Toledot 2021
In this week's Torah portion, Vayera Avrohom faces the most difficult of his ten tests, to sacrifice his child. The Akedah is perhaps the most perplexing chapter in the Torah. How could Avrohom agree to do what was forbidden? When Cain killed Abel it can be argued that Cain did not know it was wrong. But when it comes to Abraham, God had already commanded Noah that we are not allowed to kill.
If God came to us today and told us to kill, the answer of course would be that the Torah is not in heaven, it's forbidden according to the halacha and so we can not, even if God commands it. And yet it seems that God approved of Abraham’s willingness to go through with it. Though God never talks to Avrohom again after the Akedah, an angel does appear to Avrohom and tells him, “Now I know you fear God and did not hold back your only child from me.”
Many answers and approaches have been suggested to this perplexing chapter, such as: 1. Sacrificing one’s child was not unusual or immoral at that time, so Abraham did not see it as unusual, 2. Abraham trusted that in the end he would not have to kill his child since God just said bring him up, 3. Abraham failed the test and was supposed to argue with God, 4. God does not tell us what to do because it is moral, rather it is moral because God commands it, 5. The point of the story is to teach us not to sacrifice our child, in those days the only way to advertise this was to get people’s attention by doing it on a mountain and dramatically saving Isaac at the last minute. 6. Jews have sacrificed their children for God thousands of times over the past two millennia, 7. Though on the level of pishat Isaac was not sacrificed, on the level of midrash he was (as seen from the many midrashic references to the ashes of Isaac), 8. The entire story is a metaphor to teach us something but it did not really happen, 9. The purpose of the akedah was to teach Avrohom a lesson after he treated Ishmael so badly, sending him to the desert with only a canister of water, which was essentially a death sentence, 10. God asked Abraham to “please” do it, He did not actually command him to.
The Netivot Shalom, the Slonimer rebbe, has an interesting alternative take on this test of Abraham (Nitivot Shalom Vayera):
“We do not show our love for God primarily by keeping the Torah and obeying God, that is comparatively easy for a righteous person such as Abraham, rather, the challenge of such a test is to retain and cultivate our love of God in the face of absurdity. Physical tests, the test of losing life, was no test for Abraham since he was so great and put little stock in the physical body...The main test in Abraham's life is not the killing of Isaac, but the test of loving God in the face of the contradictions and the inherent existential conundrum produced by the Akeda. The true test was the test of Abraham's spirit- to love God and to stay connected to God- even in the face of the utter contradiction between Isaac being his progeny and sacrificing Isaac...To love God in the face of such a contradiction is a much greater test than sacrificing his son.”
The Slonomer is saying that for each of us the ultimate test is not keeping the Torah, that is comparatively doable, the real test is loving God even in the face of existential contradiction and ultimate perplexity produced by our tests. For instance, such conundra as: the existence of a just and loving God and yet the reality of living in a cruel world; theodicy-the suffering of the righteous and the prosperity of the wicked; the indispensable idea that we are totally free to choose, and yet we are the product of nature and nurture, neither of which leaves us in charge of our free choice, etc.
The Kabbalah famously says that Abraham's test was not just sacrificing his son, but, that he received the message from God, “biasppaklaria shelo meira” in a vision which was actually unclear to him-and he did it anyway, and retained his love for this God of antinomies throughout. And so it is for us. Not only do we live flailing about in a sea of existential contradictions but the path forward itself is often unclear to us much of the time. The test for us is even in such a world, to know that God loves us, is present to us, and that we can and must love God back.
