Sefer Bereishit
Parshat Vayeira: On Knowing the Right Sacrifices
By Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz
Of all the events that take place in Parshat Vayeira, the most unforgettable has to be the Akeidah, the Binding of Isaac.
To rewind a bit: In Genesis chapter 15, God tells a childless Abraham that his descendants will eventually be as numerous as the stars. And yet, Abraham and Sarah are, in what seems cruel, made to wait until they are 100 and 90 years old, respectively, to have a child of their own, Isaac. 1
By the time we get to chapter 22, in our parshah, it begins to feel even more senseless and cruel. God infamously says 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.” 2
And Abraham actually does it. The Torah tells us, chillingly:
They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. 3
Only by verse 11 can one let out a sigh of relief:
Then a messenger of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.”
“Do not raise your hand against the boy, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.” 4
Further perplexing readers, God’s response to Abraham’s actions is a rewarding one. For the Jewish people, his willingness to sacrifice his son is supposed to be an immensely positive development:
By Myself I swear, the Lord declares: “Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your favored one, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.” 5
All of this leaves us with a lot to figure out. What do we make of this story?
The first possible read, maybe the plainest interpretation of the text, is that Avraham is a hero, willing to sacrifice his own moral reasoning in service of the Divine command. Obedience to God comes before everything. This is what the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard called “the teleological suspension of the ethical.” Many traditional Jews, such as Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, sign on to something like this view.
On the other end of the spectrum, still completely within the boundaries of Jewish interpretation, is the opinion that Avraham misunderstood what God was saying and that, of course, God would never actually command such a thing. According to the medieval Provencial rationalist Ralbag (Gersonides),6 God wasn’t telling Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; rather, God was telling him to take Isaac to witness a sacrifice,7 so that he would know how to serve God later on. 8
Another option is to note the moral direction in which God is pushing the Jewish people. This is not just the first, but the last time God calls for child sacrifice, and God calls it off before it can happen. Perhaps God is making it entirely clear to the world that never again will you sacrifice a child in the name of a god.
Furthermore, according to Maimonides, the very institution of korbanot, sacrifices, from the Israelites was a concession to human desire and practice at that time. In other words, God, realizing that humans were accustomed to sacrificing animals to their deities, decided to allow his chosen nation to do the same, with the caveat that they do so according to God’s specifications. 9 Maybe it is the case that God meets the people where they are at and instructs them morally from there.
No matter what interpretation we accept, none of us like to imagine ourselves into the story, either in the position of Abraham or of Isaac. But, if we lower the temperature, knowing that we will never find ourselves in a situation in which God commands us to kill our own child, we can, and perhaps must, ask ourselves: How is this story morally relevant for us today? I offer two approaches:
First, we can examine the moral challenge of how far we’re willing to go and how much we’re willing to sacrifice for what we believe in most deeply. Whatever we’re fighting for in the world, whatever we love most, how much are we willing to give from our time, our resources, and our lives at large? We are not asked to sacrifice our children, but for the sake of the improvements we hope to see in the world, we are asked to sacrifice some things. Sometimes it takes a bit of introspection to know what those are.
Alternatively, in light of Ralbag’s reading, we can think in the opposite direction. How much of what we cherish most do we mistakenly put up on the altar in blind pursuit of our goals—or because we’re misunderstanding what we’re called to do? In what ways do we sacrifice our children for our own professional fulfillment? In what ways do we sacrifice humanity’s children based on our inaction on global threats to their future, such as climate change and nuclear warfare, because we’re preoccupied with other goals? What do we misguidedly put on the altar by not understanding and internalizing the will of God?
When we reduce the stakes, it is easy for all of us to think of ourselves as a Yitzhak, remembering times that we’ve been victimized, exploited, or made a pawn in someone else’s religious or personal enterprise. But we must remember that the Torah also inspires us to put ourselves in the position of Avraham.
When God “put Abraham to the test,” seemingly commanding him to sacrifice what he loved most, Avraham’s answer was “Here I am.” 10 And when Avraham had his knife in hand ready to slay Isaac—and God called on him to stop—his answer was the same, “Here I am.” 11
Our task is to listen for that voice of God.
Sources
- Yishamael had been born to Abraham and Hagar 13 years earlier.
- Genesis 22:2
- Genesis 22:9-10
- Genesis 22:11-12
- Genesis 22:16-18
- Ralbag is an acronym for Rabbi Levi ben Gershon.
- Such a reading would require a rereading and retranslation of the text. For example, God tells Avraham: “ve’ha’aleihu sham le’olah,” “offer him up there as a sacrifice.” In the original biblical Hebrew, the words “ve’ha’aleihu” and “olah” share the same root and are thus interconnected. However, the word “ve’ha’aleihu” both literally and in a general context, means “bring him up.” Ralbag’s insight requires this alternate reading, rendering the translation as “bring him up there [to witness] a sacrifice.”
- Ralbag on the Torah, Genesis 22:1:1
- See Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim (Guide for the Perplexed) 3:32. For further discussion, see Midrash Vayikra Rabbah 22:8.
- Genesis 22:1
- Genesis 22:11