While we read it only twice a year, once on Rosh HaShanah and the other time for Parshat Vaera, reading the Akedah enters us into a search for the universal, timeless meanings we can draw from this narrative. Poets, artists, and philosophers, and rabbinic sages all seek to understand the story’s deeper meaning, and what it can tell us about humanity. When we read the Akedah, we are struck by the drama and uncertainty of the event, likely the result of the moral ambiguity implicit in the story’s arc. At the same time, I always find myself wondering what inspiration we might draw from this text, how the angel stopping Abraham from sacrificing Isaac can teach us something positive about the relationship between God and humanity.
Chancellor Arnold Eisen writes in Taking Hold of Torah that God could not have seriously intended for Abraham to sacrifice his own son because of the nature of God’s promise to Abraham at the beginning of Parshat Lekh Lekha:
“I never believed that Abraham, who loved his son so, actually went up to the mountain with the asses and the firewood and the servant boys-and Isaac-intending to sacrifice his “only son” (Ishmael didn’t count) on the summit at God’s command. I knew even in moments of hot Oedipal anger, when any excuse to hate him would have been welcome, that my father wouldn’t have done such a thing….Abraham had not left his homeland, contended with Pharoah, argued over Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. etc.-all in accord with the will of his inscrutable God-just to lose his blessing, his future, his Isaac, in a barbaric act of slaughter” (Arnold Eisen, Taking Hold of Torah, 26).
According to Eisen, we should not believe that God really wanted Isaac to be sacrificed because such a command would be internally inconsistent with the nature of God’s promise to Abraham, and had Abraham sacrificed Isaac, any other messages of the Abraham narrative would be lost upon all who read it, for what kind of people would study a Torah that validates sacrificing your own son? Instead, because Abraham does not end up sacrificing Isaac, our rabbinic tradition asserts that the Akedah represents a timeless affirmation of the covenant between God and the Jewish people.
Our rabbinic commentators argue all the key actors in the Akedah narrative will play some role in the future destiny of the Jewish people. For example, we are taught in a midrash that the ram slaughtered on the mountain would be used at key moments throughout the rest of the Tanakh:
“That ram, not a part of it went to waste: its tendons became the ten strings of the harp that David used to play on; its skin became the leather girdle around the loins of Elijah; as to its horns, with the left one the Holy One, blessed be God, sounded the call on Mount Sinai; and with the right one, which is larger than the left, God will in the future sound the call at the Ingathering of the Exiles in the Age to Come” (Pirke Rabbi Eliezer, Chapter 31).
According to the midrash, if we are to see the Akedah as a moment whose meaning is timeless, then it makes sense to assume that the actors in this timeless moment will play roles in future generations. Explaining this decision of the rabbis, Professor Shalom Spiegel writes in The Last Trial: The Akedah that (emphasis mine),
“For had it not been for this substitute that God provided in place of Abraham’s son, Isaac would never have had offspring, nor could the covenant and the promise have been fulfilled (Genesis 21:12), “For it is through Isaac that offspring shall be continued for you.” However, since Isaac was redeemed, it is as though all Israel had been redeemed” (Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: The Akedah, 38).
In Spiegel’s understanding of the Akedah, since every narrative of the Torah can be seen as archetypal, it would make sense that Isaac’s redemption the mountain would extend to all of Israel’s redemption throughout the generations. More specifically, if the Akedah was a moment where Abraham learned that God would not force him to sacrifice his son, and instead affirms a covenant built around faith and purpose, it follows that each subsequent generation of Jews should feel the power of a divine connection in their own lives.
When you hear the Akedah read in synagogue this Shabbat, you might choose to pay close attention to the moral questions of the story. I do not minimize the importance of any of those questions, yet I would encourage everyone to think about the story more broadly, and see how our tradition grappled with the story’s drama but placing into the context of our lifelong relationship with God. Abraham and Isaac went up and came down the mountain, and their relationship with God was better for it; may we continue to reap the benefit of their divine blessings.
Shabbat Shalom!
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