Rosh Hashanah 5770 #2

Finding Your Story

The binding of Isaac is a complicated and difficult story. For thousands of years Jews and non-Jews alike have been trying to understand it and deal with the questions it raises. How could Gd request that Abraham kill his son? How could Abraham agree to do it? Why didn’t Abraham argue with Gd, as he did in an attempt to save Sodom and Gomorrah? When he argued for Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham told Gd that He was not being fair. Did Abraham think it was fair that he sacrifice his son?

Why does the Torah tell us that Abraham woke up early? Why didn’t Gd tell him where he was going until he got there? In 19 short verses there are myriads of questions. Last year we answered some of them, and next year we may answer some more. Some of them will never be answered. But today forget those questions. I will ask a different one. What does this story have to do with you? What is your role in the Akedah?

The Torah is your story. It is a story not only about your ancestors, but about you. Everything that happens in the Torah foreshadows what will come later in the Torah, and also what happened later in Jewish history, and what is happening to Jews today. There are layers upon layers of meaning, and and the meaning you need today is in it.

There are three main characters in the Akedah. One or more of them is you.

Abraham is a man who has finally, after many years, after it was already too late, been granted what he most wanted in the world. What he wanted was a son with his wife, Sarah. The thing you most want is probably something else. But it is the same story nonetheless. After a lifetime of service, a lifetime of hardship in the employment of a mysterious Master, Abraham has received his reward. And then, suddenly, his reward is taken away.

Abraham is not a modern father. He doesn’t want a son just because babies are so darn cute, or because he wants someone to play ball with. Abraham needs a son to continue his family line. Without a son there is no continuity. Abraham’s name will be forgotten, and it will be as if he has never existed.

And yet, Gd has promised him his reward. וַיּוֹצֵא אֹתוֹ הַחוּצָה וַיֹּאמֶר הַבֶּט־נָא הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וּסְפֹר הַכּוֹכָבִים אִם־תּוּכַל לִסְפֹּר אֹתָם וַיֹּאמֶר לוֹ כֹּה יִהְיֶה זַרְעֶךָ Gd took Abraham outside and said ‘Look towards the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them. Thus shall your descendants be.’

Was Abraham wrong to think that he had been promised many descendants? Did Gd only mean that his children would be very small and far away? Gd later said to Abraham:

אֲנִי הִנֵּה בְרִיתִי אִתָּךְ וְהָיִיתָ לְאַב הֲמוֹן גּוֹיִם:  וְלֹא־יִקָּרֵא עוֹד אֶת־שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָם וְהָיָה שִׁמְךָ אַבְרָהָם כִּי אַב־הֲמוֹן גּוֹיִם נְתַתִּיךָ:  וְהִפְרֵתִי אֹתְךָ בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד וּנְתַתִּיךָ לְגוֹיִם וּמְלָכִים מִמְּךָ יֵצֵאוּ:   וַהֲקִמֹתִי אֶת־בְּרִיתִי בֵּינִי וּבֵינֶךָ וּבֵין זַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ לְדֹרֹתָם לִבְרִית עוֹלָם לִהְיוֹת לְךָ לֵאלֹקים וּלְזַרְעֲךָ אַחֲרֶיךָ

And I, behold, My covenant with you shall be that you will be the father of many nations. And your name shall no longer be called Avram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I will make you the father of nations. I will make you very fruitful. Nations will come from you, and kings. I will establish My covenant between Myself and you, and your descendants after you in their generations, as a permanent covenant, to be your Gd and the Gd of your descendants after you.

And what does Abraham get? וַיֹּאמֶר קַח־נָא אֶת־בִּנְךָ אֶת־יְחִידְךָ אֲשֶׁר־אָהַבְתָּ אֶת־יִצְחָק וְלֶךְ־לְךָ אֶל־אֶרֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּה וְהַעֲלֵהוּ שָׁם לְעֹלָה עַל אַחַד הֶהָרִים אֲשֶׁר אֹמַר אֵלֶיךָ Gd said ‘Take your son, your dear one, whom you love, Isaac. Go to the land of Moriah and offer him up there as a sacrifice, on the mountain that I will tell you.

This story is your story if your life has ever stopped making sense. If, like Abraham, everything has turned upside down in a moment. If you have ever functioned in a daze, putting one step in front of the other because you know you are supposed to, but doing it as if watching yourself from a distance. “Look, there I am walking to the hospital.” “There I am on my way home, where my wife, or my husband, no longer lives.” 

The rabbis say that Gd has Abraham walk for three days to prove that Abraham is not following His commands on the spur of the moment, that he could turn aside at any moment, but he does not. I say Abraham does not turn aside because he cannot.

You may remember thinking “If I do not go to the police station, he will still be alive.” “If I do not go to my boss’s office, I will not be fired.” But you also found it impossible to turn away. You also walked step by step, wondering if this was a dream or a nightmare.

Perhaps you are not Abraham in this story. Perhaps you are Isaac. If someone you loved has ever acted inexplicably, if someone you trusted has ever shown you an aspect of his or her character that you had never seen before, then you have lived through this story. 

Isaac climbs the mountain with his father, and he asks him “Here are the firestone and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” His father answers “Gd will see to the sheep for His burnt offering, my son.”

Many rabbis have said that Isaac was bound willingly, that he did not resist being offered up as a sacrifice. Yet the conversation between father and son in this story known for its terseness must be there for a reason. And the reason can only be to show that Isaac still had no idea what was going to happen.

If Isaac went willingly, why was he bound at all? In the midrash, the rabbis wrote that he asked to be bound, lest he inadvertently flinch when the knife was at his throat, and make the sacrifice unkosher. Why do the rabbis say this? Because how else could Abraham, over a hundred years old, have tied up his young son, had he not been a willing participant? How could Abraham have caught Isaac, had Isaac decided to run?

But I suggest another explanation. I would suggest that Isaac let Abraham tie him up because Isaac was in shock. Because Isaac had obeyed Abraham’s commandments his entire life. Because nothing--nothing in the past had suggested to Isaac that something like this would take place, and he just didn’t know what to do.

Perhaps this is your story. Someone you trusted. Someone in a position of authority. And you suddenly realized that they were going to do something horrible. Maybe to themselves. Maybe to you. Maybe to someone that you did not realize until that moment that it was your responsibility to protect. And you didn’t know what to do. And then it was too late.

Perhaps even, like Isaac, people later said that you must have gone along with it, because there was a moment when you could have stopped it and you didn’t. Perhaps you even said that to yourself. But that is not the case. You were fighting a lifetime of obeying authority. You were fighting a lifetime of being taught to trust, and you just weren’t able to switch gears fast enough.

After the story of the binding of Isaac, the Torah never has another dialogue between Isaac and Abraham. There are not many dialogues in the Torah at all, so this might not mean anything. But those same rabbis who wrote that Isaac went to the slaughter willingly also wrote that Isaac chose never to speak to his father again. They lived together, or near each other, but they never spoke again.

If you have had an experience in which someone you trusted betrayed that trust, and you were never completely whole again, or if you had to fight for normalcy, or if trusting just didn’t seem worthwhile anymore, then this story is your story.

Who is the third character in this story? Not Gd. We cannot get inside Gd’s mind. We cannot compare Gd’s experience to our experience and hope to learn something. No, the third character in this story is Sarah, whose very absence from the story is itself a presence. 

Abraham was willing to adopt a son. Abraham had a son with Hagar, his concubine. For Sarah, there was no one but Isaac. So where was Sarah in this story? Was she at home? Was she away? Did she know? Did she guess?

If you have ever been left out of an important decision, if something that concerned you was ever hidden from you, then this story is your story. In some ways, this is quintessentially a woman’s story. For how many thousands of years were the decisions made by men? How many times did a woman have to keep silent when she knew better?

But this is not just the story of a woman, or even of all women. This is a story of powerlessness, a story of being shut out of other stories. If you have ever been told that you have no say in the matter, when you know very well that you should, then this is your story too. 

Sarah’s story is your story if people have made crazy decisions without consulting you. If you have come home to find that your life has changed beneath your feet, if someone you love has done something that alters your life forever, this is your story. For everyone who comes home to find that your family is no longer a family, for everyone who has cried hot tears of helpless rage, this story is your story.

Shortly after the binding of Isaac, we read that Sarah has died. The midrash says that she died of grief, thinking that her husband had killed her only son. Was she refusing to make a choice between her husband and her son? When given two impossible choices, some people elect rather to remove themselves from the equation. But the truth is that we do not know Sarah’s reaction, nor even if she knew anything about the incident. She might have lived the rest of her life with both Isaac and Abraham refusing to tell her why they would no longer speak to one another.

The rabbis noted certain patterns in the Torah. There is a famine and Abraham must leave the Promised Land for Egypt. So too his grandson Jacob goes down to Egypt because of a famine. We first encounter Rebecca, Isaac’s wife, at a well. Their son Jacob also meets his wife Rachel at a well. Years later, Moses will meet his wife Tziporah at a well. Nothing happens only once in Judaism, the rabbis said. The stories of the Torah are prophecies, they are hints and metaphors for other stories in the Torah, and then stories in the Prophets and the Writings as well. They are also prophecies of events that have occurred in history, and events that are yet to take place at the end of all times. But they are also metaphors and prophecies about our lives right now.

If the Torah does not relate to your life then it is nothing more than a collection of stories, geneologies, and laws that are of mere historical interest. Yet when we look deeply into the Torah we find a shocking relevance. In Pirkei Avot we read that Ben Bag-Bag used to say of the Torah, turn it and turn it again, for everything is in it. It is your story. Your life is there.

The story of the binding of Isaac is a appalling story, a horrible story and yet a compelling one. The questions we ask are the same questions that we ask of horrible and compelling stories from our own lives. There are answers, but we may never know if the answers are truly correct. Some people will be comfortable not knowing, and others will pick the answer they think is best, and that will allow them to move on. 

To look into the world of Jewish scholarship is to find millennia of Jewish answers to the questions you ask about your own life. Some of these questions are simple: How important is education, how important is family? Some of the questions are very difficult: How should we deal with senseless tragedy? How should we react if we are betrayed by someone close to us? These questions are asked, although not always answered by our Tanach. Turn to it. It will be a shield to you and a refuge. Find your story in the Torah, and you will see its sacred and eternal nature. Judaism is not just about Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca. Your life, your story, is a holy one.

I pray that in the year 5770 your story, your holy story, will be a good one. May it be a story without sadness, and may it be filled joy and gladness. Join me in saying כן יהי רצון.