d'var torah: the binding of Yitzchak

[cellio]

This is approximately what I said in my d'var torah yesterday. (I took a written copy with me but found myself treating it a little more freely than I usually do in that situation. This is good, in that I'm trying to improve my delivery, but it does mean that I don't know exactly what I said, only what I intended to say.)

How could he?

This is the question the Akeidah brings to mind. How could Avraham be willing to sacrifice his son, and how could the man who argued for S'dom and 'Amorah not argue against this disturbing command?

The rabbis are concerned too. One midrash inserts an argument that has Avraham rules-lawyering in rabbinic fashion. Others explain that Avraham learned a lesson from S'dom and 'Amorah and trusted in God after that, no matter what, reluctantly. We don't really know how willing Avraham was from the text; multiple interpretations are possible.

The question "how could he?" carries the assumption that one would not make unreasonable sacrifices even for God, but is that really true? "Unreasonable" is in the eye of the beholder. For centuries Jews have given up their lives -- and those of their children -- rather than submit to religious domination; is that unreasonable? I don't think so -- and we honor those martyrs on Yom Kippur and during Yizkor, so I think our tradition agrees. Just this week we remembered the millions of soldiers who have sacrificed their lives or well-being in wars of varying merit; is that unreasonable? No, we undersrtand that sometimes there are things worth the price of human life. (No, I am not about to argue in favor of child sacrifice.)

Now sometimes sacrifices are clearly not worth the cost, but people make them anyway. How many parents provide for their children's basic physical needs but neglect any real nurturing, because they are too busy or absorbed with other matters? How many people neglect their spouses, focusing on careers or personal interests -- or the secret partner on the side -- instead of maintaining the marriages they committed to? How many people sacrifice their future well-being, or that of their families, in pursuit of vanity or consumerism or addiction? We don't have to hold a knife to another's throat to do harm.

Yet, if we have families or live in communities, we have to make uncomfortable trade-offs. We don't get to live in a vacuum and always do what's best for us. We have to sacrifice some things to gain other things. It is not just the magnitude of the sacrifice that matters; the decision to act depends on both what you give up and what you gain.

I know a woman who has desperately wanted a child for as long as I've known her. As time passed she endured more and more expensive medical procedures, which eventually worked. The pregnancy was difficult and her child was born with severe disabilities, so now her life, and her finances, must revolve around caring for this child. Yet, she willingly makes those sacrifices for her child; it's that important to her.

I know someone else who is one of the kindest, most giving people I've ever met. That became particularly striking to me when I learned that she had sacrificed years of her life taking care of adult family members unable to provide for themselves -- even though she has other family members who could share the burden but declined to do so. Now she's 50 and just beginning her life, in a way. She could have dodged, like her relatives did, but she didn't; it's that important to her.

I know parents who have given up all but their most basic needs -- living in the cramped house, patching the fifteen-year-old car through another annual inspection, and shopping at Goodwill -- in order to pay college tuition for their children, Their children's future is more important to them than the cost.

All of these are sacrifices that were important to the people involved -- we might or might not make the same decisions, but it's not about us.

And one from my own experience: I married someone with very different religious observances and we have both had to make sacrifices, even in matters where divine commandments are involved. Pesach is particularly challenging as it involves both God and family. To those who think Avraham should have just ignored God I ask: should I? It's not that simple.

We are all called upon to make sacrifices in life, some major and some minor, some appropriate and some not. Sometimes the call comes from God, sometimes from family members or others close to us, and sometimes from within ourselves. So our question should not be "how could he?", but rather "what sacrifices are worth making for us?". I don't think the lesson of the Akeidah is primarily about Avraham; I think its purpose is to get us to think about how we respond to calls for sacrifice. Each of us will answer that question differently, and we must answer it for ourselves.

---

An afterward: This passage begins with God deciding to test Avraham. (I wonder if Avraham was also testing God with some brinksmanship...) The torah uses many names for God and our tradition understands the different names to reflect different aspects of God. The God who issues this test is Elo[k]im, the aspect of strict judgement (din). The God who sends an angel to the rescue, however, is Hashem (the tetragramaton), a more merciful aspect. It is Hashem who is with Israel in the desert and it is Hashem we mainly pray to. Perhaps Avraham passed Elo[k]im's test but failed Hashem's, and perhaps this has something to do with our own relationships with these two aspects -- Elo[k]im, who is largely beyond our reach, and Hashem, who is ready to guide us if we allow Him.

Comments

[siderea]

Of all your d'var I have read, this is the most disappointing. It entirely side-steps the critical issue: all the examples you give are of people choosing to sacrifice themselves, but God commands Avraham to "sacrifice" someone else. And that's why this is so very challenging. You say, "No, I am not about to argue in favor of child sacrifice." But you just did.

[cellio]

Argh -- this reminds me that I totally forgot to talk about the halacha that requires that if you and someone else are dying in the desert and it's your water bottle, you must drink it even if he'll die. (It was in my plans but didn't make it into the bits. :-( ) That and talking more about the martyrs would have helped. (In some of these cases whole communities died rather than submit, so parents were in fact making that decision for their kids. It is weakened, though, because the parents were also sacrificing themselves.)