia, I was dazzled by her talent, her joy, her exuberant and contagious love of life. We lost touch when I moved to California, and last month, I decided to track her down and reconnect. I was listening to a recording of her music in the days after I found out the good news from my recent biopsy: benign, thank God, and I thought: I’d love to get back in touch with Felicia. I Googled her and found many listings about her Klezmer band, her rabbinic work, rave reviews about her performances, and then I found her obituary. She died a few years ago, after a long battle with breast cancer, at the age of 34.

Who shall live and who shall die? That hair’s breadth between benign and malignant, between life and death, is so arbitrary, so unpredictable. So Isaac was saved at the last minute, but not everyone is. How do we live with this reality? It is my hope to honor the spirit of Felicia Shpall, by living with some of the vibrancy and vitality that she had, by appreciating the preciousness of every day, loving as best I can, by celebrating all the beauty and gifts of being alive that I have the privilege to experience and giving back of the abundance I receive, by enjoying music and flowers and friends, and by not complaining about stupid things or being grouchy and mean and irritable. Why I get to live and she didn’t, I don’t know, but I promise to try to be like Abraham, who knows the precariousness of life and responds by saying Hineni, I am here, living fully in each precious moment.

That is the question for us the high holydays: what do we plan to do with the time we’ve been given? How will we respond to the sound of the Shofar calling us to wake up and live as best we can? In the words of the poet Mary Oliver:

I know how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Parashat VaYeira: Seeing the Other

© Rabbi Menachem Creditor

Senior Sermon 5761/2001

I’ve been told that I look like my father. In fact, at this very moment, I probably resemble my father more than any moment before today. Because, 26 years ago, my father delivered his senior sermon. Today probably looks a lot like that day. A young bearded man sharing some Torah. Same institution (though in a different room), same love of Judaism, and, thank God, some of the same family members.

And if we’re going to be discussing fathers and sons, what better Torah portion could we ask for? We just read the Akeidah, the Binding of Isaac. It’s an interesting thing- people resembling each other. I wonder whether Isaac looked like this father. He probably did.

I’d assume that Abraham and Isaac looked something alike. I’d also assume that when Abraham looked at Isaac, he saw himself and remembered his youth. Isaac resembled Abraham.

And I can only wonder what it must have felt like for Abraham to look down at Isaac, bound on the altar.

Take your son, your only son, the one you love- take Isaac.

Liz and I keep on imagining what it, God-willing, will feel like to look into the face of

someone who resembles us. But what must it have felt like for Abraham to see Isaac’s face, resemble it, love it, look into Isaac’s eyes, and raise up the knife? What must it have felt like to harm someone who looked just like him?

Even more than that- As a human being, created, in the image of God, Abraham resembled God! What could have been going through God’s Mind when God commanded a human being, created in God’s image, to kill?

Think of it as a three-leveled mirror: God looking at Abraham looking at Isaac. Our story is about three beings that resemble each other. And so many questions come to mind when we read this section of the Torah.

Why does God command this?

Why does Abraham say yes?

Where is Sarah during the entire story?

What psychological ramifications does the Akeidah have on Isaac?

What must it feel like to know that you resemble someone?

And what must it have felt like to be brought to a mountain to be sacrificed to God by

someone who looks just like you?

Listen to the words that God speaks to Abraham: Take your son, your only son, the one you love.

God refers to Isaac by four names, and only the last one is Isaac’s name. Every other

name is in relation to Abraham- -your son, -your only son, - the one you love- And finally, -Isaac.

Isaac reminds Abraham of his youth, of Abraham’s family line. For Abraham, who has

been promised countless descendants, this command from God amounts to suicide. He is killing his future. And that is what he sees in Isaac- his future.

Abraham simply does not see Isaac as a separate person- he sees Isaac as an extension of

himself. Abraham does not see is Isaac as a separate individual- as the Other. Abraham is willing to commit suicide, but not murder.

My rabbi, Neil Gillman, once took part in a biblio-drama where different participants

took on different roles within the story of the Akeidah. Ironically enough, Dr. Gillman played God. An audience member posed a question to Dr. Gillman, and said, “God- how could you command such a thing?! You finally gave Abraham and Sarah a child, and you’re commanding its death? Why are you doing this?”

Dr. Gillman’s response was moving, and is a strong part of my thought today. He answered, “Don’t you see that every person I’ve created has gone the wrong way? I just want to know that I got it right. I feel like Abraham is my chance to prove that people can love me and listen to me, even when it’s hard! Abraham is my chance!”

Even God only sees Abraham as an extension of God’s self.

Abraham is God’s chance. Just like Isaac is Abraham’s future.

In our Parsha, Abraham and God are very alike. They resemble each other. Both interact with others, but they both see others in the same way: as an extension of themselves. This is a great message to take from the story- We must see the people around us as separate individuals, as the Other.

For Ex: The same holds true for education- Teachers, so many times, see students as extensions of themselves. But students are not extensions of teachers. I am a teacher. I can’t bring a student to their full potential – only the student can. The teacher’s role is to discover, with the student, what lies within. We’ve learned to respect the learner, because students are equal owners of the process.

We are learning to see the student as an independent person – as the Other.

I’ve learned a lot about seeing the Other during my time here at JTS. After 9 years in this Holy place, I’ve learned that the study of Torah is complex, deep, and rewarding. I have caught glimpses of holiness walking around, sensing the buzz of the learning, feeling Kedushah, holiness in the air… But so many times I find us concerned with the origins of Torah, searching manuscripts and different traditions for the most authentic version of the text. And I ask myself: Why do we spend so much energy in the pursuit of the pure text?

Perhaps it is because we believe that we can uncover the Truth of the text. Maybe we believe that by dissecting the texts into their component parts we can understand them completely. We pursue questions like:

How do different manuscripts compare?

What does the Mishna really mean?

Where did the Torah come from?

So much energy.

Is the pursuit intellectually stimulating? Yes.

Is that what speaks to my soul? –No.

Does the pursuit of truth motivate me to daven and celebrate? No.

I am not in pursuit of truth.

I am in pursuit of faith.

I am in pursuit of the Holy.

I deeply believe that we will never understand the texts completely, and that that is what

Emmanuel Levinas, the great French Jewish Philosopher meant when he taught that the Torah is holy because it has infinite meaning. We can never exhaust the meaning of the text, and so the text of Torah is holy.

And that is what it means to be the Other.

To be the Other is to have unlimited potential. We will never realize the entire potential of the Torah. So when we can view the Torah as the Other, and not as an extension of ourselves, and therefore not completely knowable- that’s when we are really learning Torah. That is when we sense the holiness of learning.

And I believe that the same is true for God- we can never exhaust the meaning of God, and so God is also the Other. When we can view God as the Other, not as an extension of ourselves, and therefore not completely knowable - that’s when we are really in a relationship with God.

The same is true for people. To look at someone in the eyes and recognize infinite potential is to see that person as an independent Other – that’s when we are really in a relationship with another person.

Even at the end of the Akeidah, Abraham hasn’t recognized Isaac as the Other. -When

God reveals that this whole mission has been a test, what does Abraham do? He sees a ram and rushes to sacrifice that. But what doesn’t he do? He never unties Isaac. Isaac must have untied himself! Isaac was aware of his own needs, but Abraham saw only his own.

My father and I do resemble each other! But our close relationship is based on recognizing that we are different people.

In other words, I will never completely know you. Only you can do that. And since every one of you here is the Other to me, every one of you here is also holy.

And so,

If the student is the Other to the Teacher, then I will always be the Other to Torah.

If children are the Other to their Parents, then I will always be the Other to my child.

If the Other contains infinite possibilities, then God will always be the Other.

And if those are true, then Teachers, Children, Parents, and God are all Holy.

So I want to bless us all that we should find deep faith in our lives, remembering once in a while that each one of us, each Other one of us, contains infinite meaning within us.

I also want to bless us all that we should begin to realize that infinite meaning is within the person next you, the person you pass on the street, and the people we have yet to meet.

May we never, ever, slow down in our journeys to see the Other.

-Shabbat Shalom.

Akedat Itzak

Andrea Zanardo

I must confess that the whole story of Akedat Itzak, the binding of Isaac, that we have just read, is a bit disturbing to me. And I am sure I am not the only one who feels this way.
It is an inhumane story: God commands to a father to kill his son. Even summarizing the whole tale in a single line, a sense of horror overwhelms me. I try to look for something more reassuring.
Each time I think of the Akedat Itzak I say to myself that it isn’t true, that such a cruel command can’t come from my God. No father can accept such a horrible command. Only if I manage to impress different thoughts into my mind, to cancel out the idea of a God commanding such a terrible commandment, to kill a son, one’s own flesh and blood, do I feel myself safer, and reinforce my confidence in mankind. I return to my daily life, safe and sound. Thank God I do not live in a world where sons risk ending up killed by their fathers.
But things were not always as such, in the course of Jewish history. In the Middle Ages, for example in Germany, the crowds surrounded the Jewish quarters. Pushed to suicide entire families, more than once, escaping more terrible deaths by the hands of the Crusaders. It happened also in Spain and Portugal, in the endeavor to avoid the horrible tortures of the Inquisition to the youngest.
Jewish parents hastened the death of their children, to spare them from more cruel torments. This happened not only centuries ago. The Shoah is not surrounded in clouds, as myths are. We have detailed accounts and the witnesses are still around. It is a real event.
It is perhaps something we experience in Israel today, only a few hours flight from here? It is true, no one in Israel kills his own children, but to educate and build an Israeli citizen means also to prepare him or her to dress in a uniform. The uniform of an Army that on one hand does certainly beautiful acts of social justice, tiqqun olam, assistance to weakest. Few people know that Israeli soldiers may choose months of additional service, in retirement homes, in shelters for battered women, cooperating in the integration of new immigrants from Russia or Ethiopia. On the other hand it is an army, a war machine and in war you kill. And you die also.
To risk one’s own life because you are a Jew in Israel happens not only in the military. Today the condition of the inhabitants of Sderot, or the cities on the northern border, also calls for sacrifice. Other Israeli citizens also sacrifice their lives: passers-by crossing a road, retired citizens that ride a bus, or children playing in a park of Jerusalem.
In the Diaspora, being a Jew is to be a minority, and a minority is not always secure. In democracies, numbers count, and we Jews are not a significant number of the population. We are not a group numerically significant in Italy, but probably in the future we will be a smaller community.
To raise children as Jews means to raise them as a minority. Even if they do not risk their lives a child, a boy or girl, all young Jews are going to face ignorance and suspicion. They will be asked: What are these strange biscuits that you eat in a certain period of the year? Why for you is Saturday important and not Sunday, as it is for everybody else? Why the barbaric rite of circumcision?
But they may confront even worst moments, like those that happened to not a few of us. During a conversation on an international policy, turn out the topic of the power of the neocon lobby, perceived as a kind of Elders of Zion that control the USA and also the world. A person that we believe is a friend explains to us that Jews always help each other, so why is a certain guy, friendly with Caio, who everyone knows is called Levi.
And we would explain that those are myths, myths which, moreover, we would wish were always true, but suddenly we feel a deep loneliness and the words die in our throat. We do not know whether to talk to our friend or about the distorted legends that live in his brain.
At one moment or another, without any control, those destructive elements out there may coalesce and create a poisonous mixture. We expose our children to an uncertain atmosphere, when they are with us at the Temple, or when we ask if they can stay away from school for Rosh ha Shana?
Oh, yes. Grown children, when we educate them as Jews, are not going to be part of a majority. We will explain to them, usually around our table, during festivals that their friends have not (yet) heard about, that not always being part of the crowd means to know everything. It often means that you are not in the right. There are, as they say, more things in the world.
With this strange New Year, which begins more or less when the school year starts, but not every year on the same date, we educate our children to feel part of a Community wider than that of their peers or of the inhabitants of Milan: the Jewish people, whatever that people means, a people that follows its own calendar, and not just the one we call civil calendar.
Being Jews mean to be part of humanity in general, and be part of a particular minority: it is not easy, of course. But it is also an extraordinary tonic for independent judgment. To educate a child to be Jew is also to educate him/her to think critically and independently, hoping that one day will increase the number of Jewish Nobel Prize winners: women and men dealing with extraordinary things, for the benefit of humankind.
But to educate children to be Jewish means also to educate them to respect human life, regardless if this is a value or the will of the majority. Because being a Jew means to be part of a tradition that proclaims that each human being is created in the image of God: that the dignity of human beings, and human life are the supreme values. This is how we educate our children, when we want them to grow up as Jews.
Being a Jew is also found in that feeling of horror that inspires the reading of the Akeida, this Rosh Hashanah morning- a story that I can read and hear only because I already know it is going to end up humanely. Isaac is not going to be killed. A few pages after this story begins the narration of the events of a normal and complicated Jewish family.
Being Jews means also being faced with the stories and myths of our tradition, with the terrible questions aroused by the Akeida’s narration. The story of how God tests the world.
Our past, ancient or recent, is full of these kinds of tests and trials. But they are also in our present: in the difficulties of living out the existence of a minority; in a constant risk of encountering a fool or an anti-Semite (I have never met an intelligent anti-Semite and tend to consider the two terms as synonyms); in the arduous task to advancing into the future generations in an interesting or even fun way.
Leiner Izbicer, a Chassidic teacher explains that the text of this morning’s Rosh Hashanah Torah reading says that, yes, God put Abraham to the test, but Abraham did not pass the test.
Abraham, the Izbicer argues, was engaged in a fight against the practices of the idolaters. We know they had the custom of sacrificing their offspring to their gods. Abraham received a command from God to do exactly the same.
The test was in this, in receiving this command: God wanted a negative response from Abraham, God wanted the opposite of blind obedience and subjugation. God wanted Abraham to recall that the Lord does not kill the innocent, as he had already done defending the inhabitants of Sodom, where innocent people were few in number.
The Izbicer argues that the proof is spoken at the beginning of the Torah text, And God tested Abraham. But Abraham failed the test. He did not manage to rebel against to an unjust order, which he should have challenged, and refused to carry out. He should have remembered, he should have realized that God does not ask us to kill. Abraham failed the test because he said yes, without even thinking about it. For this reason an angel must intervene to stop him.
This is the center of Akeidah. God says to Abraham: I know that you fear God – Do not raise your hand. This is the story that was read, recited, sung by generations of our ancestors, alongside the Rosh Hashannah wish expressed by the words zokhrenu lehayyim, Remember us to life. May you be inscribed in the book of Life.
To teach the next generation and ourselves, that the main value is human life. It is to ensure to our children that the Omnipotent does not call for the death of sinners, but that they can change and live because every human being is created in the image of God. In order that we can show our faith through our respect for other human beings and that to destroy a single life is like destroying the whole world.
And that the supreme wish, the dream and task for the future, is to turn weapons into ploughs, so that that humankind will follow derakhei Shalom, the roads of peace, as he did for our first ancestor Abraham, whom God has prohibited from killing.
May this year be remembered as a year for peace.
May we all be inscribed in the book of Life.

Andrea Zanardo, PhD

Rabbinical Student

Leo Baeck College, London

Delivered in Milan, Congregation Beth Shalom, on Rosh ha Shana 5769

Isaac’s Shofar

“Happy are the people that knows the shofar’s sound, they walk in God’s light.”

What does it mean to “know the shofar’s sound? How can we walk in God’s light? What is a worthy life? These are among the questions we face today.

In rabbinic literature, the sounds of the shofar and today’s Torah reading are connected to each other in two, nearly opposite ways. The best known connection is that of Abraham:

Abraham said: “Yesterday, you told me that ‘Isaac will be your seed.’ Now you are telling me ‘Sacrifice him on one of the mountains.’ I conquered my natural desires and did what You said. Now, when Isaac’s descendents sin or get into trouble, I want you to remember the binding of Isaac, forgive their sins and save them from trouble.”

God replied: “You have said your piece and now I will say mine. In the future, when Isaac’s descendents sin, I will judge them on Rosh Hashanah, unless they ask that I credit them by remembering the binding of Isaac when they blow on the shofar.” (Midrash Tanhuma)

This midrash emphasizes the strength of Abraham who conquered his desires and knows how to negotiate with God in order to get a good “deal” for his descendents. It corresponds to the “tekiah” sound of the shofar – long and steady – symbolizing the hope inherent in repentance and all new beginnings.

The less well-know connection between the shofar and this morning’s reading is from Sarah’s side. Although she does not appear actively in the story, Sarah is very involved in the Binding of Isaac:

Know that this is true. When Isaac returned to his mother, she asked him where he had been. He replied, “Father took me up mountains and down valleys. Up on one of the mountains, he built an altar, arranged the wood and took the knife to slaughter me. If an angel had not come to stop him, I would have been slaughtered.”

Sarah asked, “Oy! Do you mean that if hadn’t been for the angel, you would already have been slaughtered?” Isaac, “Yes.”

At that Sarah screamed six times, paralleling the six teruah sounds. There are those who say that before she finished, she died. (V’yikra Rabbah)

In other version, Sarah’s screams are compared to a “teruah” sound. Indeed, Maimonides compares the teruah to a “wail” or “groan.”

Here there is no power, no hope, no new beginning; there is weakness, despair and death.

For the last month, I have been contemplating the Binding of Isaac and the messages that are delivered by the choice to read this passage on Rosh Hashanah. If this chapter is read in isolation, the messages are almost unbearable. Abraham is willing to surrender his beloved son, the fulfillment of the covenant and his independent sense of justice. Isaac is willing to surrender his life and Sarah collapses in the face of all this surrender and her loss of control over Isaac.

However, there is no reason to read the chapter in isolation. It is part of a much larger context in which our ancestors provide varied and positive examples that are relevant to our lives. There is so much material that I cannot consider it all today. Therefore, I have selected a few examples from the lives of Abraham, Sarah and Isaac that can still guide us on our way today.

From the life of Abraham, I have selected two examples that relate to the inescapable necessity to choose, not only between good and bad but also between good and good, in those situations where limited resources or other conditions make it impossible to choose both.

In Genesis 18, Abraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent and God appears to him for no apparent reason. From the juxtaposition of texts, the Rabbis learned and taught that God has come to visit the sick, three days after Abraham’s circumcision. “Sick,” hurting and hot, Abraham merits a special spiritual experience. Suddenly, he sees three “men” in the distance. He gets up and runs to them. Nothing, good or bad, can prevent him from personally extending hospitality to them.

This story emphasizes the importance deeds of loving-kindness. God visits the sick and Abraham overcomes obstacles and gives up personal pleasure, in order to welcome guests.

>An important element in a worthy life is giving to others and being attentive to their needs.

Another situation in which Abraham must make a decision is at the end of the Binding of Isaac. At the beginning of the chapter, God commands him to sacrifice his son. Later, an angel commands him “Do not touch the boy.” The free, human Abraham must make an independent decision.  He makes the choice that must seem to him to be more humane and more just. He sacrifices the ram instead of his son. By doing this, Rabbi Michael Graetz teaches that he “establishes an autonomous realm of righteousness by which God’s commands can be judged. Commands, which offend the autonomous realm of righteousness, can be turned into symbolic ones. “

>Additional important elements in a worthy life are human standards and independent moral judgment.

In the Torah, Sarah does not have the same close connection with God that Abraham does but her life is effected by his connections, the covenant and God’s promises. However, Sarah does not trust in promises. She takes initiative in order to ensure that Abraham has offspring and the covenant can be fulfilled. Unlike Abraham who was apparently so certain that everything would turn out okay that he was willing to sacrifice Isaac, Sarah lives in a world of reality, If she cannot have children, she looks for an alternative solution. The unfortunate part is that she does not anticipate the outcome of her initiative and does not handle it well. Instead she treats Hagar most unfairly.

Even Sarah’s famous laugh is rooted in her clear vision of reality. Sarah knows that she is too old to give birth; miracles simply are not part of her plan. Once Isaac is finally born, she does everything in her power to protect him, even at the price of further injustice to Hagar and Ishmael.

In the end, Sarah will pay with her own life for her deep involvement in Isaac’s life. Even in the above version of the midrash, where Isaac himself returns alive and tells his mother what has happened, the shocking news has a fatal affect. How much more so in the version in which Satan comes alone and never gets to the “happy” end of the story.

>From Sarah’s life we can learn about the importance of a clear understanding of reality and the need for human initiative. Her example also warns of the need to anticipate the results of our actions and to distinguish between those things which we can control and those which we cannot.

Isaac is often portrayed as passive, an essential but boring link between Abraham and Jacob. However, a close reading of Genesis 36 reveals a totally different personality. Despite the fact that he is not a colorful, charismatic figure, Isaac’s example is very important for anyone who was born Jewish since he was the first born into Abraham’s covenant and the first to continue the tradition, despite the trauma of his youth.

During a famine in Israel, God appears to Isaac and commands him “Do not go down to Egypt. Stay in this land and I will be with you.” Like his father, Isaac listens and obeys. Like his mother, he takes initiative in order to ensure success – he plants a crop. God keeps his promise through the agency of Isaac’s initiative: Isaac is blessed with a record-breaking crop.

>It is also important for us to understand that God’s blessing do not just “fall out of the sky.” They come in response to human initiative and in accordance with the laws of nature.

During the conflict with Avimelech regarding the wells, Isaac also takes action to ensure himself adequate water and living space. His success and the blessing that follows impress Avimelech who offers a peace agreement. Isaac is hesitant but accepts, thereby ensuring tranquility.

The Torah does not tell us about Isaac coming down the mountain and the midrash does not add much.  In my mind’s eye, I see him coming down the mountain with the ram’s horn as a reminder. Just a ram’s horn, not a shofar. He keeps the horn until the end of the year of mourning for his mother. Then he makes a shofar out of it. He takes the raw material of his life and creates a useful tool. Isaac’s sound is the “sh’varim” broken pieces that together equal the “tekiah” in value,

Isaac blows: “Tekiah, sh’varim, teruah, tekiah gedola.”

Tekiah: In honor of his father Abraham: his strong faith and his contributions to others.

Sh’varim: To remind himself that even the ordinary initiatives of daily life can bring blessing.

Teruah: In memory of his mother, her initiative and clear vision.

Another Tekiah, a long one: to encourage future generations to continue, to continue in the path of their ancestors.

Shoshana Michael-Zucker
Congregation Hod v’Hadar
Kfar Saba, Israel

A Jewish Theology of Parenthood

Rabbi Fred Morgan

It was the great philosopher Emil Fackenheim who famously asked, after the Shoah is there a new mitzvah to be added to the traditional list of 613 mitzvot?  He derived from the Jewish experience of the Holocaust this mitzvah: You shall not hand Hitler a posthumous victory.  He went on to say that this mitzvah is carried out by having Jewish children.  He knew that by saying this he was placing a heavy psychological demand on the generation of the Holocaust.  But I’m not sure he appreciated the theological weight he was asking parents to carry.

The classical Jewish text that portrays what Jewish parenthood is all about is the passage that we read every Rosh Hashana: Akedat Yitzchak, the “binding of Isaac”.  Abraham is tested by God.  God tells him to take his son, his only son, the one whom he loves, Isaac, to a place that God will show him.  The place is Mt Moriah, identified by the rabbis with har habayit, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  There Abraham is to build an altar and offer Isaac as a sacrifice.  Abraham and Isaac go off on their journey.  When they arrive at the place, Abraham sets up the altar, binds Isaac and raises the knife.  But Abraham’s hand is stopped by a messenger of God, an angel, who assures him that God recognizes his faithfulness.  A ram caught by its horns in a thicket is offered up in place of the boy.

That is the story.  Many scholars from the medieval period onwards have argued that the purpose of the Akeda is to tell us that those who follow Abraham’s faith will never have to offer their children again as sacrifices to God, in the manner of pagan faiths.  The point of the story is to inform us that our God, the one true God, does not require the offering of children.

That is how the story is interpreted from the standpoint of the history of religions.  It marks a revolution in theology, a turning away from pagan child sacrifice.  Yet, looked at not from the angle of the history of religions but from the angle of parenthood and family dynamics, the story reads very differently.  We are constantly called upon to offer our children on the altar of life.  We constantly struggle with the fact that our children are the same as us, yet different from us; that we identify them with us, and yet must let them go to risk life on their own.  Since Freud we have recognized that these tensions, between sameness and difference, between identification and letting go, define parent-child relationships.

But this insight long predated Freud.  It is there in the Akeda.  Some of the greatest joys in life, and also some of the most intense agonies of life, are modeled by the relationship between Abraham and Isaac, – and yes, between Sarah and Isaac (Sarah lurks behind the story of the Akeda without being directly mentioned in it).  They are expressed in the nisayon, the test that is borne of those relationships.  The test is ultimately God’s test of us; hence, the theological character of parenthood in the Akeda, and in our lives.

A personal anecdote:  When one of our children was only six months old, we noticed that she wasn’t responding to a dog barking, so we took her to the local ENT clinic for examination.  They determined that she had a congenital hearing problem and gave her massive hearing aids that she had to wear in her tiny ears.  We also had to make regular visits to the major ENT centre in London to learn how to work with her to develop her speech skills.  I remember vividly my feelings at the time.  I was shattered that our perfect baby had a “flaw”.  Of course, we didn’t love her any less, but it upset me that she wasn’t sh’leimah, complete; that she was sh’vurah, broken.  Several months later, she had her first cold and developed an infection.  The doctor put her on antibiotics.  When Sue brought her home from their next visit to the ENT clinic, she was no longer wearing her hearing aids.  The congenital defect was, in fact, glue ear!

Though she hadn’t had a congenital hearing problem in the first place, when I saw our child without the massive hearing aids hanging from her ears, it felt to me like a miracle had occurred.  She had been delivered from the altar, saved from life-long bondage.  I can recount this story now without any difficulty; in fact, it makes quite a good tale.  But for many years whenever I spoke of it I had a lump in my throat.  I imagine it’s the same sort of lump that Abraham would have had in his throat, when he accompanied Isaac up the mountain.

Another of our children was accident-prone.  As a toddler, he used to ride his toy car at break-neck speed through the house.  One morning, he rammed the car into the leg of a table, flew over the toy bonnet and cracked his head on the table.  With blood flowing everywhere I rushed him to the doctor’s surgery for a few stitches and bandages.  After our third visit to the surgery for similar mishaps, the emergency nurse told me that if we appeared a fourth time she’d have to send a social worker to check us out at home – rabbi or no rabbi!

Luckily, no more accidents occurred for a while; not until we arrived in Melbourne.  In the first month of our arrival our son broke his arm playing football at The King David School.  Another parental offering on the altar of childhood.

With your indulgence, a final story from our home album:  It follows Yom Kippur last year; Yom Kippur when we pray in the Unetanne Tokef prayer, “On Rosh Hashana it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed, how many shall pass on, how many shall come to be, who shall live and who shall die, who shall be secure and who shall be driven.”  I might add to the list of dichotomies: mi sh’leimah u-mi sh’vurah, who shall be whole and who shall be broken.  On the last day of November, a Thursday, I arrived at work and had just begun my day when I received a phone call from Sue.  Our daughter had been in an accident.  While driving her Vespa motor-scooter to work, a car had pulled out just in front of her.  She couldn’t swerve to avoid car and the bike had gone straight into it.  She’d flown over the car and landed on the road several meters away.

We’re all still recovering from that accident.  I can’t tell the story yet.  It’s too close, too real, too dangerous.  But it is very much part of our Yamim Nora’im this year.

I imagine that we all share stories like these; all of us who are gathered together this Kol Nidre evening, all of us who have ever been parents, or indeed all of us who have ever been children!   You may be recalling your own moments when you have stood beside Abraham sharing the agonies of his parenthood; or when you have lain beside Isaac on the altar of childhood.  We are privileged to have with us this evening Shlomo Goldwasser.  Shlomo is the father of Ehud Goldwasser – Udi – whose name is very familiar to us here at TBI.  We have read it out every Shabbat in this synagogue for the past year and more.  Udi is one of the three Israeli soldiers kidnapped last July by Hamas and Hezbollah.  Later in the service Shlomo will be sharing with us his story.  Truly he stands here this evening like Abraham at the Akeda.

I would quickly add, it is not only those with children who suffer the agonies of the Akeda, fearing and facing the sacrifice of their beloved offspring to the vicissitudes of life.  So, too, those who are unable to have children suffer in the way of Abraham and Sarah.  It is important to include them: those who struggle with all their being to have children but find themselves unable to do so for one reason or another.  They, too, suffer from the “holding on” and “letting go” of the dreams and expectations that all parents face.  They offer their “children of the imagination” on the altar of cold reality.  (Rabbi Jacki Ninio, from our sister Congregation Emanuel in Sydney, composed a beautiful reflection on the struggles of childlessness for her Rosh Hashana sermon this year.  It is available on the UPJ website: www.upj.org.au, click on Learning/High Holyday sermons).

Some might argue that there is a significant difference between Abraham’s test at the Akeda, and us.  The difference is that Abraham freely chose to accept God’s test.  He chose to see the test as his destiny and went freely to bind Isaac on the altar on Mt Moriah.  By contrast, they would argue, we do not.

But I believe this argument is mistaken.  The proof I would point to is found in the prayer Unetanne Tokef that I referred to earlier.  This prayer tells us two things of great significance.

The first thing it tells us is that life is what it is.  By being born, we become subject to the vicissitudes of life.  By having dreams of children or giving birth to children we enter into all the joys and agonies that such dreams entail.  We do this willingly, freely, because it is our destiny to strive and to struggle with life.  Even though we know the cost, nevertheless our dreams – our hopes – carry us forward.  Like Abraham, we place our trust in the force that makes for life, even while – like Abraham – we remain realists about the cost.  That trust is expressed through the effort we put into creating and maintaining life – into the very act of living.

We seek to have children, we raise them as Jews, we celebrate their successes and agonise through their sufferings, because we have faith.  We feel it matters; the naches and the tzuris matter.  They confirm to us that life is not merely a matter of fate: que será será, what will be will be.  Rather, if we should aim to seek it, we shall find a destiny at the heart of life, a meaning and a purpose to our lives, no matter how modest that destiny may seem to be.  God decrees, and in God’s decree is our destiny.

Things don’t simply “happen to us”.  Rather, we absorb them, reflect on them, find direction through them.  The things that happen to us deepen our understanding.  They enable us to act towards others, our fellow creatures, with greater compassion, greater humanity, greater empathy.  In a word, they move us closer to seeing ourselves as “partners with God” in choosing life.

This leads to the second thing that the Unetanne tokef teaches us: repentance, prayer, giving (teshuvah, tefillah, tzedakah) temper the apparent severity of life.  They make life more human and more purposeful for us.  They prepare us to face the harshness and the realities of life with sensitivity, grace and courage.  They take us out of our inner world, the world of the ego, and help us to focus our attention on others.

This is the argument of Rabbi Harold Kushner, the author of When Bad Things Happen to Good People.  This book has been translated into dozens of languages; it has touched millions of people.  Someone recently asked why Rabbi Kushner’s book has been so popular.  He answered his own question by pointing out that Rabbi Kushner’s theology grew out of his experience in encountering his son’s illness and death.  Kushner’s son suffered from a syndrome that caused premature ageing and he died as a young teenager.  Kushner the parent grappled with incomprehension, bewilderment, anger.  After a long period, when the darkness began to separate, he saw that there is still goodness in the world; that life cannot be defined by his son’s death.

The goodness that Kushner experienced despite all in a world that had been broken by the death of his son led him to a renewed understanding of God and the place of God’s will in his life.  His theology did not provide a framework into which he felt he had to maneuver his experience.  It worked the other way around: his theology followed the contours of his experience.  This is what makes his theology seem so authentic, and what attracts so many readers to his book.  They find real meaning and true solace in his words.  His book takes us out of our inner world and helps us to focus on the experience of others, their sorrows and their goodness.

Though Yom Kippur seems very inwardly focused, the inward focus is really there in order to give us the space to reflect on the needs and experiences of others, and then to reconnect and recommit to addressing these human needs through our own efforts.  The teshuvah that our prayer speaks of and that Yom Kippur seeks is a returning to others, not a turning to ourselves alone.  Teshuvah is about caring for others, caring about what happens to them, sometimes even putting their needs above our own, even as parents put their children’s needs above their own.  The model for teshuvah is parenthood: our own parenthood, God’s parenthood.  We do this, realizing that in the end there are no guarantees of success or joy or happiness.  Nonetheless we have faith – we trust – that what we do matters.  It matters to our children, it matters to those we love, it matters to the goodness that is God.

Trauma and Recovery: Abraham’s journey to the Akedah

Naomi Graetz

In the concluding paragraph of an article on the Akedah, the late Tikva Frymer Kensky wrote that “In its stark horror and ambiguous statements, the story of the Akeda remains the central text in the formation of our spiritual consciousness.” [2] In Genesis 22: 1 it begins, “After these things, God tested (nisah) Abraham,” in which God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son. “Abraham offers no emotional or ethical response to the command. He simply sets out with his son to do God’s bidding.”[3] The Akedah (Gen.22:1–19), the binding of Isaac, is considered to be the ultimate spiritual moment when a man expresses willingness to sacrifice his beloved son to demonstrate fealty to his Lord. This central text has continued to horrify generations, and in Sören Kierkegaard’s words, arouses “fear and trembling”.[4] The Hebrew for a burnt offering that goes UP to God is olah, and is used to describe Abraham’s offering of his son. The sages understand the test (from the word nisa) to mean a trial, one of many trials–physical and psychological incidents that retarded his adjustment in Canaan and endangered his marital status.[5] According to the Midrash, fiery associations are among the many obstacles Abraham had in his journey, before he got to the point of bringing his son Isaac as an olah. Another obstacle was the famine in the land which caused Abraham to go down to Egypt.

The King James Bible, however, translates, the word, nisa, as tempt, not try! To tempt is to solicit to sin, to entice, to entrap, with the purpose of bringing about the fall of a person. And if the reason for this translation has to do with Rashi’s reading of the Talmud

who is the subject of the temptation?

“SOME TIME AFTERWARDS” Some of our Rabbis say (Talmud, Sanhedrin 89) that this line refers to after the incident with Satan who accused [God] saying “From all of the festive meals that Abraham made, he did not offer You  a single bull or ram.” God responded, “Everything Abraham did was for his son. Yet, if I were to tell Abraham to sacrifice him before me, he would not delay.” (Rashi, 22:1)

Is it God being tempted to play with Abraham, as he did with Job?[6] Or is God testing Abraham to see if he gives into the temptation of filicide that was widespread in his time?

One might ask where God was during these trials or temptations. Why was there lack of moral guidance to Abraham? From a theological perspective, what is worse, the problem of an abusive God/father who demands sacrifices of his son/peoples or a God who tempts people to sin?

Looking at Abraham from a relationship perspective and in particular with his troubling relationship with God, I can understand the transition in his character from one who fights back to protect his family and the other who abandons his family to fate. If Abraham as a person has experienced trauma and abuse as a son, a brother, a husband and a believer, then there is no contradiction. If one can regard him as a multiple victim of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), then Abraham behaves consistently when he heeds God’s call to sacrifice Isaac. To see how this works, we must look at the back story of Abraham’s life, which is to be found in rabbinic Midrash and commentary. We will start with two midrashim that explain Haran’s death. The first one depicts Terah as a manufacturer of idols. Abraham destroyed these idols. His father was furious and seized him and delivered him to Nimrod. Nimrod throws him into the fiery furnace saying. ‘Behold, I will cast you into it, and let your God whom you adore come and save you from it.’

Now Haran was standing there undecided. If Abram is victorious, [thought he], I will say that I am of Abram’s belief, while if Nimrod is victorious I will say that I am on Nimrod’s side. When Abram descended into the fiery furnace and was saved, he [Nimrod] asked him, ‘Of whose belief are you?’ ‘Of Abram’s,’ he replied. Thereupon he seized and cast him into the fire; his inwards were scorched and he died in his father’s presence. Hence it is written, AND HARAN DIED IN THE PRESENCE OF (‘AL PENE) HIS FATHER TERAH ” ( Midrash Rabbah Genesis 38:13)

The Rabbis translated ’al pene’ as ‘because of’: he died because his father manufactured idols!

According to Aviva Zornberg in her book The Murmuring Deep, “Nachmanides treats the fiery furnace midrash as not only historically true but essential for the meaning of Abraham’s narrative.” There is no good reason why this narrative is omitted from the biblical text, but as Zornberg points out, “the repressed persecution story leaves us with a significant gap.”[7]

She states the case even more strongly:

In this stark retelling of the midrash, the essential fact is that Abraham’s brother was killed by his father, who had originally intended Abraham’s own death. By handing him over for execution, Terah is, virtually, killing him. And when he is saved, his brother’s actual death is directly attributable to Terah. … This memory of horror is not recorded in the written biblical text. (p. 189)

The other Midrash is less well known and this one speaks of attempted fratricide:

And Haran died “al pnei” his father Terah. Until this time no son had died before the father. And this one, why did he die? Because of what happened in Ur Casdim. When Abram was shattering Terah’s idols; and they were jealous of him and threw him into the fiery furnace. And Haran stood by, adding fuel to the fire and was enthusiastic about the flames. Therefore it is said that Haran died before his father Terah. In Ur Casdim. The name of the place is like the fire (urim), relying on a verse from Isaiah 24:15, “honor the Lord with lights”) [Pesikta Zutrata (Lekah Tov) Gen. 11, 28]

In this source Haran is among those jealous of Abraham and fanatically wishes to participate in his murder. Haran is the one, in this text, who is in charge of stoking the fire in the furnace, and he is in the process of feeding the fire when the flames shoot out and consume him. In this Midrash both the brother and father are out to kill Abraham. Haran is gleeful while making the fire as hot as possible so that killing Abraham will “make his day”.[8] Thus according to these two midrashim, Abraham has experienced abuse at the hand of Nimrod the king, his father, his brother and indirectly by God.

Besides using the tools of rabbinic Midrash and later looking at some modern poetry to comprehend Abraham’s action, I find Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery very useful for her description of PTSD:[9]

“[t]raumatic events are extraordinary, not because they occur rarely, but rather because they overwhelm the ordinary human adaptations to life. Unlike commonplace misfortunes, traumatic events generally involve threats to life or bodily integrity, or a close personal encounter with violence and death…” (p.33)

This of course is what according to the Midrash, Abraham has certainly experienced. Herman writes that “The person may feel as if the event in not happening to [him]……a bad dream from which [he] will shortly awaken”.[10] Herman points out that the victim who suffers from PTSD may feel

a state of detached calm, in which terror, rage, and pain dissolve….” Perceptions may be numbed or distorted….Time sense may be altered, often with as sense of slow motion…” (p. 56).

This may have been Abraham’s feelings as he went up the mountain, slowly but inexorably.[11] Returning to Genesis 11:26-32, we find lacunae which leave much to the imagination. The text does not say why they left, nor does it say why they stayed in Charan. Was Terah alive when Abraham and Lot left? What did Abraham feel about leaving? Would he have liked to stay and comfort his father? Did his love for God get in the way of making amends with his father?

Clearly there is a need for more “back story”, which the commentators and the Midrash continue to provide. According to Ibn Ezra on Gen.12:1, Abraham’s father, Terah lived for another sixty five years in Haran and in taking his grandson Lot away from him, he severed the family relationship, deprived his father Terah of his grandson Lot. When the family leaves Egypt, after strife with Lot, Abraham proposes that his nephew’s herdsmen separate from his. Abraham already separated Lot from his grandfather and country and now he does so from himself.

Why is Abraham so much a master at separation from his close family? Is this a fatal flaw in him? According to Judith Herman, “The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others.”[12] If this is so, can it account for Abraham’s ease in letting Lot go, then Sarah (with the real possibility of losing her), and then Hagar and Ishmael and finally Isaac?

It would seem that the sages picked up on this as well. For in a famous Midrash the rabbis try to change the order of the text to show that Terah died in Charan.[13] Why do they do this? To show that Terah was wicked, and like all wicked are called dead even during their lifetime. Why do they do this? They do this so as not to detract from Abraham’s greatness.

Yet in this same midrash we read: that Abraham was afraid that people would say, “He left his father in his old age and departed”. Therefore God reassured him by saying: ‘ I exempt thee (leka) from the duty of honoring thy parents, though I exempt no one else from this duty. The rabbis deduced this from the emphasis GET THEE (LEK LEKA), where lek (‘go‘) alone would have sufficed. And this is why God recorded Terah’s death before Abraham departed.

So one part of the Midrash implies that Terah is the old father that Abraham dishonorably leaves behind, and the other says that Terah is an evil person whom Abraham had the right to leave behind. What are we to make of this contradiction? I find it strange that the rabbis would prefer to reverse the order of the biblical text rather than acknowledge that Abraham had the right to detach himself from a possibly abusive father. In reading Kierkegaard, I am struck by how the second half of the midrash is a perfect example of the “Teleological Suspension of the Ethical”. And this first act of “suspension of the ethical” later permits him to do other unethical acts.[14] Could it be that the rabbis sensed something murky in Abraham’s past when they referred to him as a Job-like figure and vice versa and that God’s test of Abraham is similar to Job’s because of Satan’s intervention.[15]

What are we to make of a God who submits to a challenge of Satan and plays with people like sport to the flies? Who unfairly puts his people to a test, puts temptation in their way, to see how great is their faith, their love for Him?

It is difficult to accept Kierkegaard’s conclusion that God tempted Abraham to prove his faith by rejecting morality.[16] This kind of faith is seen by many as “religious” only in an extreme or fanatical way, and as such a kind of idolatry, or perversion of religion which always factors in a moral dimension. Besides what does God gain by having an exemplar of faith act immorally? Why tempt him to do so? This is the sine qua non question that has plagued generations of readers, both religious and secular, when they confront the text of the Akedah.

In previous work I have discussed the effects of a God who abuses his people. Some of these images include executioner, mass murderer, and divine deceiver. These images are problematic because God acts unethically or immorally; uses excessive force; and some times doesn’t offer an opportunity for repentance.[17] Most of us would prefer not to contemplate a God who is too dangerous to approach and too incomprehensible to make sense of, a God who might simply demand extreme and devastating behavior. We avoid all thought of the paradox that the very foundation of the world might also contribute to its devastation.[18]

Another troubling image of God that I will point to briefly, since I have written so much about this elsewhere, is that of God the husband/lover of Israel, who has total power over his female people. In one Midrash we see Abraham depicted as a woman, a daughter whose father owns the house she lives in and is aroused by her beauty and wants to show it off to the world.

NOW THE LORD SAID UNTO ABRAM: Go Forth from your Land etc. (12:1). R. Isaac commenced his discourse with, Listen daughter, and look and incline your ear; and forget your people, and your father’s house (Ps. 45:11). R. Isaac said: This is a mashal, about someone who traveled from place to place and saw a birah (building, castle, capital city) burning. He wondered: Is it possible that this birah doesn’t have a leader? The owner/master of the birah looked out and said, ‘ I am the master of the birah.’ Similarly, since our father Abraham was constantly wondering, ‘ Is it conceivable that the world is without a leader/guide/master/ruler?’ God looked out and said to him, ‘ I am the ba’al, the owner of the world the Sovereign of the Universe.’ So let the king be aroused by your beauty, since he is your lord (Ps. 45: 12): Let the king be aroused by your beauty and show it off to the world. Since he is your lord, bow to him (Ps. 45: 12.): hence, THE LORD SAID UNTO ABRAHAM: Go forth etc. (Genesis Rabbah 39:1)

Abraham is again depicted as a woman, this time as the unformed little sister, in another Midrash on the same verse.[19] Here she offers herself up to be sacrificed in an act of Kiddush hashem or martyrdom The idea that God is Abraham’s lover appears also in Maimonides in the Mishneh Torah. Here it is Abraham who is obsessed with God and has what can only be described as love-sickness.

Halacha 2: [Love] is an attribute of Abraham our father, who was called “his beloved” because he worshiped him out of love. And it is a quality that was commanded by Moses in that we are to “worship our God”….

Halacha 3: What characterizes proper love? That a person should love God with a great excessive, very strong love, until one’s soul is bound up in love of God and is obsessed by this love as if he is lovesick; and his mind is not freed from the love of that woman; and he is always obsessed by her, whether it is in his resting or rising, or whether he is eating or drinking. Moreover the love of God in the heart of those who love Him is obsessive, like the commandment to love with all your heart and soul (Deut 6:5). This is alluded to by Solomon who stated through the Mashal, “for I am sick with love” and in fact all of the Song of Songs is a mashal/parable about this issue. (Maimonides, Hilchot Teshuva, Chapter 2 and 3)

Rabbinic literature is sensitive to these images of God the lover and the obsession with the beloved, but do not necessarily see them as troubling, full of potential menace and contributing to abuse. Love-Sickness, is pathological by nature—it affects decision making, it distracts one from what is moral. It further dislocates one who is already fragile.[20] Furthermore, love should not harm[21].

When Abraham is depicted as a dependent woman, he is, like Herman’s traumatized patient primed for God[22]: “The greater the patient’s emotional conviction of helplessness and abandonment, the more desperately she feels the need for an omnipotent rescuer.”[23] The fact that he loves God and God loves him makes it seem natural to follow God to wherever and whatever he demands.

Despite the threats hanging over him, the rabbis are at great pains to make it look as if Abraham is an active willing participant in what God demanded of him. A Midrash says that God was with him when he willingly offered (nadavta) … to enter the fiery furnace and would have emigrated sooner to the land if he had been permitted to do so earlier.[24]

What is the nature of the God Abraham is expected to follow? The rabbis) write that this God places the righteous in doubt and suspense, and then He reveals to them the meaning of the matter. That is why it is written, TO THE LAND THAT I WILL SHOW THEE. The rabbis view this putting of the “righteous in doubt and suspense” as a sign of God’s love.

R. Levi said: ’Get thee’ is written twice, and we do not know which was more precious [in the eyes of God], whether the first or the second….. And why did He not reveal it to him [without delay]? In order to make him even more beloved in his eyes and reward him for every word spoken, for R. Huna said in R. Eliezer’s name: The Holy One, blessed be He, first places the righteous in doubt and suspense, and then He reveals to them the meaning of the matter. Thus it is written, TO THE LAND THAT I WILL SHEW THEE; Upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of (ib.); And make unto it the proclamation that I bid thee (Jonah III, 2); Arise, go forth into the plain, and I will there speak with thee (Ezek. III, 22). [Midrash Rabbah - Genesis 39:9]

In addition, the rabbis are making an equation between lekh lekha and the akeda. Lekh lekha is also a foundational text, because it encourages (perhaps in the case of going up to the Land of Israel, even enshrines) leaving loved ones behind and it encourages detachment. Perhaps if Abraham (and others who wish to leave) would think it out clearly, they might hesitate to follow the lure of lekh lekha. In both cases God does not reveal his intentions to Abraham until the very end.[25]

Zornberg refers to Rashi’s explication of the verse “to the land that I will show you”. Rashi writes that God “did not reveal which land immediately, in order to make it precious in his eyes.” Zornberg builds on this to show that “the effect of suspended naming is to achieve an intimacy…tantalize him and endow him with an experience of mystery.” (p. 137) Zornberg interprets this as suspense. She describes this as follows: “He will travel without solid ground under his feet….[he will be] off balance….[it will be] a painfully tantalizing process, in which delay only increases the horror of realization” (137). Whereas she reads this positively, I read this as further abuse. Instead of giving Abraham agency, God keeps him in his power, and cruelly tantalizes him until the end. Surely this is not a sign of love.

In a transaction with Abraham in Gen. 15, God appears to Abraham in a mahazeh, a vision, telling him that he will protect him and provide for him. Following the brit bein habetarim—the covenant of the pieces of animals, Abraham falls asleep and a great dread of darkness falls upon him. He has a nightmarish vision of a smoking oven and a flaming torch, which according to Zornberg reminds him of Nimrod’s fire. She writes that

forgotten, repressed, absent from the biblical text, is the story of the fiery furnace, in which the child Abraham was thrown, to test his faith in the invisible God…. Its total absence from the written biblical text suggest that it is an unthinkable, even an unbearable narrative, banished from Abraham’s memory. (188)

It is unbearable because Abraham is being treated as a pawn by God. If he were truly a partner, God would share with him what is on his mind, so that Abraham can react appropriately, take into account all options and then make up his own mind. On the surface, this is what God seems to do in Genesis 18:17 when he says: “Am I to hide [lit. cover up, mechaseh] from Abraham that thing which I do”.

Initially God treats him as a full partner, but since He goes on his way to do what he had planned to do all along, destroy the town and its evil inhabitants (except for Lot and all his family) what is Abraham to make of all this? Why did he not continue to protest? Did he end up being a passive bystander, or was he complicit in the destruction as the Israeli poet Meir Wieseltier (b. 1941) writes in his poem “Abraham”:

The only thing in the world that Abraham loved was God.
He did not love the gods of other men,
Which were made of wood or clay and of polished vermilion….

He did not appreciate anything in the world, only God.
He never sinned to Him; there was no difference between them.
Not like Isaac, who loved his coarse-minded son; not like Jacob
Who slaved away for women, who limped from the blows that God gave him at night,
Who saw angelic ladders only in dreams.
Not so Abraham, who loved God, and whom God loved,
And together they counted the righteous of the city before they wiped it out.

He sees a straight line from Abraham’s willingness to see Sodom wiped out and his willingness to sacrifice Isaac in the name of love. I would not go so far; for I see his acquiescence to what eventually happens as being the way a traumatized soul such as Abram has reacted to what has happened in his past—and he has already done the unthinkable by casting out his first born son.

Yet one can argue that Abraham shows great initiative in Genesis 14 when invaders took his nephew Lot from Sodom. I use Herman’s words to view this is as a form of

“[r]ecovery [which] is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In [his] renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience” [p. 133].

Thus, when Abram heard that his kinsman had been taken captive, he went in pursuit as far as Dan and brought back Lot and his possessions. And when the king of Sodom said to Abram, “Give me the persons, and take the possessions for yourself.” Abram said to the king of Sodom, “I swear to the Lord,” I will not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap of what is yours; you shall not say, ‘It is I who made Abram rich.’ So it is here that Abraham takes the moral high ground, something he has never done before.

Unfortunately this is to prove the exception to what I am claiming is his usual way of acting and Abraham reverts to his previous behavior in Genesis 16 when the story of the interaction between Sarai and Hagar is highlighted. Without any protest, Abram passively heeds Sarai’s request to take Hagar so she can have a son through her. When Sarai blames Abram, “The wrong done me is your fault! (hamasi alecha, and makes him feel guilty). Abram again passively gives in to Sarai and says “Your maid is in your hands. Deal with her as you think right.” Why this lack of concern about his potential seed? Is it fear of his wife? Is it because he knows that Sarah was also once taken and traumatized? Is this why he allows her some leeway when she lashes at those around her? It doesn’t help that God condones Sarah’s abusive behavior through His agent who tells Hagar to submit to this abuse from Sarah. I don’t want to imply that Abraham is blameless here because of the abuse he has suffered in the past, but it seems that Herman’s explanation about how the cycle of abuse is passed on is valid here. Herman writes that

The protracted involvement with the perpetrator has altered the patient’s relational style, so that [he] not only fears repeated victimization but also seems unable to protect [him]self from it, or even appears to invite it. The dynamics of dominance and submission are reenacted in all subsequent relationships… [26]

For sure the trauma that inflicted Abraham is passed on to Isaac in the form of passivity in the face of abuse—and this trait will be passed on to the biblical family. Abraham’s tears, according to the Midrash blinded Isaac. As he held the knife “tears streamed from his eyes, and these tears, prompted by a father’s compassion, dropped into Isaac’s eyes” (Midrash Gen. Rabbah 56:8). And Isaac will in turn, turn a blind eye to the cheating and neglect that Rebecca and Jacob inflict on Esau and Jacob. Jacob, too will be a passive parent when it comes to not seeing the family dynamics taking place with his own children. The inappropriate parenting that has taken place in Abraham’s household is thus passed on to the next generation.

In addition to trauma and abuse, there is also the issue of attachment and lack of attachment. There are many types of attachment. John Bowlby was the first to use the term when he encountered trauma during World War II. He described attachment as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.”[27] He believed that the emotional bonds formed by children with their mothers had a continuous impact on their life choices. In this theory it is important that mothers are available to their child’s needs and that the child knows that the mother can be depended on to give him a sense of security. Abraham’s father is identified in the bible, but his mother is given only a name in the Talmud: Amathlai the daughter of Karnebo.

R. Hanan b. Raba further stated in the name of Rab: [The name of] the mother of Abraham [was] Amathlai the daughter of Karnebo [From Kar, ‘lamb’, Nevo (‘Mount of) Nebo’].; [the name of] the mother of Haman was Amathlai, the daughter of ‘Orabti; [From Oreb ‘raven’] and your mnemonic [may be], ‘unclean [to] unclean, clean [to] clean’.[ Haman's grandmother was named after an unclean animal (raven, cf. Lev. XI, 15. Deut. XIV, 14); but Abraham's grandmother bore the name of a clean animal.] (Baba Batra 91a)

I am assuming she was never present for him in his life. One can only speculate on her absence and her detachment from her three sons and it is not clear what purpose the Midrash has in even assigning her a name.

Perhaps the Talmudic text hints at an insecure attachment which is caused by stressful life events, such as neglect, death, abuse, migration. In this situation you keep looking and hoping that someone or something will come about to give you back what you lost. Did Abraham’s lack of attachment begin in early childhood or later when he had his life spared, and his brother Haran was sacrificed in his stead?  Perhaps it begins around the time of the akedah.

According to Phyllis Trible, the Akedah, first and foremost, tests Abraham’s willingness to detach from his son so as to be able to turn to God:

To attach is to practice idolatry. In adoring Isaac, Abraham turns from God. The test, then, is an opportunity for understanding and healing. To relinquish attachment is to discover freedom. To give up human anxiety is to receive divine assurance. To disavow idolatry is to find God.[28]

Thus it would appear that God tempts Abraham to turn away from human attachment and choose divine attachment instead. Trible says this is to disavow idolatry, but surely Abraham’s eagerness, to “over-worship” God, his excessive love of God and his willingness to sacrifice his son, to prove his love, may be considered a form of idolatry. On the one hand, Abraham wants to carry out what was a secure clear cut command given by God, the source of all his security. Yet he is given a contradictory command not to sacrifice by the angel. Can this be another major factor contributing to his insecurity? There is “no certainty, when God’s commands contradict conscience and morality.” Abraham is faced with the fact that he must challenge God’s commands, for they are contradictory. Both cannot be acted upon! If he totally disregards the first one, he is destroying a revelation from God, and breaching his own sense of security in God. If he totally disregards the second he is violating his own sense of justice and ethics, and also ignoring a Divine revelation….”[29]

God, too, appears to be insecure about Abraham’s love. Why did he doubt him and put him to the test? If, as Judith Herman maintains, “traumatized people lose their trust in themselves, in other people, and in God,” it is logical that God, who knows all about the trauma Abraham has experienced, would doubt Abraham’s total faith in him. This would help to explain, why with the backing of Satan (as with Job), He would be tempted to put Abraham to the test.

According to Rashi, Abraham was ambivalent about whether to choose his love of his son or his love of God. It is clear that God wins out, but the cost is that he loses his son Isaac. According to Wendy Zierler, “[t]he outcome of the Akedah is that Isaac no longer appears in the story as Abraham’s loved one. Perhaps even more startling, by the end of the story God isn’t Abraham’s loved one either.”[30] In the words of the poet, T. Carmi (1925-1994) in his poem “The Actions of the Fathers”: “The voice from on high disappeared….And the voice within him (The only one left)  Said: Yes, you went From your land, from your homeland, the land of your father, And now, in the end, from yourself.”

Conclusion: The Akedah

Until the momentous, horrific, command of the Akedah, Abraham has only followed orders: lekh lekha, shema be-kolah. What Abraham understands instead in his “click moment”, is that his unavailable mother figure, Amathlai, and three past father figures, Terah, Nimrod and God have sacrificed him to what they perceived as the greater cause. Terah, perhaps in protecting his status as an idol producer and for the love of his younger son Haran, offered him as a sacrifice to Nimrod. Nimrod who literally wanted to burn him up and succeeded in doing so to his brother Haran, so that nothing was left of him, and who truly was an olah. Finally God, who is so fixated on getting Abraham to accept the covenant and enter the promised land that he allows and even encourages Abraham to act dishonorably in leaving his father behind, using his wife Sarah, sending off Ishmael and Hagar at Sarah’s request and most of all, in what has been referred to as the great testing of Abraham, telling him to sacrifice his remaining son, in order to prove his obedience and faith.

Abraham’s greatness is that he breaks his cycle of abusive behavior by not following his previous role models and by not sacrificing Isaac. In Zornberg’s words: “Abraham’s work is to fathom the compulsions that led to filicide; to know in the present the full force of an experience of terror that lies enfolded in his past; to wake from his trance at the angel’s call.” (p. 200). Until this point in his life, Abraham has only followed orders: lekh lekha…asher areka, shema be-kolah, kah na etc. God does not tell him to sacrifice the ram instead of Isaac (tahat beno). It is Abraham who SEES the ram and has a click moment. At the decisive moment when he SEES the ram he, of his own volition, chooses to sacrifice it rather than his son. God did not tell him to do that. He chooses to follow the second command, the angel’s. This is the only action Abraham takes on his own initiative with no specific command from God. He decides on his own that some of God’s commands do not have to be obeyed literally and can be carried out symbolically. The ram is tahat beno, in place of his son, but that is Abraham’s decision.”[31] His decision is not to inflict any more abuse, to realize that he can avoid repeating the abuse (the attempted filicide and fratricide) that was done to him in the past. He can say, I have choices, and this is what I choose. This is his real test, the one where he reaches deep into himself and with great courage defies God’s temptation of him to repeat the pattern of abuse. This test he passes. He has avoided the temptation. He has achieved autonomy or agency.  He has, in Herman’s terminology, recovered from his trauma.

Sadly, however, as a result of previous decisions, Abraham must still cope with the death of his wife (possibly his fault according to the Midrash) and the disappearance of and non-communication with his son. These are not punishments, but consequences of previous abusive acts. What has been done cannot be undone, but the steps forward will hopefully teach the next generation how to behave—and note that both his sons do indeed come to bury him.

Abraham is a complicated human being, for morally speaking, he can argue with God over the fate of Sodom, yet can be morally neutral about sending Ishmael away and willing to   slaughter Isaac. Once he has been willing to overstep the boundary of being a moral human, God never again addresses Abraham directly. Yet he does become more sensitive to others. He marries Keturah, has more children, provides for them during his lifetime, and sends Eliezer to arrange a marriage for Isaac and Rebecca. Thus Abraham serves as a quintessential exemplar of humanity and the cycle of stories illustrates human complexity in dealing with trauma.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918), who died in action during the First World War on November 4, 1918, hints in one of his most powerful poems, The Parable of the Old Man and the Young, that Abraham actually “slew his son”. Although there are midrashic sources which hint at Isaac’s slaughter at his father’s hand,[32] these are not mainstream and so it is only fair to give Abraham the last word.

In two summations of his traumatic life he says to Avimelech: God made me wander from my father’s house” (Gen 20:13)

וַיְהִי כַּאֲשֶׁר הִתְעוּ אֹתִי אֱלֹהִים מִבֵּית אָבִי:

and later to Eliezer: The LORD, the God of heaven, who took me from my father’s house and from my native land”. (Gen 24: 7)

יְקֹוָק אֱלֹהֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם אֲשֶׁר לְקָחַנִי מִבֵּית אָבִי וּמֵאֶרֶץ מוֹלַדְתִּי

There is poignancy here for Abraham recognizes in retrospect that he was unable to feel mourning at the time. And this is part of his recovery when he says about himself that he had been forcibly taken from his father’s home and his homeland by God, forced to wander and possibly be mislead by God (hitu). For it was God, who took him from his birth land. This is the trauma from which Abraham almost never recovers. It is what is inscribed on his heart and possibly at the root of his tortuous love affair with God. This trauma, to a certain degree is the one that we as a people, starting from Abraham through the aftermath of the Holocaust, have experienced, as one big tatoo inscribed, not only on our arms to identify ourselves, but as a trauma that, as in the prayer of the shema, has literally and figuratively been inscribed on our hearts and in our psyche. It is in the poet Haim Gouri’s word, our “heritage”, and the fact that according to him, while Abraham did not slaughter Isaac, in the end, we are “born with a knife in our hearts”[33]. The continuing question is how to preserve memory of this suffering, and at the same time recover from this very memory of our trauma. We need to figure out how to live lives that have meaning, nourish generations to come and help them in turn deal with the complexity of our lives and a seemingly remote and at times absent or quixotic God.

[1]I would like to express thanks to my three critical readers: Sidney Bloch, Michael Graetz and Menorah Rotenberg.

[2] Tikva Frymer Kensky, “Akeda: A View From the Bible,” in Judith Kates and Gail Twersky Reimer (eds.), Beginning Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holidays (New York: Touchstone, 1997), p. 144.

[3] Wendy Zierler. “In Search of a Feminist Reading of the Akedah,” NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women’s Studies and Gender Issues.( 2005): p. 10.

[4]Fear and Trembling by Sören Kierkegaard, Translated by Walter Lowrie. Published by Princeton University Press, 1941. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

[5] cf. Pirkei Avot 5:3

[6] Both Jubilees and Jon Levenson in The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son, (Yale

University Press, New Haven, 1993, pg. 178) discuss the Akedah in conjunction with the Book of Job.

[7] Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep: Reflections on the Biblical Unconscious (New York: Schoken Books, 2009), p. 147.

[8] Pesikta Zutrata (Lekah Tov) Gen. 11, 28. I thank Michael Graetz for bringing this source to my attention.

[9] The 1994, 4th edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines trauma occurring when “the person experienced, witnessed, or was confronted with an event or events that involved actual or threatened death or serious injury, or threat to the physical integrity of self or others,” and “the person’s response involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror.”[American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association, 1994, pp.427, 428 ]…

[10] Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books 1992, 1997), pp. 42-43.

[11] Herman, p. 56.

[12] Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books 1992, 1997) :133

[13] Midrash Rabbah – Genesis 39:7.

[14] “If such be the case, then Hegel is right when in his chapter on “The Good and the Conscience,” he characterizes man merely as the particular and regards this character as ‘‘a moral form of the evil” which is to be annulled in the teleology of the moral, so that the individual who remains in this stage is either sinning or subjected to temptation (Anfechtung). On the other hand, he is wrong in talking of faith, wrong in not protesting loudly and clearly against the fact that Abraham enjoys honor and glory as the father of faith, whereas he ought to be prosecuted and convicted of murder.” Quote from Fear and Trembling.

[15] Sanhedrin 89b, see also Tanhuma on lech lecha 10, p. 185 Zornberg

[16] Eugene Korn , REVIEW ESSAY “Windows on the World—Judaism Beyond Ethnicity: A Review of Abraham’s Journey by Joseph B. Solveitchik, edited by David Shatz, Joel B. Wolowelsky and Reuven Zeigler, and Future Tense by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks “, Meorot 8 Tishrei , 2010 : pp. 1-9.

[17] Eric A. Seibert, Disturbing Divine Behavior: Troubling Old Testament Images of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) reviewed by John E. Anderson for RBL 03/2011 by the Society of Biblical Literature.

[18] These thoughts came from a talk given by Kenneth Seeskin, “The Destructiveness of God,” at the conference: Philosophical Investigation of the Hebrew Bible, Talmud and Midrash, in Jerusalem, June 26-30, 2011 sponsored by The Shalem Center.

[19] Midrash Tanhuma on lech lecha 2

[20] Aviva Gottlieb Zornberg develops this idea in her first book, The Beginnings of Desire: Reflections on Genesis (New York: Doubleday, 1996): 86-93. However, Zornberg does not interpret this as pathology or abuse on the part of God.

[21] Love Does No Harm: Sexual Ethics for the Rest of Us is the title of a book by Marie M. Fortune (New York: Continuum: 1995).

[22] Zornberg on p. 178 writes that at the moment of the akedah, “Abraham’s fear and desire make him ripe for the he sacrifical act.” (emphasis mine)

[23] Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books 1992, 1997), p. 137.

[24] Midrash Rabbah – Genesis 39:8

[25] I would like to thank Menorah Rotenberg for this insight, personal communication.

[26] Herman, p. 138

[27] John Bowlby. Attachment and Loss. Vol. I. (London: Hogarth, 1969), p. 194. For an excellent overview see Wikipedia article on attachment.

[28] Phyllis Trible, “Genesis 22: The Sacrifice of Sarah,” in Alice Bach (ed.), Women in the Hebrew Bible (New York–London: Routledge, 1999), p. 278.

[29] Unpublished paper by Rabbi Michael Graetz, “Abraham, the First Masorti Jew”, published as a weekly column called pina masortit on ravnet for about 10 years, date unknown.

[30] Wendy Zierler. “In Search of a Feminist Reading of the Akedah,”NASHIM: A Journal of Jewish Women?s Studies and Gender Issues.( 2005): 20-21

[31] Paraphrase and partial quote from Michael Graetz.

[32] See Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial, trans. Judah Goldin (Philadelphia: JPS, 1967)

[33] Haim Gouri, “Heritage” b. 1923

The ram came last of all.

And Abraham did not know

That it came to answer the boy’s question –

First of his strength when his day was on the wane.

The old man raised his head.

Seeing that it was no dream

And that the angel stood there –

The knife slipped from his hand.

The boy, released from his bonds,

Saw his father’s back.

Isaac, as the story goes, was not sacrificed.

He lived for many years,

Saw the good, until his eyes dimmed.

But he bequeathed that hour to his descendants.

They are born

With a knife in their hearts.

Where is The Love?

Elliot J. Cosgrove

The story of the akedah reminds of a Yiddish aphorism to the effect that “an act of folly which turns out well is still an act of folly.”

Abraham, our heroic knight of faith, heeds God’s command to slaughter his son Isaac, an act that is fortuitously prevented by angelic intervention at the critical moment.  Indeed, while Abraham passes the divine test and Isaac emerges unscathed, I can not help but wonder if the mission’s success has horrific and irreparable consequences: that while it turned out “well,” it must ultimately be judged as “folly.”

Suggestions of such a reading are found by comparing the beginning and the end of the story.  God’s initial command to Abraham famously identifies Isaac by three markers, “Your son, your favored son…whom you love.” (Gen. 22:2)  Some verses later, having stayed Abraham’s hand, the angel assures our patriarch, “For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”  (Gen 22:12, 22:16) The lack of mention of the third dimension of Abraham’s relationship with Isaac – love, is altogether striking

Where is the love?

Somewhere on Mount Moriah filial love was sacrificed.  Having carried out God’s command, Abraham could no longer claim the affections that had preceded the akedah.  This reading is supported by the lack of further contact between father and son as they descended the mountain and, for that matter, the rest of their lives.

Given such an interpretation, we are left with a troubling question:  If Abraham’s obedience came at such a high cost, why exactly do we read this story on Rosh Hashanah?

One possible answer is to understand the function the akedah plays within the High Holiday machzor.  In the zichronot (remembrances) section of the musaf service, we ask God to remember Abraham’s willingness to sublimate his compassion for Isaac in order to carry out God’s command:

“Remember how he bound his son Isaac on the altar, subduing his fatherly compassion so that he might do Your will with a perfect heart. So may Your compassion overbear Your anger against us…”

The logic of the prayer is unexpected. It asks God to look at Abraham’s actions as a negative model for divine response. Contrary to conventional Jewish interpretation, the machzor reads the akedah as an example of what not to do.  Abraham’s choice to suppress compassion and to sacrifice love, while affirmed within the Bible (and much of rabbinic literature), serves as a counter-text for us on the High Holidays.

After all, as flawed human beings, we are painfully aware that if God were to apply strict standards of justice, the divine ruling should not tilt to our favor. Knowing this, we ask that God consider us kerachem av al banim, as a parent would a child. Such a bond considers the entirety of a relationship over any particular failing, seeks compassion over justice, and chooses love over the letter of the law. It is this demeanor that we seek from God over the Days of Awe.

So too, between us and those for whom we care most. How often have we let a love be sacrificed, eclipsed by demands of a moment?  The hardest part of the High Holidays is not asking for forgiveness, but granting forgiveness. The heroics of this season emerge from the un-Abrahamic ability to let love overwhelm our other instincts.  What is the act of reconciliation if not an openness to the possibility that the totality of a relationship exceeds any single shortcoming?

Walter Benjamin once wrote: “The only way of knowing a person is to love them without hope.” In responding to God’s terrible command, Abraham chose a path that we must judge as a failed success. The success of our season of repentance will be found in our ability to love both with hope and forgiveness, and pray that God will do the same.

Elliot J. Cosgrove, Ph.D. is the rabbi of Park Avenue Synagogue and editor of Jewish Theology in Our Time: A New Generation Explores the Foundations and Future of Jewish Belief (Jewish Lights).

Bound to the Akedah: Some Teachings for Our Time

Since its beginnings, human life has moved between the poles of being determined and choosing. Gradually, human beings have chipped out a margin of relative freedom beyond sheer survival. With the first cave paintings, sacred dances, and oral traditions, art and religion stepped into that free arena; and these twinned ways of knowing-the religious and the artistic-are still the primary ones whereby we gain some independence from, and perspective on, the necessities of ongoing, daily life.

And yet, neither art nor religion can fulfill its function through freedom alone. For art, there are the requirements of different media and the weight of artistic tradition. For religion, there are sacred times, places, and texts. In Judaism, especially, the fixedness of text has been and remains central. Commentary and interpretation encircle virtually every text, and sometimes the pressures to replace the traditional text are immense. But on the whole, we do better-I and many others believe-to go on wrestling with and reinterpreting the same given texts, even when they trouble us. For me, a special, profound quality of Judaism resides in its combination of giveness and freedom, its tribal particularity, and its open universality.

And so it is that we come each year, during the second half of what is traditionally seen as the one long day o fRosh Hashanah, to read Bereshit kaf-bet, Genesis 22, the Akedah or “Binding of Isaac.” How do we feel about this encounter? Often we wish it could be avoided; we listen to the reading without hearing or confronting. That is not so bad, for simply being in shul amidst the community, as the Torah chant rises and falls, is worthwhile. But surely engaging oneself with the text’s meaning and implications is better, both for the individual and for the Jewish People.

And yet, we can hardly blame others and ourselves for seeking to avoid a demanding, painful experience. In this, our situation parallels that of the poet John Keats in “Sitting Down to Read King Lear Again.” In this sonnet, Keats banishes lyrical romantic poetry because “once again, the fierce dispute/ Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay/Must I burn through.” He speaks of Shakespeare as the “begetter of our deep eternal theme!” For Keats, confronting Shakespeare was as inevitable, important, and traditional as reading the Akedah is for Jews; it simply could not be avoided if he was to fulfill his promise to ”be among the English poets after [his] death.”l And if this was true regarding Shakespeare’s work as a whole, then it was especially true of the most austere and relentlessly human of the bard’s works, King Lear. There, more than anywhere, the impassioned clay of humanity confronts the damnation- and sanctification-charged universe. If Keats and later readers can wring a life-affirming blessing out of King Lear-like Jacob wrestling with the angel-then it will be a blessing worth having, a blessing that can provide sustenance on the long, hard haul. And so with the Akedah.

Jews have many books and texts and stories. But towering above all the rest is Tanakh-our equivalent to Shakespeare-and within it, three biblical accounts loom as foundational and fundamental. They seem to be our core myths-myths not because they are untrue,but because they are larger than themselves and their literal truth is not the primary issue. That the Exodus from Egypt and the revelation at Mount Sinai stand as two of the three is without dispute and it seems clear to me that the Akedah completes the triangle. Of course, the Genesis Creation account is also foundational and mythic, but it speaks of and to all humankind, rather than to the Jewish people specifically. Interestingly enough, in Reform and other settings where Torah readings sometimes shift, the opening of Bereshit often substitutes for Chapters 21 and/or 22 on Rosh Hashanah. And appropriately so, for one of the aspects assumed by the Jewish New Year is the day on which God created humanity. After all then, isn’t Bereshit barah Adonai et ha-shamayim v’et ha-aretz the narrative we should be recounting on this ”birthday of the world”?

It may be that, at one time in our history, we did read that story, but something happened leading to the Akedall’s being substituted; 2 however, this essay will not pursue historical and liturgical arguments. Rather, it simply pauses to notice that on Rosh Hashanah Jews could have been focusing on the creation of life through God’s word, but instead we confront what appears to be God’s call for death. What has our People gotten out of that substitution, with its seemingly negative rather than positive focus? What docuntemporary Jews get out of returning to the Akedah during the High Holy Days, and taking it seriously?

Shalom Spiegel’s electrifying The Last Trial has taught us that in some rabbinic versions of the Akedah, no angel or heavenly voice intervenes and the dead Isaac gets spirited to heaven to be healed and resurrected.3 It may have been that, in the early centuries of the first millennia, the Akedah was utilized to counter the growing popularity of Christianity by showing that Jews too had a central figure whose death atoned for our sins and whose resurrection testified to God’s power. More widely acknowledged and more powerful is the use to which the Akedah was put during the nightmare period of the Crusades. In places like Mainz and Worms, when the crusaders threatened Jews, parents killed their children and themselves rather than convert to Christianity. Surviving accounts make clear that the binding of Isaac offered a paradigm for their dreadful, noble action.4

The Crusades and other situations of Jewish persecution have called upon the Akedah in order to transform slaughter into martyrdom. Instead of being mown down by meaningless violence and evil people, sometimes our ancestors were able to hear the voice of God calling to them as it did to Abraham. There would seem to be a difference, however. For in Worms and Mainz, it was a third party that arose between the Jewish community and Adonai, insisting on a different and exclusive path to holiness. In the Akedah, there is no outside enemy, no alien force threatening Jewish integrity and loyalty to Adonai. Rather, it is God’s own self that appears to be demanding death.

I say “appears” because, of course, normative reading of the biblical text stays Abraham’s knife-holding hand. Theramreplaces Isaac, who goes on to marry Rebecca and continue Judaism’s founding line. Itwas all a nes-a test or trial, a miracle, as well as a banner on which to display the patriarch’s loyalty and Adonai’s sovereignty. I do not know about those reading this essay, but I have learned to not submit others or myself to tests-unless absolutely necessary. Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson suggests that God learns this very lesson through the Akedah experience.s Artson writes:

At the outset, God sees the devotion of Abraham as compromised
by a new competitor for love-by Isaac. How else to test whether
Abraham really loves God than to demand exclusive devotion?
Construing love as a test, God insists on proof of Abraham’s
loyalty. The command, “Sacrifice your son,” emerges from an
insecurity that seeks reassurance by requiring a test. For God, as
for people, deliberately creating a test for love can only result in
distress, and generally also in failure…. Even in winning, God
loses. So God retreats from the original demand, calling out: “do
not raise your hand against the boy.”

In construing the Akedah as, among other things, a learning experience for God, Rabbi Artson joins generations of commentators and thoughtful readers who push against this elliptical and difficult text, striving to elicit usable meanings for themselves and their times. The longest standing of such meanings posits Abraham’s superhuman behavior in controlling his parental emotions as a model for divine response to Israel’s being in adversity or striving for tshuvah. Potential criticism of Abraham for not having argued withGod is muted throughinterpreting the patriarch’s deeds as, in effect, teaching the Creatorhowto behave. This traditional reading ofthe Akedah also serves to ground the pervasive,and Ithink meaningful, idea of patriarchal merit: the willingness of the founding father to sacrifice his son creates an inexhaustible source of spiritual credit upon which future generations may draw.

It is meaningful to see the patriarchs and matriarchs as well as other biblical and rabbinic figures as ethical and spiritual models and links in the chain connecting our People and us, personally, to God. But the idea that Abraham’s willingness to kill his own son tips God’s hand perpetually in our favor, as it were, has become increasingly problematic to many Jews. So, too, has the Akedah’s connection to Jewish martyrdom. As S. Y. Agnon’s Days ofAwe puts the traditional reading, lithe sacred root of the thought of every Israelite that impelshim to give his life for the Torah, and the service and for the sanctification of the Name of God is derived from Abraham our father, who bequeathed it to his children after him.116Incontrast to Agnon, themodemIsrapli poetHayimGouri’s much anthologized and beautifully intertextual poem Yerushah (”Heritage”) concludes as follows:

Isaac, as the story goes, was not sacrificed.
He lived for many years,
saw what pleasure had to offer, until his eyesight
dimmed.
But he bequeathed that hour to his offspring.
They are born
with a knife in their hearts.

In Hebrew the final line is: Hem noldim oolt’maachelet b’libam.7 From Gouri’s implicit critique of Jewish martyrology and his probing into Jewish psychology, it is a smallish step to pervasive use of the Akedah motif in modem Israeli poetry and prose. Typically the Jewish Abrahams are the bereaved-but also proud and even militaristic-parents; the Jewish Isaacs are the fallen-and also innocently manipulated-sons. It has been suggested that the theme of the binding of Isaac has captivated Israeli artists, writers, and playwrights to so extraordinary a degree because it encapsulates the tense relationship between the founding Zionist fathers and the new generations of Israeli statehood.8 The savage irony lying below the surface of Natan Alterrnann’s Ma-agash Ha-kesef (liThe Silver Platter”), which is typically read on Yom Ha-Zikaron in Israel, was expressed more directly in the WW I British poet Wilfred Owen’s “Parable of the Old Men and the Young.II Owen’s powerful poem concludes as follows:

Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! An angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his sonAnd
half the seed of Europe, one by one.

I venture to say that fewer such pieces have appeared since the second Intifada began, in particular, fewer pieces that cast Hagar and Yishmael into positive roles.9 Poised at the border between sympathy and fear is a poem entitled “Isaac” by A. G. Jacobs, in which the deeply tom speaker concludes his discourse as follows:

What shall I do against God and my father?
I too believe in the destiny of my children.
I too have suffered, perhaps more than he:
I have had a sacrificial knife laid at my throat.
These lands are a small exchange for that terrifying
moment.
I would like to help my brother, but he is still proud.
There will be no discussion of peace between us;
And our father, the old God-fearing man, has been dead
many years.

In addition to its dealing with the Middle East conflict, a poem like this one points toward the way in which modern Jewish literature, in classic midrashic fashion, has been giving voice to characterswhohave minor, silent, and seeminglytangential roles inthe Akedalt drama. A good example is Yehudah Amichai’s witty lithe Real Hero,” a poemthat begins lithe real hero of the Isaac story was the ram,/ who did not know about the conspiracy between the others.IIlO In the meantime, numbers of poems have been written fromSarah’s perspective, giving voice to her biblicalsilence during a crucial period in the life ofher family and building upon the way in which her unexplained death immediately follows the Akedah.lI One writer of prose argues that Sarah’s “is a voice that asserts that the ties ofparent to son or daughter are the ties that demand a hearing… the binding ofparentto childmaybeanexpressionofthe ultimate, and need give way to no other allegiance. Metaphors of warfare, of the battle, need not shape our reflection on the relation between parental love and faith.”12

Some literary and critical works focusing on Sarah and other characters in the biblical drama cross an interpretive line that rabbinic school taught me to respect: they preach against the text. The scholar Jon Levenson has strong words for approaches that interpret Abraham’s last trial as “an act of unspeakable cruelty, a paradigm not of love, faith and submission to God… but of hatred, mental illness and even idolatry.”13 To my mind, both critical and Jewish principles argue against turning any text on its head without clear warrant and open acknowledgment.

Andyet, IunderstandwhypeopIe cross the line to accuse, rather than reverentially accept, this sacred text. I understand the temptation. Yet I ask, do we really want to use this and other such difficult texts primarily as a plank from which to dive into open water?

To use a more gripping metaphor, do we really want to bore a hole in the very lifeboat within which we are riding above the waves? Debunkingis a tricky business, and one hadbetter identifyan alternative sovereign before announcing that the emperor has no clothes. And so I now ask, are there not alternatives that confront the Akedalt earnestly and honestly while also revering it as holy? Even with its problematic qualities, can we not learn from this text to which we return year after year-this foundational text, this third-core myth of the Jewish People? Can we not take a cue from the conclusion of T. S. Eliot’s ‘The Waste Land,” which proclaims: “these fragments I have shored against my ruin” by including the Akedah among our saving fragments?

Let me offer several lessons for our time derived from the Akedah-several interpretations, if you will, that speak to me in a meaningful way. They help me make sense not just ofthis text that I care about, butalso ofmylife. Theyoffer guidanceandhope withoutriding roughshod over the text or minimizing the complexities and perils of the time and place in which we find ourselves. I am hoping that others will try them on for size, embracingthemifthey fit and pressing themselves to shape their own alternatives if they donot. Atthis point inmylifeand reading ofthe Akedah, I offer five.

The first will be controversial, but deserves a hearing. It is that family cannot be the final, highest value. The love of life-partners and spouses for one another and for their children, like the loving loyalty of children to their parents, is important and enriching. Moreover, the family does provide a basic building block of society. However, each ofus lives within concentric circles of relationship of which our nuclear, and then extended, family represents only the first ringbeyond our sole selves. Beingdevoted to our children is natural and good, but it is not everything and probably not the main thing. And it is hardly disinterested. Ifit takes a villageor a synagogue-to raise a child, then adults who care about their children need to devote themselves not just directly to those children but also to building the village, synagogue community, neighborhood, country,and world within which their and other people’s children can thrive. These days, we hear a lot about “family values,” but people who really value the family cannot place it at the pinnacle of their moral hierarchy. If God represents our ultimate concern, then Abraham’s being called upon to serve God more thanhe serves his family canbe taken to meanthatin the great scheme of things we cannot put our families first.

The second of my Akedah lessons validates a traditional approach after putting it under great pressure. There is a place, an important place, for yirat-shamayim-the fear or awe of God. Rambamsees theAkedah as preciselyshowing “the extentandlimit of the fear of God.,,14 ForJonLevenson too, “whatis tested in Genesis 22′is notAbraham’s faith buthis fear ofGod-thatis, his responsiveness to the divine imperative.illS For some reason, I’ve thought a lot aboutyirah, thebestEnglish translation ofwhichmayreallybe “piety.” At its core is not ritual or ethical observance, though such observancewillprobablyfollow. Essentially, yirah is anattitude, an approach toGod and even to life as a whole thatpushes againstour natural human egotismby displacing us from the center. It recognizes that all weare and allwehave, even our lives and those dearest to us, derive from and belong somewhere else; that we are not self-created, self-sustaining, or totally self-validating. Even for those whosesense ofGodis less clear, personal,and binding-even if there is not a God who in some sense speaks to people and issues commands-still yirah acknowledges that we live in a universe making claims on us thatmay well go against our most immediate interests and loyalties. Sometimes the right thing to do is painful, conflicted, and fraught with peril.

For Rabbah bar Rav Huna, “everymanwho possesses learning without the fear of Heaven [without yirah] is like a treasurer who is entrusted with the inner keys but not with the outer: how is he to enter?”16 For Abraham, the inner keys are God’s promise of covenant continued through Isaac, whereas the outer keys are the broadest possible context in which that covenant will be enacted. To return to my metaphor of our living within concentric circles, looking and reaching toward the most extended of these circles is yirat-shamayim.

Mythird Akedah lesson is thatwe are here asJews because ofour forebears’ steadfastness. The endurance of the Jewish People flows from something beyond nature; it is in some way super-natural. Our way of emphasizing the chain of generations, what today we call “Jewish continuity,” may blind us to the fact that each transition represents an act of will that rises above the merely natural. Even if the covenant is a two-way street and it is God who finally ensures Jewish survival, still it is one Jew after another who keeps the chainintact. As withmy earlier lessons, this one cannot explain every element of the Akedah. As commentators before and after Rashi have noted,17 there seems to be a contradiction between God’s promises to Abraham that his seed will be as the stars of heaven and that his line will continue through Isaac on the one hand, withGod’s seemingdemand that Isaac be putto death onthe other. In the end, there is no Judaism or Jewish People without Jews. Nonetheless, Abraham’s holding fast to a complex vision of his emerging People’s future represents commitment and risktaking that can inspire us. Sometimes actual endurance requires a willingness to risk mere existence.

My fourth lesson is really just an observation, or perhaps an acknowledgment. Filled with beauty and pleasure and sensation as it is, life is essentially serious and scary. We understand more and more scientifically, but at its core, life remains mysterious and filled with terror. Demands arise out of the blue; crises present themselves from one moment to the next. Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav taught us the words we now sing: “All the world is just a narrowbridge.”Nachmanwenton to identify thebridge as leading to the world to come, and I think it is not primarily the demands of rhythmand melody thatomitthat identificationfrom the song. The song comes to teach us that being unafraid is the essential ingredient- ha-eqar-of living well. Crossing the bridge of life may be precarious and demanding. Nonetheless, we should not allow ourselves to be paralyzed by fear. It is death that narrows the bridge, death that puts pressure on our lives and our choicesdeath and the impOSSibility of going down both of Robert Frost’s twopaths that diverge in the yellowwood ofour lives.18Alongwith death, there are pain, sickness, and loss to circumscribe the human condition. Finally, that condition is notan easyone, and works such as the Akedah and liThe Road Not Taken” help us handle it.

Because we cannot and should not keep death and life’s terror always in our minds, art and religion crystallize their recalcitrance into enduring forms whose beauty enables us to stretch our capacities for acceptance. From increased acceptance of life’s limits and rigors, we are ideally led to a fuller appreciation of its possibilities. Milan Kundera taught us about lithe incredible lightness of being”19 that comes from its taking place in an ever-receding, never-returning present. So it is that the Abraham of the Akedah carries on, decides, and acts in the face of imperfect knowledge. He and we may not understand God’s demand of him, but Abraham does not buckle or run away or go mad-all likely possibilities. He confronts life’s rigors and, in some sense, goes forward. As we return to the Akedah each year at this time, our own capacities for existential valor are increased.

Fifth and finally, accepting the Akedah as parallel to the Exodus and Sinai enriches our understanding of the other two foundational events. As Julius Lester puts this, “Just as we are to consider ourselves at Pesach as coming out of Mitzraim, just as we are to consider that we stand at Sinai for the giving of the Torah on Shavuot, so on Rosh Hashanah we are to consider that we are bound on the altar ofsacrifice in the land of Moriah.” For Lester, “if we truly consider ourselves so bound, then there comes on Rosh Hashanahan awful moment, one that rends our hearts and bowels as only the presence of death can [when] we learn what Isaac learned, namely, that to be a sacrifice is to be rendered holy. Hwe are fortunate, at some time during Yamim Noraim our hearts will break, [for as] SimeonbenZemach Duran wrote… in his commentary to Pirke Avot: ‘Sacrifices to God are a broken heart.”,20

Also, we will remember that love binds us to trusting another, even with our very lives. Isaacseems to trust his father in that way, as Abraham does God. I agree with Lester that”this level oflove is fearful, becauseit is frightening to love with such trust.”21 For Rashi and the Midrash, Abraham’s saddlinghis ownass, rather than calling upon his servants, shows that love disregards the rule and upsets the usual order of things. To leave Egypt, the proto-Jewish People had to trust God, even if midrashic commentary and the biblical text pull against that trust. To stand at Sinai amidst the thunder and lightning and categorical demands required trust, although here, too, that trust is acknowledged to be equivocal or partial, even if finally solid. But neither the Exodus nor Sinai, majestic as they are, focuses as much pressure on so small but critical a humanpOint as does the Akedah. Neither pivotal event brings love into the equation in the humanizingway that the Akedah does. Freedom and its complement, the law, do provide the foundation stones of civil society. But things are not always simple or rational. HaVing gained freedom and embracing law can still leave us rootless, floating. The Akedah comes to remind us that we are boundeven when we don’t quite understand why and to whom, even when we al’t~ impOSSibly tom between conflicting loyalties.

Readers will wonder if these five lessons do not really amount to the same thing, and if that thing is not impossibly vague. I see them as different ways of coming at the same paradoxical pairing of particular and universal, the fixed and the free, mentioned earlier. In the end, Ihave not domesticated the Akedah, but decided to make an uneasy peace with it. After trying various approaches over the years, I conclude that the binding of Isaac gets reenacted when we ourselves are bound to this complex, stirring text. I conclude with two short poems featuring the Akedah by the late, great Israeli poet Yehudah Arnichai from the sequence Tanakh, Tanakh; Etakh, Etakh; Ooh’Midrashim A~erim, included in the volume Open Closed Open.22 The first begins:

Two lovers lie together like Isaac on the altar and it feels
good-
Shnai ohavim shokhvim yachdav nqoodim ba-nqedah v’tov lahem-
They don’t think about the knife
or about the burnt offeringshe
thinks about the ram and he about the angel.
And finally, speaking to all ofuswho carry on our lives, day in and
day out-making hard choices, trying to be faithful and pious and
loving, trying to do better, striving for tshuvah-Arnichai writes:
Anyone who rises early in the morning is on his own.
He gets himself over to the altar-
ItO may-vee et atzmo la-aqedahhe
is Abraham,
he is Isaac, he’s the donkey, the fire,
the knife, the angel,
he’s the ram, he is God.

Notes
1. Keats’ confidence in this promise is expressed in his Letter #94, written in October 1818 to George and Georgiana Keats.

2. See Nahum Sarna’s commentary essays liThe Meaning of the Akedah” and liThe Akedah in Jewish Tradition” in his edition, Tile IPS Torah Commentary: Genesis (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989), pp. 392-94.

3. Originally published in Hebrew, copyright 1950 by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America; first Berman House edition, 1979, in arrangementwith Pantheon Books, copyright 1967byShalomSpiegel.

4. For this and the subsequent paragraph, as well as much else in the essay, I am indebted to Rabbi Stephen S. Pearce, Ph.D., who graciously shared with me his studies of the Akedah and several sermons that grew out of them.

5. In his “Today’s Torah” cyber-eolumn from the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies of September 17, 2001 (ziegad@Uj.edu).

6. In Book I, p. 40 (New York: Schocken Books, 1948 & 1965).

7. The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, editor and translator T. Carmi (London and New York: Penguin, 1981), p. 565.

8. I am indebted here to “Israeli Fathers and Sons Revisited” by Stanley Nash, COllservative Judaism (Summer 1986), pp. 28-37, as well as to having been privileged to study modem Hebrew literature with Professor Nash at the Hebrew Union College, New York School.

9. Such pieces include “Ishmael, My Brother” by Shin Shalom and “Little Hagar is Lost in the Desert” by Reisel Zichlinsky. Unfortunately, I am unable to provide citations for these poems, nor for A. G. Jacobs’s fine poem, quoted below in the text.

10. Published within “The Hour of Grace” (1983) in The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amic1mi, edited and translated by Chana Block and Stephen Mitchell (New York: Harper & Row, 1986), p. 151.

11. Such as “Sarah and Isaac Her Son: A Midrash” by Helen Papell, H. Wenkart (ed.), Sarah’s Daughters Sing: A Sampler of Poems In) Jewish Women (Hoboken, N.J.: Ktav Publishing House, Inc., 1990); “A View of Moriah” by Reva Sharon, Response: A Contemporary Jewish Review, 55; “Sarah’s Choice” by Eleanor Wilner, Sarah’s Choice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and “Sarah Talks to God” by Lillian Elkin, Judaism (vol. 44, 1995), p. 415.

12. “Where’s Sarah: Echoes of a Silent Voice in the Akedah,” by W. Lee Humphreys, in Soundings (Fall/Winter 1998), p. 505.

13. In “Abusing Abraham: Traditions, Religious Histories, & Modem Misinterpretations,” Judaism (Summer 1998), p. 262. This substantial essay is illuminating, in both its critiques and its assertions.

14. Guide for the Perplexed, Part III: chapter 24, translated by M. Friedlander (New York: Dover, 1956), p. 304.

15. Levenson, p. 270.

16. Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 31 a-b, Soncino edition.

17. Rashi, citing Genesis Rabbah 56, smooths this seeming contradiction in his gloss on ad koh, meaning both “yonder” and “thus.”

18. In his justly famous poem “The Road Not Taken,” published in 1915.

19. In his wonderful novel of that name, published in English by Harper & Row in 1984.

20. “The Binding of Isaac,” by Julius Lester in New Traditions (Spring 1985), p. 73.

21. Lester p. 71.

22. Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld (Harcourt: New York, 2000), which appeared shortly before Amichai’s death. Both poems are on page 24.

The Akedah

Stuart Forman

We usually look at the story of the Akedah as a Test by G-d of Abraham. However, Tradition tells us that Isaac was 37 years old when the test occurred – far from a young boy. None of the story could have unfolded without Isaac’s cooperation. How could an old man such as Abraham bind a younger man of 37 years old if Isaac had not been an active participant? And what person would submit to being sacrificed willingly by his own father?

The story poses serious concerns which the legend tries to deal with. Throughout the Tanakh text, the tension between fathers and sons unfolds. In this story, the complex relationship is played out in a most dramatic way.

It may well be that Abraham is a co-conspirator with G-d in this test. He tells his two “servants” to remain at the base of the Mountain while he and Isaac ascend, telling them to remain, and “…WE WILL RETURN TO YOU.” The text says “we” and not “I”. Had Abraham foreseen that the sacrifice would actually have taken place he would not have said “we” referring to Isaac and to himself?

So, why test his son in this dramatic way?

Over the millennia, the Jewish People have been equally tested. The numerous massacres, persecutions, and finally the Holocaust have all tested us against the sacrifice of our lives. These are harsh tests. If G-d is viewed as a father (Avinu she’b’shamayim) and we as children then the Akedah is ongoing throughout our history. Yet, “we” (father and children) have returned together from these tests.

Perhaps, the Akedah is the foreshadow of the rest of Jewish history. It is not so much that we have offered ourselves for sacrifice, as that we have returned, firm in our reliance on convictions of our ancestors. Tested, but not broken. Alive and not dead. In the here and now and not ashes.

Isaac had to earn the faith of his father to become an inheritor of that faith. What would become his future was not only based on his father’s convictions, but on his own. Each of us must become a person in our own right to be able to live. If Isaac had not been  so tested, it is Abraham who would not have had an inheritor. After the Akedah, Abraham was convinced that his faith would be upheld against the many tribulations which that faith would expose his descendents to.

Perhaps it really is Isaac who is the hero of this legend and the foreshadower of our own relationships to our own history. We cannot just accept the ideas and resolutions of our parents and ancestors. We must acquire them for ourselves, if they are to sustain us through the difficulties of the realities of our own present.