Abraham, Hagar, and Us: Risking Confusion, Rejecting Despair—For Our Children

By RABBI SHARON COHEN ANISFELD

Genesis 21-22

The reading for the second day is the story of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, the painful story of our father, Abraham, commanded by God to go up to Mount Moriah to sacrifice his beloved son Isaac. Abraham is ready to obey the divine command and all the preparations for the burns offering are made. The altar is built, Isaac is bound upon it, and just as Abraham raises the knife to his son's throat, an angel of God calls out from heaven and says, "Don't do it." Just testing. Do not raise your hand against the boy.

Before I had children, I used to think that it was insignificant that the sacrifice was not, ultimately, carried out—that in terms of the inner drama taking place, the relationship between father and son, it almost didn't matter that in the final moment, the knife was stayed and the child was spared.

Now I feel differently. I think it is of utmost importance that the angel called out, that Abraham was able to stop, that Isaac was spared, and that he lived to have childen and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of his own.

Indeed, the commentaries pick up on just how hard it must have been for Abraham to stop when the angel told him to. The angel had to call out twice, "Abraham, Abraham." Imagine the psychological momentum of the experience. What must it take to bring yourself to the place where you are prepared to sacrifice your own child? And then, what must it take to stop, to hear the voice that says, "No. Don't do it."

Hagar had to resist despair in order to see the alternative that would save her child. Abraham had to resist something else—the blinding certainty of one who believes that he has heard the voice of God, of one who is so zealously committed to a vision that there is no room for doubt, and hence, no room for alternative visions.

I am convinced that part of Abraham's greatness was his capacity to experience doubt in the midst of his faith, his capacity to hear the voice of the angel saying, "No,"his capacity to stop and see another way, an alternative that would save his child's life.

This is no small thing, to be willing to risk the possibility that what one once believed with absolute unshakeable certainty, may no longer be true or right.

Until the last moment, Abraham's zealous devotion was so blinding that he could not even see the ram caught in the thicker right before his eyes. It was only the voice of the angel saying, "Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him," that enabled Abraham to suddenly see what was there all along. "When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son."

The ram was the alternative, the creative solution that Abraham hadn't seen in his zeal to go God's will. The boy is saved, and with him, Abraham's own future. Tradition has it that Isaac is the father of the Jewish people.

The place where the Binding of Isaac took place is called by Abraham "Adonai yireh—God will see". From this, according to the Torah text, comes the saying, "Behar Adonai yei-rah-eh—on the Mount of Adonai there is vision". That place is what we now call the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and what Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, the place where violence started one year ago, on the eve of Rosh Hashana.

The future of the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael depends in part on whether we will be able to risk confusion, and question that which seems certain to us. For only if people on both sides take the risk of questioning their own truths do we have a chance of discovering the ram caught in the thicket, the alternative to endless sacrifice and bloodshed.

That future also depends in part upon whether we will be able to resist despair. For only if we insist upon hope in the face of an apparently hopeless situation do we have a chance of discovering the unexpected well of water in the desert, the alternative to watching as our children die before our eyes.

I do not always feel so hopeful. But these stories echo in my mind, and I know that ours is hardly the first taste of a people's hopelessness the world has seen. This is not the first time that people on both sides of a conflict are tempted to throw up their hands in disgust and say, "We give up. There is no solution, and is no alternative. We must simply resign ourselves to war, because that is the only way."

And this is not the first time that people on both sides will say, "Wait, stop, there must be another way, if not for our own sakes, then for the sake of our children."

The shofar that we blow during this High Holiday season is made from the horn of a ram. There are many traditional associations with the blast of the shofar. In biblical times, it was often used to call people to war. But our sages teach that it is also meant to remind us of the ram that appeared to Abraham on Mount Moriah so long ago.

Let us pray that this year's blast of the shofar will not be a call to war, but a reminder of the ram caught in the thicket—a reminder that there may be an alternative that we cannot imagine now.

Let us pray that Jerusalem will once again become a place of vision, the place where the children of Isaac and the children of Ishmael will resist despair and risk confusion, in order to discover the possibilities for life and peace that lie waiting before us, if only we will choose them.