Observances & Rituals
Sacrifice: Example of the Akeidah
By Harry Glazer
September 26, 2008
If there's one thing that Rosh Hashanah is replete with, it is symbolism.
Much of the symbolism is uplifting or, at the very least, optimistic. The custom of dipping apple slices in honey embodies our wishes for a sweet new year. Families come together for prayer services and festive meals, demonstrating our renewed understanding that familial bonds are the greatest gift bestowed on us by God. New clothes and fine foods reflect our appreciation of the unique character of the season and, perhaps, our desire to start off the new year with a fresh start.
The sound of the shofar stirs us to examine our deeds from the previous year and to seize the opportunity to recognize our sins and shortcomings, while recommitting to act with alacrity on behalf of the values of our Yiddishkeit. The ceremony of Tashlich reinforces the idea of recognizing the errors of our past and pledging to live with a greater daily awareness of God in the year to come.
One source of symbolism during the holy day, however, does not offer such buoyant imagery or a heart-warming message.
The Torah reading on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the account of the Akeidah -- the sacrifice of Isaac -- is a puzzling counterpart to the otherwise optimistic cast of so many of the customs of the day. Our encounter with the Akeidah is, of course, not anomalous to this holy day alone since the biblical episode is codified as a regular component of our morning prayers, both on weekdays and on Shabbat/holidays.
Since the rabbis of old made a point of including this reading in our Rosh Hashanah service, we should grapple with the meaning of this challenging tale -- both on its own and in terms of its relevance to Rosh Hashanah.
My interest in examining the Akeidah anew is prompted, in part, by an essay I read earlier this year in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The Chronicle is a weekly publication focused entirely on issues of concern to colleges and universities, which is widely read by administrators and faculty members on campuses across the country.
In an essay published in February entitled "Abraham's Curse: Our enduring fixation on the slaughter of the innocents,"
Chilton asserts: "Naming the compulsion to take innocent life in the belief that sacrifice is noble goes beyond the incidents of any single crime and takes us into the foundations of human culture and of how people understand the divine … Abraham's haunting willingness to slay his own child makes the Akeidah the darkest of the Bible's classic scenes, a strange counterpoint to the stories of promise, deliverance, and justice that readers expect from a just God and his righteous people."
Chilton goes further, stating that all three major monotheistic faiths "have provoked their people to martyrdom by speaking in terms of Abraham's sacrifice of his son and making the Akeidah into the model of pure devotion to God" and states that "the 20th century saw more children sacrificed to one cause or another than any previous century saw offered to its gods." He suggests that we begin to "confront" the Akeidah and "untangle our actions from the atavistic impulse," so we may free our children from "Abraham's curse."
After I read this essay, I was stunned by the Christian clergyman's intense antagonism toward this pivotal tale of Judaism's forefathers. Reflecting on his argument further, I realized that one of the critical distinctions between his worldview and my own observant Jewish outlook is rooted in the fact that he relates to God's biblical identity when it's associated with "promise, deliverance, and justice" but not when it's tied to inexplicable sacrifices.
We know from our exposure to other episodes in the Torah, and from traumatic accounts in Jewish history past and present, that the type of inexplicable sacrifice evidenced in the Akeidah is not unique. Job, described as "righteous" in the text, suffers the loss of all his children in one day and then is struck with painful ailments. David is pursued for years by King Saul, despite David's faithful service to the king and to the nation, and during his own reign as king sees three of his sons die early ignoble deaths. These accounts and others demonstrate to us that Abraham was not alone in encountering sacrifices that appeared to be undeserved or inequitable. In our own era we can look back on six million tales of forced, barbaric sacrifice of Jewish lives that also appear manifestly unjust.
It appears to me that to understand the Akeidah's role in Jewish theology and in our Rosh Hashanah prayers, we cannot get distracted by a discussion of "Why did God impose this test on Abraham and Isaac?" While some ancient commentators do offer creative answers to this troubling dilemma, ultimately we must know that God's ways are beyond our comprehension and we can never hope to understand the reasons why He imposes such painful trials.
What we can do, however, is reflect upon how Abraham faced the trial and then moved on afterwards. The greatest relevance and personal inspiration to be derived from this account may be tied to our understanding of Abraham and Isaac as role models of people who derived meaning from sacrifice and suffering.
In that vein, I find one aspect of the narrative of the Akeidah particularly enlightening.
Just as Abraham raises his hand with the knife to complete the errand he was sent to do by God, an angel calls out to him and says: "Do not send your hand against the lad and don't do anything to him, for now I know that you are a God fearing man, seeing that you did not withhold your son, your only son, from me" (22:12). The text instructs us that immediately after receiving this reprieve, Abraham sees a ram caught in the thicket. He takes the ram and sacrifices it on the altar instead of his son. Then he names the place "God sees."
After the sacrifice and the naming of the place, the angel speaks to Abraham again and states: "By myself I swear, said the Lord, because you have done this thing and had not withheld thy son, thy only son, that I will greatly bless thee and I will greatly multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven and as the sand, which is upon the seashore. And thy seed shall possess the gates of their enemies. And in thy seed shall be blessed all the nations of the earth, because thou hast hearkened to My voice" (
What is striking in this part of the narrative is that God only bestows the heavy praise and the far-reaching blessing in the second utterance of the angel, which takes place after the replacement sacrifice and the place naming. Why is that?
I have reviewed a few commentaries on the Akeidah and have not found this question addressed (admittedly, though, I did not conduct an exhaustive study). So I will offer my own idea with the hope that, please God, it is an appropriate interpretation of the text.
After Abraham was instructed to "cease and desist" from his plan to sacrifice Isaac, he must have experienced a rush of emotions. Relief surely came first, along with a renewed love and hope for the future of his son. I suggest that another powerful emotion that may have overtaken Abraham then was a sense of frustration, both at being launched on a three-day task that he had to abort before completion (however welcome the cessation was) and for the initial inexplicable command itself. Perhaps more than the initial call to sacrifice Isaac, this moment of mystified frustration could have shaken the core of Abraham's faith.
Yet he moved on. Rather than become frozen in the moment of relief and exasperation, or moving from there to a crisis in faith, Abraham chose instead to take decisive action to recognize God's presence -- despite his own inability to explain why God manifested Himself as he did. Perhaps this is why Abraham receives the expansive blessing after the sacrifice and place naming, because God saw then that even after the heat of the crisis passed Abraham didn't stop and wait for his doubts to resolve. He held onto his faith and acted on it.
As we look to the year ahead, we can safely assume that we will confront challenging circumstances that force us to make sacrifices on behalf of our faith. God willing, the challenges will be relatively minor and the sacrifices will not cause us much hardship. Whatever sacrifices we face, we can learn from the Akeidah that we may never understand why God has us confront some trying times. Our job is not to get hung up looking for answers. Instead we must struggle to find God in the situation, thank Him for whatever strength or resources he gave us within the trial, and endeavor to move on. If we can make this our task, then we will find blessings.
Harry Glazer can be reached at donlegofzechut@yahoo.com.