Back to the Rabbi's Desk

Yes, we've heard this story many times - so many times, in fact that some of us have become numb to it. Some of us look at it as a strange pediatric tale of our tradition. Others readily accept the popular explanation that it is in the Torah to emphasize that God does not want the Israelite people to practice child-sacrifice. Some of us may sympathize with Abraham, a father trying to do what is right. Some of us sympathize with Isaac - a son about to be sacrificed to the dreams of his father. And some of us sympathize with the ram - caught in the wrong place at the wrong time forced to sacrifice his very being.

I submit to you that this tale is neither written for children nor necessarily reflective only of ancient Biblical society. This is an ultra-modern tale of the intricacies of our relationships with God and our loved ones. This Torah portion is about us and about what should be most meaningful in our lives - our relationship with God and our relationships with the people most special in our lives.

The rabbis wrote scores of midrashim, stories about this troubling tale. They proposed that Isaac was actually 33 years old at the time of this story. The rabbis tell us that he urged his father to bind him tightly so that he could not move and thus blemish the sacrifice. In this understanding Isaac was proud to fulfill his father's demands. He was a willing sacrifice. We also learn that when Sarah heard that Abraham attempted to sacrifice her son, she fell off a roof to her death.

Though the majority of the rabbis defended and supported Abraham's actions, I contend that this was a test that Abraham failed. The question that moves me to anger is, "What kind of father was Abraham? How dare he be willing to sacrifice his son to fulfill his own dreams?" In my mind the true test was whether or not Abraham would yell out at God and say, "No! I will not do this! I will not commit murder in Your name!" But Abraham stood passive. For the strangers in Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham was willing to argue, but for the life of his own son he "stood idly by." When the really difficult challenge came, Abraham failed to do what was right - he failed to understand that blind faith leads to an eclipse of darkness. His failure cost him his relationship with both his son and his wife.

Consider this modern parable on our Torah Reading. "It came to pass forty generations after Abraham that the Lord appeared to Allister who was the descendant of Abraham and said to him, "Allister," and he answered: "Here I am."

And the Lord said: "Take your son, your only son, whom you love, take Keith, and bring him up to the Penthouse suite which is in your corporate headquarters, and there inform him that you have chosen him to advance to even greater heights than you have achieved in your own career.

And Allister arose early the next morning and he took his son and his secretary and his chauffeur and they entered his Ferrari and set out towards the place of which God had told him. And in the third hour Allister looked up and he saw the corporate headquarters from afar. And it towered above all the other buildings of all the corporations in the area. And Allister said to his staff: "You stay below on the first floor in the waiting room or in the restaurant, and the boy and I will go up to the penthouse office and we will return to you."

And Allister and his son went up to the top of the building in the private elevator, and Allister carried the gold lighter and the cigar cutter and Keith carried the briefcase, and the two of them rode together.

Then Keith spoke to his father and said: "Dad." And Allister said: "Yes, my son?" And Keith said: "Why have you brought me up here with you? You know that it is not my thing - cigars, the elegant restaurant and all the rest. My interest, you know, is not in high finance; it is in art."

And Allister said: "Only God and I know what your true interests are my son." And the two of them rode together. They arrived at the office, and Allister built the case to alter his son's life. He laid out the cigars. He cut two of them with the solid gold cigar cutter, and he lit them with the solid gold lighter, and he offered one to his son. And he said to him:

"Youth, my boy, is a period of naive dreams. Only with experience, only with maturity does one learn the realities of life. Your present interest may be in art but this is because you are young. I know better. Therefore, for your sake, I insist that you accept the responsibility of succeeding me in the company. I want you to sacrifice your interest in art, and for your own good, I am prepared, if necessary, to force the issue. You must change your major from art to business and get over this infatuation that you have with art. And if you don't, I will put you in a bind. There will be no more tuition, no more financial support, and no place for you in my home. I will withdraw my support, my caring, my love."

Just then, before the boy could answer, a voice came from heaven and said: "Allister, Allister!" And he answered: "Here I am." And the Voice said: "Do not do this to the boy, for now I know that you truly love your business, seeing that you have not withheld even your son, your favorite son, from it. Therefore do not put your hand upon this child and do him no harm, for now I know what really means the most to you."

And Allister looked up, and his eye fell upon his CPA who was caught in the thick of a financial discussion with his attorney. And Allister went to the CPA and he offered him the vice-presidency of the company instead of his son.

And the Voice called to Allister a second time and said: "Because you have done this, because you have let your son go and let him be himself and you have not bound him to your business, now therefore I will bestow my blessings upon you, blessings as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands of the sea. You shall become the Man of the Year in your industry and your company will wax great and it will conglomerate and it will shine on the Big Board. For on Mount Moriah I taught your ancestor that I do not want the sacrifice of human life, and today I have taught you that I do not want the sacrifice of a human personality."

And the two of them, the father and the son, embraced, and they took the elevator down together and they each went on their own way.

There is nothing more intense in life than our relationships with our loved ones. Through these relationships we either find life's greatest joy or life's deepest miseries. Imagine being a child bound to a sacrificial pyre of his father. Though Isaac survived physically, he was emotionally sacrificed. We hear little about the life of Isaac after this event. He is not known for any successes in life. Despite the fact that Isaac did not die at Abraham's hand, he was fatally wounded. Abraham broke the sacred trust of love.

So often during the past years, I have counseled, listened and cried with congregants who have been emotionally victimized by their loved ones. Sometimes it is a parent, an in-law, a spouse or an adult child; sometimes it is a close friend - it doesn't matter what the relationship is - when love is used as a pretext to fulfill one's own needs with no regard for the welfare of the other, love is abused.

During these next ten days we must pause and consider how we have treated our loved ones. As parents have we recognized that our children are created in the image of God - not in the image of their parents? Have we quietly but persistently required them to be someone other than who they naturally are? Through our discipline techniques have we required them to be obedient rather than respectful? Consider the following written by Barbara Bassett about an obedient child:
When Angela was very young/ Age two or three or so/ Her mother and her father/ taught her never to say NO./ They taught her that she must agree/ With everything they said/ And if she didn't, she was spanked and sent to bed./

So Angela grew up to be/ A most agreeable child;/ She was never angry/ And she was never wild;/ She always shared and she always cared/ She never picked a fight/ And no matter what her parents said/ She thought that they were right.//

When Angela was thirty three, she was a lawyer's wife./ She had a home and a family, and a nice suburban life./ She had a little girl of four/ And a little boy of nine,/ And if someone asked her how she felt/ She always answered, "Fine."/

But one cold night before the holidays/ When her family was in bed/ She lay awake as awful thoughts went spinning through her head;/ She didn't know why, and she didn't know how/ But she wanted her life to end;/ So she begged God, who put her here / to take her back again.

And then she heard, from deep inside,/ A voice soft and low;/ It only said a single word/ And the word it said was . . .NO/ Well, her family found it shocking/ Her friends reacted with surprise/ But Angela was different, you could see it in her eyes/ For they've held no meek submission/ Since that night three years ago/ When Angela the Angel/ Got permission to say NO. / Today Angela is a person first, then a mother and a wife./ She knows where she begins and ends,/ She has a separate life/ She has talents and ambitions,/ She has feelings, needs and goals./She has money in the bank and an opinion at the polls. /And to her boy and girl she says,/ "Its nice when we agree;/ But if you can't say NO, you'll never grow/ To be all that you're meant to be./ Because I know that I'm sometimes wrong/ And because I love you so,/ You'll always be my angels/ Even when you tell me NO."

Subtlety, unconsciously, there are so many ways that we pressure our loved ones to become the people that we want them to be rather than the people that they want to be. We tell our children that they must reach for higher or different goals. We impose our value system and our definition of success upon them. We want everything to be perfect for them but we fail to recognize that perfection is in the eye of the beholder. As parents of adult children, we withhold our support if they do not do things the way that we would like them done. Out of love and a true sense that we know what is right, we impose our methods of child rearing, career-building and general morality upon our children. It is so hard to withdraw a little and to give them the freedom of finding a different path.

It is hard enough to find the right path with our children and parents but it can be even more difficult to juggle the intricacies of love when it comes to our spouses and in-laws. We come into these relationships later in our lives with preconceived notions of what these bonds will mean. Each of us has the image of the perfect spouse, but our image is not possibly reflected in reality. We must learn to compromise, to accept the weaknesses of others and to know that the image of God is reflected in the eyes of our spouses and in-laws. It is our job to look at Abraham our ancestor and to know that he failed God's most precious test. He failed to say, Isaac, my son whom I love and cherish, is not created in my image. I may not make certain decisions on his behalf. If you want Isaac as a sacrifice, God, you must ask him yourself. Furthermore, I cannot make, Sarah, my wife, over in my image. She is a unique individual of her own. Created in Your image, God, Sarah must make her own decisions.

As a result of his actions Abraham lost his son and his wife. That which was precious to Abraham was sacrificed at his own hand on Mount Moriah. Our rabbis tell us that if you turn the Torah over and over, you will find that everything is in it. Haffchta v'hafchta, d'culei bah. Through Abraham, the Torah reveals a modern lesson for all times. During this coming year O God, let us learn from the mistakes of Abraham. Please God give us the strength to see the image of God in our loved ones. Teach us how to support them along life's path but prevent us from directing them toward our parallel paths. Furthermore God, give us the power of person to resist efforts made by others to diminish our own uniqueness. Teach us more and more that created in God's image, each of us has the capacity to find success and fulfillment for ourselves!

Once there lived a rabbi named Zusya. He was a poor man, who lived among the simple people of his own village. He did not speak like a great scholar, nor did he act like the famous rabbis of the big cities.

But he was a kind, generous man, who followed the commandments of the Torah. And so, many students came to study with Rabbi Zusya, and to learn from the way he lived his life.

Often Rabbi Zusya repeated the same lesson. "Listen to your heart," he told his students. "And try to live as the still, small voice inside tells you."

Then the rabbi's students would nod with understanding, and would ask God to help them hear the voice of their own hearts. One day Rabbi Zusya failed to arrive at the house of study. His students waited and waited, yet their teacher did not come. At last they became worried, and rushed to the rabbi's house.

There they discovered a terrible thing. The rabbi was sick, too ill to move. He lay on his bed, trembling, with the blankets pulled up over his shoulders.

"I am dying," said Rabbi Zusya. "And I am very frightened."

"Why are you afraid?" asked the rabbi's favorite student. "Surely you cannot be worried that God will find fault with you. All your life, you kept the commandments as faithfully as Moses. All your life you prayed as steadily as Abraham. Why then should you fear to face God?"

"That is not what frightens me," replied Rabbi Zusya, "For if God asks me why I did not act like Moses, I can tell God that I was not Moses. If God asks me why I did not act like Abraham, I can tell God that I was not Abraham."

"But, when God says, 'Zusya, how can you account for those times when you did not act like Zusya - what can I tell God then?"

Let us live our lives in this coming year with the knowledge that we are uniquely ourselves created in the image of God.