Menuchat HaNefesh – The Soul’s Rest
By Tomer Yitzchok ben Avraham Avinu v’Sarah Imeinu
Apply g’vurah to circumstances
The rhythm of the bony donkey riding away from circumstances
calms you
lulls you
The chamor is my chayah
Be’er Lachai Roi flows to Elim’s 12 springs to water the 70
tamarim
As many people know, I have been obsessed with the Akedah for decades. I even chose Yitzchok as half of my Hebrew name as a direct result. My thinking about it has evolved, and I am sharing my current reading of the Akedah. I emphasize that a proper understanding of Torah allows for a variety of readings, even contradictory readings – as the sages say, there are 70 faces of Torah – and if, in matters of halachah, opinions of both Hillel and Shammai are preserved because “these and these are the words of the living G!d” even as the rulings of Beit Hillel are usually followed, then how much more must this be true for Aggadah, about which the Or HaChaim HaKodesh has said that we are free to come up with new interpretations even when they contradict those of Chazal!
It is not difficult to understand why the Akedah speaks so powerfully to me – my parents were married for twenty years without being able to have a child. One child died at birth and there were at least a couple of miscarriages. My mother didn’t even recognize the signs of pregnancy when she became pregnant with me! My father was nearly 50 and my mother 41 when I was born, a much less common occurrence in the 1960s than today. Deeply religious, my father a Southern Baptist minister, my parents offered me to G!d before I was born and held a dedication service for me, almost unheard of in Southern Baptist churches at that point (it smacked too much of infant baptism), although it has become more common in the intervening years. My father had very serious unaddressed mental health issues that unfortunately were exacerbated by his religious views. He was fired by four churches when I was between five and twelve years old and his beliefs in faith healing, miracles, and the prosperity gospel as well as in his own special calling led to abusive and negligent parenting. In many ways, it felt like I, or at least my childhood, was metaphorically sacrificed to my father’s understanding of what G!d asked from him.
Given that background, for many years, I followed the approach of many who hold that Avraham failed the test – that G!d wanted him to do the ethical thing and reject G!d’s demand – after all, he had argued with G!d about destroying Sodom and Gomorrah – why could he not argue with G!d about his own son? And I still see this as a very valid reading of the Akedah. It was very important to me that G!d be exonerated from wrongdoing and Avraham be condemned for his action or lack thereof. I noted that neither G!d nor Yitzchok ever spoke to Avraham again – surely this was a divine consequence of Avraham’s action. I also failed to find convincing the rabbis’ view that Yitzchok was thirty-seven years old – it made sense to me that he was perhaps around thirteen years old.
A couple of years ago, a friend confided in me on Shabbat Vayera that she had concluded, when hearing the Akedah read on Rosh Hashanah, that G!d was the villain of the story. And thanks to that and reading feminist critiques focusing on Sarah’s grief that led to her death after Yitzchok failed to return, I began to read the Akedah with Avraham banished from the position of protagonist, replace by Yitzchok (and I believe readings with G!d, Sarah, the ram, and others as protagonist are also very valuable). I also read Rabbi Ben Greenfield’s essay “Hesed, Gevurah, and Emet: Do These Attributes Actually Describe our Forefathers?” (https://thelehrhaus.com/tanakh/hesed-gevurah-and-emet-do-these-attributes-actually-describe-our-forefathers/), in which he argues that these attributes are given respectively to Avraham, Yitzchok, and Yaakov because they lacked them and needed them, which helped me to see that Yitzchok, as an adult survivor of trauma (such as his half-brother Yishmael being sent away), could quite easily have been thirty-seven years old. Rabbi Goldie Guy, in a wonderful class on Rebbe Nachman’s teachings, introduced me to his idea that “Ayeh?” “Where?” – referring to a question about where G!d is while in the place furthest from G!d – becomes the place of G!d’s greatest closeness – when applied to Yitzchok’s question “Ayeh ha-seh l’olah?” “Where is the lamb for the burnt-offering?” is transformed into the proclamation “[The question] ‘Where?’ is the lamb/means for the ascent!”
With all of this in mind, this is how I read the Akedah today – not as a story of G!d testing Avraham, but rather of Yitzchok finding the courage and the gevurah – the strength – to leave an abusive situation and find a life of meaning.
While it is obvious that Avraham is going to sacrifice Yitzchok, Yitzchok nonetheless chooses to deny it and remain oblivious and accompany his father, the young men, and the donkey (chamor) to the mountain. Once they leave the two young men and the donkey behind, he begins to get a glimpse of what is going on and notes the fire and the wood when asking his father where the lamb is. Notably, he leaves out mention of the knife, which is the instrument which would be used to kill him – he has begun to awaken, but still cannot fully fathom the horror of his father’s intention to murder him. He ends up being bound and placed on the altar and his father has taken in hand the knife to kill him when the angel intervenes.
After the angel (not G!d, the angel) talks to his father, the text notes that Avraham returns to the young men. As rabbinic commentators note, Yitzchok is not mentioned, and they speculate that he did not return with Avraham, perhaps going to Gan Eden to heal from being actually wounded or even killed, perhaps going to yeshiva to learn Torah, or perhaps going to rejoin his brother Yishmael. What very few note is that the donkey is also not mentioned.
I believe Yitzchok ran back to the young men and took the donkey and rode it into the rest of his life, a life free of his abusive and murderous father. I read chamor (donkey) as chumrah – stringency – the same three-letter root (Hebrew linguists might quibble and insist they are, in fact, different roots that share the same three letters – but I choose to read this in a midrashic and Chasidic way) – the stringency that is a demonstration of the gevurah that he is able to access to make this bold journey. G!d says “Lech lecha” – “go forth” – or “go to yourself” – to Avraham at the beginning of this story – as he did in his first words to Avraham – but perhaps THIS lech lecha was meant for Yitzchok, not Avraham – to find the gevurah to go and find himself.
But the story does not end with his escaping the abuse. Later one, we read that Yitzchok was meditating in the field toward evening (the institution of the afternoon prayer of Mincha, according to the rabbis) and he looks up and sees camels coming – which bore his soon-to-be wife Rivkah. Again, I read camels – g’malim – not only as g’malim but as g’milut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness. He is able to transcend his trauma and embrace acts of lovingkindness and live a life of meaning and purpose. After his father dies, we read that G!d blessed him – the Chizkuni and others say that Avraham failed to bless him and therefore G!d blessed him with the blessing Avraham was meant to give him – and he settles near Beer-Lachai-Roi, the well Hagar is shown when she is expelled while pregnant by Avraham at the insistence of Sarah.
This is a redemptive reading for me. Yes, Avraham inflicted horrible abuse on Yitzchok given his understanding of what G!d wanted. Yes, it is an extremely problematic story. But, for me, the Akedah now represents Yitzchok’s finding the strength to make his exodus from this horrific situation for a life of meaning and purpose, a life blessed by G!d.
So may all of us merit such a redemption. Amen.
Sarah hated Hagar and sent her away both when she was pregnant with Yishmael and when Yishmael laughed/played at Yitzchok's weaning - Yitzchok being Sarah's son.
But the gematria (mathematical value of the letters) of Hagar is 208 - and the gematria of Yitzchok is . . . also 208.Three times in the Torah it says not to boil a kid in its mother’s milk
The Shulchan Aruch says this teaches that there are three things one cannot do: cook it, eat it, or benefit from it
My name is Tomer Yitzchok – the Date-Palm Tree Will Laugh
The Yitzchok – he will laugh – seems like a mitzvah as well
Yitzchok appears in the Torah 94 times – do I have to find 94 ways to laugh?
Do I have to find five ways to laugh while someone close to me tries to murder me?
The biggest and best laugh was when I snuck out with the donkey – the chumrah chamor – and neither I nor the donkey were noticed when we fled
THAT makes me laugh!
It might be helpful to familiarize yourself with the Akedah, Genesis 22:1-19, and the G'vurot blessing in the Amidah prayer in the Jewish liturgy prior to reading this.
In
the Akedah, Abraham left the two lads with the donkey – the chomer – as he took
Isaac off to be sacrificed. He returned to the two lads without Isaac – and they
were there without the donkey. The donkey – the chamor – is chumra – stringency
– and Abraham had saddled his donkey – his stringency – to be able to murder
his son in the service of G!d. But he left the donkey – his stringency – behind
to take Isaac up the mountain – and was able to hear the rachmanes – the mercy –
of Hashem telling him not to murder his son. But Isaac was able to hear the
call of G!d to take up the chamor – his chumra – his stringency – for himself - and left
without Abraham, first getting the donkey and riding it off to the next chapter
of his life.
It was only by adopting and riding the donkey that Isaac was able to leave the abusive situation he was in and find his own relationship with G!d – ultimately being able, when he went out into the field to meditate – and daven Mincha – that he was able to look up and see camels, gemalim – gemilut chasadim – acts of lovingkindness.
May
we find the gevurah – the strength – to adopt the chumras – the stringencies –
that make space for meditating in the field and looking up to see the gemilut
chasadim – acts of lovingkindness – we can do – lifting up the fallen, healing
the sick, freeing the captives – to be like G!d.
Place
G!d
Squared
Creation
Place
Place
I was nearly murdered! Place I fled from, away from my would-be murderer – my father
– and in the flight is Life and Powers and torrential rains that washed away my
tears and my fears and my destroyed dreams and caused new life to spring forth
Place
where I build the Sanctuary – and it gets destroyed – and
Place
where I rebuild the Sanctuary – and it gets destroyed – and
Place
where I rebuild the Sanctuary . . .
G!d
Squared
Place
He never really paid much attention to me before. Sure, he threw a big party for me when I was weaned, but that was more about him proving what a big man he was, not really about me. The only person who paid attention to me that day and played with me was my older brother Ishmael, and my mother, whose picture is in the dictionary next to the word “overprotective,” got so jealous because she hated his mother, my Aunt Hagar, for sleeping with my father AT HER REQUEST that she had both of them sent into the wilderness. Worst day ever.
Well, until that fateful day when my father took me and a couple of servants and the family donkey on a trip to make a sacrifice. The three days’ journey was great, camping out under the stars. It’s the first time he really paid attention to me as anything other than a prop for his fantasy of being a rich wealthy family man. Or so I thought. Once he and I set out to climb the mountain, with me carrying the wood, naturally, it slowly dawned on me that he didn’t leave the others behind to spend quality father-son time together. No – he was going to sacrifice me – I later found out because the Holy Terror in the Sky told him to. And he nearly went through with it, too, until that angel stopped it!
We ended up sacrificing a ram caught in the thicket. It smelled soooo good – I’ve loved wild game ever since. But when it came time to go back, I knew I had to run away – no way could I spend another minute with that sociopath.
It was hard and I had to find my own way – but it was the best decision I ever made. I never spoke to him again – and now that he is gone, I do not regret that decision one bit.
I eventually realized that the Holy Terror in the Sky wasn’t the G!d I came to know and I learned to pray in the field in the evening when I go out to meditate. But finding G!d was very much in spite of my father, and not because of it. And I will never forget how distant G!d felt in that moment when the knife was descending to kill me.
I still wake up in a cold sweat sometimes, feeling the ropes binding me to the cold sharp stones of the altar.
Today, in a chasidus shiur with Rabbi Nissan Antine, we looked at a piece by the Sfas Emes on Noach, but it came up that the gematria for אהבה, love, and אחד, one, are the same - 13.
I have been a part of a number of different religious groups in my life (I’m now referring to this as my “sectually promiscuous” past) and, at one point in my very early thirties, was a part of a Roman Catholic religious order. One priest in the order who did not like me wrote what he thought was a negative comment in an evaluation that said “Tim seems to be on a spiritual quest” – and this was one of the most puzzling things I have ever read – I couldn’t imagine (and still can’t imagine) how any clergyperson of any religious tradition could be worth their salt WITHOUT being on a spiritual quest. I took a class at a local synagogue last spring that studied Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s book Man’s Quest for God and shared this story in the first session and was heartened to learn that the rabbi teaching the class and the other participants share my view.
I have also been obsessed with the Akedah for three decades, since in some ways it seems to serve as a parable for my own childhood, in which my fundamentalist Christian minister father was willing to metaphorically sacrifice me to his ministry and religious mania. I believe Avraham failed the test (he should have argued with G!d as he did for the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah) and read the story through a lens of the trauma Yitzchak experienced. Yet I still see new insights in the story and the reading of the Akedah on this year’s second day of Rosh Hashanah landed differently for me this year.
I took a class with Rabbanit Goldie Guy on Rebbe Nachman last year and she introduced me to his teaching about Ayeh/Where, in which he teaches that discovering that one is in a place of filth far from G!d and asking, “Ayeh/Where is the place of G!d’s glory?” (from the Musaf Kedusha for Shabbat), “this, this, is the essence of his rectification and ascent” (Likutei Moharan, Part 2, 12:11). He goes on to say that Yitzchak’s question to Avraham as they ascend Mt. Moriah, “Where is the lamb for the olah/burnt-offering?” shows that this is the means of spiritual ascent (“olah” also means “ascent”):
This is also the concept of the olah
(burnt-offering), as in “but ayeh (where) is the lamb for the olah?”
(Genesis 22:7). [Asking] “Ayeh?” is itself
the concept of the lamb for the olah to rectify and atone for those
thoughts in the heart that stem from the “filthy places.” For it is through the
concept of Ayeh that a person is rectified and oleh (ascends)
from there, as mentioned above. (Likutei Moharan 12:16)
Learning
this shifted my understanding of the Akedah (see http://www.timcravens.com/2022/02/where-is-lamb-for-ascent.html
for my first response to this learning).
Today, it shifted again for me slightly – “Where?” is the lamb for the ascent – the means of ascent – because it is the invitation to a spiritual quest to answer the question. Yitzchak does not return with Avraham to join the servants and goes his separate way – possibly to a yeshiva (one midrash), possibly to join his brother Yishmael (a more modern theory), possibly to do something else. But he must follow this quest – because it is his raising this question that begins his spiritual quest that is the REAL sacrifice. (NOT the pshat/literal meaning of the text – I believe he was young and did not have agency in the literal text, which is why I read it as trauma – but seen in a more midrashic way, I can see it as a partially voluntary acceptance of the sacrifice as a response to the abusive actions of his father.)
And here is an interesting thing that I realized today – in Gen. 22:9, it states that Avraham bound Yitzchok and placed him on the altar on top of the wood. However, the text does NOT say that Avraham UNbound Yitzchak – even though the ram was offered instead. Yet even the word “tachat” – translated (correctly for the literal meaning) “instead of” in v. 13 – “Avraham took the ram and offered it as a burnt-offering ‘instead of” his son” – also means “under” – so, spiritually and metaphorically and midrashically, I think one can read it as the ram being the physical olah/burnt-offering under the spiritual olah/offering-of-ascent of Yitzchak – the beginning of his spiritual quest.
There are readings of the story of Yitzchak that see his life as a sacrifice (for example, unlike Avraham, Yaakov, and the twelve sons of Yaakov, he never leaves Eretz Yisrael) – and I think seeing his making the question “Where?” the offering that began a life of sacrifice and spiritual quest is one way to read this. (I am grateful to Daniel Krupka who has shared the understandings of Yitzchak as sacrifice with me.) In this reading, the Akedah still involves Yitzchak being offered as an olah/offering-of-ascent – only transformed from a physical sacrifice involved death to a living sacrifice involving a constant quest for G!d.
I recite verses for two names that are significant to me (Tomer and Michael) at the end of the Amidah, as is a minhag (albeit a minhag introduced in a Sabbatean text, Kitzur Shelah, but that is a discussion for another time) – and at Musaf, I was inspired to also read the verse in my machzor for Yitzchak (or any name beginning with yud and ending in kuf): “[G-d] brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and broke their bonds asunder” (Psalm 107:14). So the binding of Yitzchak is done by Avraham (albeit with partial consent from Yitzchak) – but the unbinding can only be accomplished by G!d – and is the ultimate result of the quest of Yitzchak begun on Mount Moriah
Longtime regular readers of my posts will know that I have been wrestling with the Akedah, the binding of Isaac (Bereshit/Genesis 22), for over three decades. One local rabbi gives me a trigger warning whenever it comes up in daf yomi or other contexts - and invited me to give a class on the various interpretations on the Shabbat when it was read as part of the Torah reading.
Ten things were created at twilight on the first Shabbat. Or maybe it was thirteen things. Or maybe fourteen.
God definitely created Balaam’s donkey’s mouth then (was the rest of the donkey created before twilight? or at the same time as her mouth?). God may also have created the ram that Abraham sacrificed at that time – or maybe not.
I think Balaam’s donkey and Abraham’s ram studied together and were best friends for the hundreds of years before the ram’s time came. God taught them how to create with their words, and the donkey and the ram were better at creating than any human that has ever lived.
The donkey and the ram could teach people how to bless with such powerful blessings that they forgot how to curse.
But the angel of the Lord botched things with the ram. He stopped Abraham from killing Isaac before the Lord had a chance to open the ram’s mouth – and Abraham killed the ram before the ram could speak. Had Abraham listened to the ram, he would have offered branches from the thicket the ram was caught in – a thicket of palm, myrtle, willow, and citron – and his heart would have opened and he would have given Isaac such a great blessing that we would be reciting it instead of the priestly blessing. But the ram got sacrificed – and so did Isaac’s blessing – and God had to give Isaac the blessing of his father after his father died.
The angel learned from his mistake. The Lord opened the mouth of Balaam’s donkey to talk to him before Balaam opened his mouth to curse Israel – an open mouth out of which blessings came, not curses. The donkey’s words were so powerful that Balaam gave a blessing they sing in the synagogue every morning. I think the donkey taught Balaam those words.
But because the angel botched things, we will never in this world know the blessing Abraham was supposed to give to Isaac.
In the fifth chapter of Pirkei Avot, there is a mishnah that describes the traits of the disciples of Abraham as opposed to the traits of the disciples of Balaam. The traits of the former are good, those of the latter bad. The disciples of Abraham enjoy this world and inherit the world to come – the disciples of Balaam inherit Gehinnom and go down to the pit of destruction. Clearly, we are meant to see Abraham as awesome and Balaam as bad, striving to emulate the former and avoid the traits of the latter at all costs.
And yet.
In Genesis 25:11, we read that “after the death of Abraham, God blessed his son” – and Chizkuni points out that although God gave Abraham the power to bless – which he used – he never blessed his son Isaac – so that God had to bless him instead. This does not seem praiseworthy of Abraham to me. His near-murder of Isaac in the Akedah – after which Isaac went his separate way from Abraham (Genesis 22:19) – and the description by Isaac’s son Jacob of “the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac” suggests that Abraham’s doing so because of his understanding that God commanded him to do so permanently damaged not only Isaac’s relationship with Abraham but with God as well. (It is my theology that Abraham failed the test – he should have spoken up and objected to God’s request – as he did for the wicked men of Sodom! – rather than blindly obeying the command – and I take as evidence of my view that the angel of HaShem ordered him to stop and that God never spoke directly to him again in Genesis – I realize there are other interpretations, but that is the only one that resonates with my understanding of any God worth serving.)
Meanwhile, the mercenary prophet Balaam, when asked – and paid! – to curse the people of Israel instead gave a blessing so powerful that it has been put in a prominent place in the liturgy – to celebrate with joy entrance into the synagogue in the morning (and non-Orthodox movements often sing it at other services as well, there being many beautiful arrangements). Mah tovu ohaleicha Ya’akov, mishkenoteicha Yisrael. How lovely are your tents O Jacob, your tabernacles O Israel. There is even a teaching that I heard (don’t remember the rabbi who taught it – or whether the rabbi was Talmudic, Midrashic, or Hasidic – if anyone knows, please let me know!) interpreting the parallel structure to suggest that transforming one’s daily dwelling, ohel, into the Mishkan, the Tabernacle or Tent of Meeting where God dwells in the midst of God’s people, elevates one spiritually from one’s natural self, Jacob, into one’s higher spiritual self, Israel – the one who wrestles with God.
How can it be that Abraham is awesome while failing to bless – and, indeed, abusing and even damaging his son – while Balaam the bad provides such a profoundly insightful blessing that contains within it a template for spiritual growth?
I don’t have the answer. But I would suggest that we very carefully look at our own words and actions – in serving God, are we inadvertently abusing and damaging others? And we should be open to learning from even those we see as wicked, who may inadvertently provide us with profound blessings and roadmaps to spiritual growth.
What lessons do you draw from this?
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we read the Akedah, the binding of Isaac, as the Torah portion. Abraham took his son Isaac and built an altar, bound Isaac to it, and reached out his hand to take the knife to sacrifice him – at which point the angel of HaShem intervened, so that Abraham sacrificed a ram instead. Afterward, Abraham returned to his servants – but the Torah does not mention Isaac returning with his father (Gen 22:19). There are various rabbinic explanations as to why this is, but from that moment, Isaac walks an independent journey from that of his father. I can’t say I blame him – his father had just started to kill him, after all, even if he was interrupted! Isaac continues this independent journey – later on, the text states that after Abraham dies, God blessed his son (Gen 25:11) – and the rabbis note that although Abraham had the ability to bless people and, indeed, blessed others, he did not bless Isaac, so God blessed Isaac instead.
We travel this journey with Isaac during the first three blessings of the Amidah, which is a roadmap for our own spiritual journey. First, in the Avot (Ancestors) blessing, we give thanks for the heritage we receive from our ancestors, without which we would not have life or the knowledge of God. Pirkei deRabbi Eliezer (ch. 31) teaches that the next blessing, G’vurot (Strengths), was first prayed by Isaac when his life was spared by the substitution of the ram in the sacrifice. As we pray G’vurot, we spring to life as ourselves, drawing from our ancestral gifts but also establishing ourselves as unique individuals. And it is only after embracing our unique selves and journeys and God’s individual blessing for us that we are able to come together as a community to perceive and rejoice in the holiness of God in the Kedusha.
What, you may ask, does this have to do with Rosh Hashanah? Rosh Hashanah celebrates the original creation of the world by God – and also the continuous creation that God enacts in partnership with us. As the new year begins, we are called by God to embrace the individual selves God creates us to be, grateful for our ancestors and their faith while courageous in our own journeys, and to use those gifts to bless God, each other, creation, ultimately receiving a blessing ourselves. But we can only do this once we have the courage, like Isaac, to set out on our own journey, called and blessed by God.
May we find the strength to do this in 5781.
