Here are the facts. In order to try Abraham, G-d comes to Abraham and tells him to take his son, his first-born, his only one, whom he loves, Isaac, and offer him up as a burnt-offering atop one of the mountains G-d will yet show him. We, the readers, but not Abraham, are told that this is a test. Without a word, not even to Sarah, Abraham gathers the necessary items: the wood, the fire, the knife, loads it all on the donkey, and starts out with Isaac, two servant lads. Three days later he lifts his eyes and sees the place from afar. He tells the servant-lads, stay here with the donkeys, and I and the lad will go up and prostrate ourselves and return to you. They go together. On the way Isaac says to his father, Abraham, "Father, here are the wood and the fire, but where is the lamb for a burnt-offering." "G-d will see for him the burnt-offering, my son, and they went on together. When they reach the top, Abraham's actions are described mechanically - he builds the alter, arranges the wood, binds Isaac to it, takes the knife and raises his arm to slaughter his son. A messenger of the Eternal cries out, Abraham, Abraham, don't set your hand against the lad, don't do a thing to him. It's over. Abraham passes the test.
Now the question that is often asked is: What precisely is the trial Abraham undergoes. At first, one assumes that the test is whether or not Abraham can overcome parental attachment to offspring, not to mention plain, old ethical considerations, and obey the will of the Ruler of the Universe. But compounding the problem for Abraham, and making the trial that much more soul-wracking, is the fact that G-d explicitly told Abraham, "For through Isaac shall your line continue". By which Divine proclamation is Abraham to be guided? Soren Kierkegaard, the influential Danish philosopher and founder of modern existentialism, wrote that Abraham's greatness lay in that he was able to believe both of these logically irreconcilable propositions - that he could make the "leap into faith", and that this was the nature of the trial. Others have turned the story on its head and have claimed that Abraham actually failed the test. G-d actually wanted Abraham to refuse to sacrifice Isaac. The praise for his obedience toward the end of the story is actually tongue-in-cheek if you read it carefully, so they claim.
Over the year I have been drawn to one or the other of these versions of what Abraham[s trial actually was. But I find I can no longer hold any of them. When I look at Elisha Noam's eyes, I see that I've missed the point of the Akedah. Abraham did not fail the test, he passed it - the story says so explicitly and the entire history of our people is testimony to that fact. And the test was not whether Abraham can simultaneously hold onto both ends of an impossible proposition, it was not even whether Abraham is at least a priori willing to obey G-d no matter what. What G-0d gave Abraham was a simple hearing test.
You see, Abraham was a unique human being, He is homo-religiousus. Only he of all of his generation could pull himself out of the much and mire of idolatry - which is the treating that which is not ultimate as though it were. He was a man of extraordinary vision, and a man of passion enough to be able to cling to and follow through on the insights of that vision no matter what was demanded. He saw far and way well - he say G-d in his dreams and saw from the distance the place - be that place the mountain of sacrifice or the omnipresent -- the Place of the universe. What G-d needed to know was not whether Abraham saw the way things were, but whether he could also hear.
You see, in Judaism, the relationship to G-d is described much more frequently by resorting to the auditory metaphor than by employing the visual metaphor. "Vayomer Hashemn el Moshe" -and the Eternal spoke to Moses. G-d's presence for us rests not in an image, but in a a name. When Moses wanted to bring the people proof that G-d had sent him, G-d revealed one of his names to Moses, and the Torah takes it for granted that that would be sufficient.
So what did Abraham hear. He heard E-lohim speak to him and demand a sacrifice. The name, E-lohim, is derived from a Hebrew root meaning strength, and thus the name signifies G-d in his role as enforcer, judge, limiter, King. And that's the aspect. Of judge, of dominant force, manipulating and affecting other entities treated like "its" is always easier to hear. The intensity of power, the allure of firmly carrying through to the end and accomplishing, the pull of standing on the mountaintop is constantly dangled before us. It is all the more appealing because it is true - there is such a thing as power and control in the world, and without it nothing would be done - we would sit placidly like jelly, basking placidly in the sun.
But that's not all there is. G-d has other names besides E-lohim, harder to hear but just as certainly G-d's name, vessels of His revelation. None of these other names appear in the story of the binding of Isaac. Until Abraham raises the knife. Then he hears a messenger, an echo of the name Yud, heh, vav and heh, commonly called the tetragrammaton. This name is made up of the Hebrew letters of the words was, is, and will be. Though untranslatable, it is best translated as Eternal, or Eternal One. Power, as defined by physics, is measured in units of time - the more instantaneous the measurement - that is, the smaller the chunks we cut time into, the more precise the measurement of power. Here, with the tetragramaton, the opposite occurs - all time is fused together, and the perspective that fusion yields produced love. Unmeasured love, uninstigated love, love for the sake of the oneness of all being. Abraham heard this name of G-d, and realized G-d had spoken it to him before - "your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac".
These two aspects of the transcendent, controlling, limiting, judgmental power on one hand, and pure, natural, almost irrational love on the other, are the fundamental particles of the stuff of human life. It is the interrelationship of these two, called in Hebrew gevurah and hesed, that we daily try to manage, and that we are always sending out of balance. We need to hear both names of G-d, the power-laden E-lohim and the love-laden Tetragrammaton we pronounce today as A-donai. When we hear them both, we move onto a different plane, the plane of balance, of beauty called in Hebrew tiferet.
For, don't be fooled. The middle path is not a grey compromise between two rival extremes. It is a balance of two indispensable extremes, but it is more as well. Tiferet, the middle path, is wholeness and balance that lends beauty, it is a radical path in its own right that demands as much ideology and commitment as the extremes of power and love, right and left, old and new, individual and community, and the like. And this path is the path of Israel. Our people takes its name from the patriarch, Jacob, Ya'acov, meaning one who struggles with G-d. Now we know that that struggle is the struggle to balance the two prevailing attributes of G-d, which are also attributes of the soul of a person: power and love.
No, hearing both names of G-d and balancing them is not a middle-of-the-road venture at all. It calls for wisdom and perspective. In a generation overbalanced by power, tiferet, balance, calls for the Jew to lean to the side of love. In a time when love has become so prevalent a commodity it has soured and turned to one of its many caricatures, the Jew must insist upon sternness and standards. And we are all so far from truly achieving that balance. We are so far from hearing both names of G-d. And when I look at little Elisha Noam and see the names resting so contentedly, sleeping in each others arms, I tremble to think that as the years pass, they will separate, that he and I will separate, and he will have to work so hard to bring them back together, for that is the human lot.
That is why we sound the shofar. We squeeze together the names of G-d through the horn of the ram that Abraham found, and offer them as a cry, as a plea, before Eternity. Shofar, the root shipur, improvement, betterment, reaching toward balance and wholeness after having lost it. Change rededication, renewal - that is all we have to offer before G-d this day, or ever. The miracle, the promise we keep close to heart, is that that will be enough. Our greatest efforts at balance will be enough. For that's the other lesson Elisha Noam has taught me - that the wholeness and peace inside him, soon perhaps to depart, will return. Let us return, with the blasts of the shofar, to wholeness, to G-d.
Rav Yehoshua Kahan
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Rav Yehoshua Kahan is a teacher at Yeshivat Bat Ayin. He has held pulpits in Knoxville, Tennessee and Los Angeles, and served as educational director of Livnot U'Lehibanot. He blogs on Parashat Hashavua here |