On the Altar: Finding Ourselves in the Akeidah

The Akeidah (Gen. 22) is among the Torah's most striking stories. It has prompted centuries of debate about how a father could lead his son to the slaughter, how God could demand such an abominable action, how Isaac must have felt, how Sarah responded, and how moral repair could take place following such a violation of trust.

We will not be resolving these questions tonight, but I urge you to read any, all, or none of the sources (feel free to read the text of the Akeidah itself if you'd like instead) below with an eye to how you might situate yourself in the story. Use the questions below and throughout the source sheet as inspiration, don't feel bound by them.

How do you relate to Abraham? How would you respond? How do you relate to Isaac?

The Akeidah is the story of the Jewish people: bound between the knife and the altar.

We begin with a general principle set forth by the Ramban (Nachmanides, Spanish commentator, 1194-1270) on how to interpret the narratives in the Torah:

Below are a series of Talmudic-era texts (~300-500 CE) on the Akeidah. As you read, think about the dominant themes running through them and how these images of the scene resonate with you.

The notion that Isaac (and the Jewish people represented through him) eagerly approached the altar out of service to both his father and to God is prominent through the Middle Ages — particularly during times of prosecution.
Solomon bar Samson Chronicle on the Rhineland Massacres of 1106:
Who has heard or seen such a thing? Ask and see: Has there ever been an akedah like this in all the generations since Adam? Did eleven hundred akedot take place on a single day, all of them comparable to the binding of Isaac son of Abraham? Yet for the one bound on Mount Moriah the world shook, as it is stated: “Behold the angels cried out and the skies darkened.” What did they do now, why did the skies not darken and the stars not dim?



Piyyut found in the Cairo Geniza:
Isaac said to his father, how pleasant is the altar you built me, my father, stretch out quickly, and take your knife, while I pray before my Lord.

Uncover your arm and gird your loins, like a man who prepares a meal for his lord, this is the day about which they will say: a father did not pity, a son did not tarry…

Sprinkle my blood over the altar, assemble my dust and bring it to my mother, my life and death, it’s all in His hands, I thank Him that he has chosen me.

Blessed are you, my father, that they will say: I am the ram for the burnt offering of the living God, let your anger be stronger than your compassion… be the man who does not spare his son.

Like a merciless man, take up your knife, and slaughter me, lest I shall become unclean, do not weep, I shall not stop you, I take myself not because of you.

All Jews should think that, being from the seed of Abraham, they should be prepared to take the lives of their children, and the children should be prepared to be bound by their fathers and to bind them, as Abraham did to perform the will of his Heavenly Father.

Many sanctified the name of God, among them my son, my only one, a bridegroom, a perfect sheep whom I offered as a burnt offering.

From this notion, it becomes natural to understand Abraham's perspective. What does it mean that Abraham "suppressed his mercy?" The most significant commentator on understanding Abraham's perspective is the Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855).

Yet Abraham believed and did not doubt, he believed the preposterous. If Abraham had doubted–then he would have done something else, something glorious; for how could Abraham do anything but what is great and glorious! (...)

Why then does Abraham do it? For God’s sake, and what is altogether identical with this, for his own sake. He does it for God’s sake because God demands this proof of his faith; he does it for his own sake so that he can prove it

There was many a father who lost his child; but then it was God, it was the unalterable, the unsearchable will of the Almighty, it was His hand took the child. Not so with Abraham. For him was reserved a harder trial, and Isaac's fate was laid along with the knife in Abraham's hand. And there he stood, the old man, with his only hope! But he did not doubt, he did not look anxiously to the right or to the left, he did not challenge heaven with his prayers. He knew that it was God the Almighty who was trying him, he knew that it was the hardest sacrifice that could be required of him; but he knew also that no sacrifice was too hard when God required it–and he drew the knife.

God from time to time calls upon man to return to Him whatever is His. He demands that man give not a part but the whole of himself... Total sacrifice was decreed by God when He summoned Abraham to offer Isaac on Mount Moriah.... Whether the sacrifice consists in physical agony, pain, and extinction of life or in spiritual surrender, humility, and resignation is man's affair. God wills man to choose the altar and the sacrifice... When he arrived there, the sacrifice was a fait accompli. In Abraham's mind there was no Isaac, no beloved son, no heir to his spiritual fortune. Abraham came alone, forsaken, and forgotten. Isaac's flesh was already consumed by the fires of the altar and gone up in a pillar of smoke to heaven. (11-12).

Which of course does that mean that every Jewish thinker has taken this direction...
Howard Wettstein (American Philosopher, 1943–):
Interpreters did not posit a clash between faith and ethics because the two were meant to agree. The system of Judaism did not set itself up against the ethical intuition, but instead built on it, refined it, and extended it. This is not to say that nothing in the Jewish tradition conflicts with much ethical thinking; there certainly is. It is to say that the Jewish tradition struggled with those cases on a foundation of understanding that religion ought to agree with ethics.... Kierkegaard seemingly has no problem with the fact that God commanded something unethical: this is the essence of faith. Jewish thought does not seem to have any place for such a view

Rabbi David Fohrman (American, 1965–), "What Kind of Test was the Akeidah."
What was Abraham really saying to Isaac? "And he said, 'Here I am, my son.'" He was saying: Right when I most want to run away, I will not. I am here, my son. I know who you are: you are my son, and I am your father. I will not evade that hard truth. I will be fully present with you, truthful with you, even when it seems maddeningly impossible. I am not hiding from you.

The Akeidah was not just a test of Abraham's loyalty to God. It was a far more difficult test than that. It was a test of his loyalty to God and to Isaac at the very same time, even when these dueling imperatives seemed impossible to balance.

Nicole Krauss (American Novelist, 1974–), Forest Dark (2017):
We bind and are bound because the binding binds us to those who were bound before us, and those bound before them, and those before them, in a chain of ropes and knots that goes back three thousand years, which is how long we've been dreaming of cutting ourselves loose, of falling out of this world, and into another world where we aren't stunned and deformed to fit the past, but left to grow wild, toward the future.

Leonard Cohen (Canadian Songwriter, 1934-2016), "The Story of Isaac" (1969):
The door it opened slowlyMy father he came inI was nine years oldAnd he stood so tall above meBlue eyes they were shiningAnd his voice was very coldSaid, "I've had a visionAnd you know I'm strong and holyI must do what I've been told"So he started up the mountainI was running, he was walkingAnd his ax was made of gold...

You who build the altars nowTo sacrifice these childrenYou must not do it anymoreA scheme is not a visionAnd you never have been temptedBy a demon or a godYou who stand above them nowYour hatchets blunt and bloodyYou were not there beforeWhen I lay upon a mountainAnd my father's hand was tremblingWith the beauty of the word.