Rosh Hashanah 2013

Tonight begins Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when the story of the Binding of Isaac is read in Temples throughout the world. Here is an interpretation of this troubling story that may provide some real food for thought. L’ Shana Tova!

THE BINDING OF ISAAC

The most important story about Isaac in Genesis, and one of the most important (and troubling) stories in the Bible, is this terrifying story of sacrifice. God said to Abraham, “Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.” So the next morning, Abraham and Isaac headed off to Moriah.

Abraham gathered and split wood for the sacrificial fire, and placed the wood on Isaac’s back – not unlike the Roman practice of crucifixion, in which the victim carried his own wooden cross on his back. Abraham took the fire and the knife, and the two walked off together. “Father”, asked Isaac, “Where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Abraham said that God would provide the sheep. When they arrived at the place God had appointed, Abraham built an altar, laid out the wood, and bound Isaac. He lifted his knife, and then a voice called to him from heaven: “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from me.” Abraham then saw a ram stuck in a thicket. He got the ram, and offered it to the Lord in the place of his son.

If Abraham, as the Kabbalah states, is the essence of Mercy and Kindness, how could he do this? The usual interpretation is that it demonstrated Abraham’s absolute devotion to God, it showed that he was prepared to put God’s wishes above everything else, even the welfare of his own child, and God appreciated this and rewarded him.

But there is something utterly horrific in this interpretation of a God who would torment his loyal followers in this way, and even pretend to demand that they sacrifice their children for His pleasure. And Abraham himself comes off as an inhuman monster.

There has to be more, and there is. 

The usual image of Isaac is that he was a helpless little boy. But the information in Genesis suggests, and the Talmud and the Kabbalah confirm, that Isaac was a fully grown man of thirty-seven, old enough to make his own decisions. Sarah’s death is recorded immediately after the binding of Isaac. She was 90 when he was born, and died at the age of 127 (when Isaac was 37), presumably a result of the stress and shock. As additional evidence, we note that a boy of five or seven could not carry the amount of wood needed for a sacrifice on his back up a mountain. But nowhere is there any indication that he tried to stop the sacrifice: Abraham built the altar, placed the wood, bound Isaac, and lifted the knife, all without a single word of objection.

Isaac, in a supreme act of inner strength and unselfishness, offered himself to be sacrificed.

If Isaac had objected, Abraham could not have continued. Mercy and kindness could not pull this off alone. But Isaac’s role in the story (and this is the necessary human quality that he represents symbolically within our individual souls) is to rein in any extravagant excess of kindness with a strength and severity that is able to make difficult decisions and judgments. Isaac is a counter-balance to Abraham, and it is not quite correct to say that Abraham did this thing: they both did this thing, two consenting adults who needed each other. In other words, both of these qualities – Abraham’s ‘Mercy’ and Isaac’s ‘Severity’ – must be present for our soul to flourish.

Just as Mercy can ‘go too far’, the quality of Severity, which opposes and balances the giving-nature of Mercy, can also ‘go too far’, becoming fierce and selfish. Isaac, the beloved child who had been longed for for a hundred years, had naturally been rather spoiled by his doting parents. It was his nature to receive, to take, always for himself. He had to give that up to follow this command of God. That day in Moriah, with each others’ help, both men sacrificed their weaknesses.

All of this, of course, is a level of psychological interpretation. There is also a spiritual meaning in the story. In its most esoteric sense, the sacrifice of Isaac actually is completed! Isaac dies! That is, precisely by not returning to God, Isaac makes the supreme sacrifice of ‘dying’ to the heavenly life of eternal Being, and descends into the material life in order to experience all of this world and mortality.

It is interesting to note that in the Islamic tradition it was Ishmael, not Isaac, who went up the mountain with Abraham to submit to the sacrifice. We can argue to the end of our days about the historical veracity of these two competing claims, but this is beside the point. Both stories are symbolic representations of the same profound psychological and spiritual processes that occur deep within the human soul, and in this sense both stories are equally true.

Andrew Cort, author of The Purpose of Religion: Enlightenment, Meaning and Love in Jewish, Christian and Islamic Symbology
www.Spirituality-and-Religion.com