JustASC

I heard a nice, even important comment on the Binding of Isaac story during Rosh Hashana services yesterday, courtesy of my synagogue’s former president (who credited it to a sermon he heard at the Rutgers Hillel 30 years ago from, perhaps, Rabbi Julius Funke or Rabbi Gerald Serotta).

Many of us find it hard to admire the behavior of Abraham after God instructs him to take his son Isaac up the mountain for ritual sacrifice. Where is the Abraham who dared debate God, when God declared He was about to destroy Sodom and Gemorrah for their wickedness? Where is Abraham who demanded that God reconsider, the Abraham who argued, “Will the judge of the whole world not act justly?”

By the time we get to the binding, his moral chutzpa has been replaced with blind faith, unthinking obedience.

Some teach the story as God’s test of Abraham — a test that Abraham passes by suspending his human judgment and paternal instincts to obey God. 

But if you find that hard to swallow — and think it’s a short hop from blind faith to religious fanaticism to holy terror — consider this: Maybe Abraham failed the test, and Torah wants you to realize that.

What’s the textual proof? At the begining of Chapter 22, God speaks directly to Abraham, as he did previously in the Sodom and Gemorrah episode, here instructing him to ” Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and … sacrifice him … as a burnt offering.”

Abraham does what he is told, and is prevented from killing Isaac only by the hand of an intervening angel — an angel, not God directly. Perhaps this is a suggestion that Abraham, failing the test by not arguing for Isaac’s life, has fallen out of favor with God, Who will no longer speak with Abraham directly. In fact, God will no longer speak directly with Abraham in the rest of the Torah.

Another hint? Why do we need three patriarchs to begin with — what remained unfulfilled in Abraham’s lifetime? It takes Abraham’s grandson, Jacob, to make the story whole, and then only after he earns his new name, Israel, by wrestling with an angel. The very name Israel — ‘one who wrestles with God’ — suggests the test that Abraham failed. We earn our name — we earn our covenant — only when we wrestle with God. Not when we put aside our moral reasoning and human instincts, but when we engage with the tradition by bringing those faculties to bear. Only when we’re willing to wrestle with the implications of faith and obedience, holy writ vs. observed life, do we really pass the test.