Post by Rabbi Neil on Sept 19, 2023 17:37:49 GMT
Why do we read the story of the Binding of Isaac on Rosh Hashanah? Near the end of the story, Abraham lifts up his eyes and sees a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. The ram’s horn --> the shofar --> the obvious link is established. Is that really it, though? The Akeidah account never even uses the word shofar, it uses the word for an animal’s horn – keren. The account of the revelation at Sinai uses the shofar – it even uses the phrase “kol shofar” as in the blessing we recite before blowing it. If the shofar were the link with the Torah reading, the Sinai account might be more appropriate, even if that one is perhaps more connected to the festival of Shavuot in the Rabbinic mind. So then maybe instead we could read Leviticus 23 which refers to Rosh Hashanah as zichron t’ruah, a memorial of blowing, or we could read Numbers 29 which calls today yom t’ruah, a day of blowing. They may not be exciting narrative accounts, but they would definitely make sense if the focus of the reading were actually about the shofar.
For all of those reasons, then, since they are not the reading, I would suggest that we read the Akeidah for a totally different reason to the ram’s horn / shofar connection. Once they reach Mount Moriah and Abraham is moments from killing his son, “an angel of the Eternal God called out to him from the heavens, and said, “Abraham! Abraham” He said, “Hineini, here I am.” The angel said, “Do not put your hand on the boy and do no harm to him, ki atah y’dati ki y’rei Elohim atah - for now I know that you fear God.” The crux of the passage, the purpose of the test, seems to be in God recognizing how Abraham fears God. That’s not an easy thing for us modern readers. “Now that you have woken up early, saddled your own ass, travelled for three days, brought your son up the mountain, tied him to an altar and were just a moment from killing him, now I know that you fear God.” Really? That’s how we prove that we fear God? That can’t be right. Thankfully, it’s not… and I wouldn’t lie – it’s Rosh Hashanah!
Last night, I spoke of how our fear for the future should motivate us to act and that the infinite potentiality of the present leads us to act morally so that the arc of the moral universe might bend toward justice. But Abraham’s actions here are horrific – they don’t bend the arc of the moral universe anywhere decent. Why is that? Following on from what I said last night, I believe that it’s because Abraham has no fear of the future – he has already been promised that his descendants would be blessed. He is therefore not compelled to act morally - he doesn’t need to do anything to secure a positive future for his family. If anything, instead of carefully assessing the moral situation, Abraham rushes forward blindly following any command. Vayashkem Avraham baboker, says the text – Abraham hurried to get up in the morning. So secure is he in the future, so lacking in any kind of fear of the future, that he rushes to kill his own son, blind to the consequences of his actions. So, how is that fear of God?
The question becomes even more pertinent when we consider another story which involves not only fearing God but also mentions children on the verge of life and death – the story of the midwives at the beginning of the Book of Exodus. There, Pharaoh has decreed the death of all Israelite baby boys as they are born but, we learn from Exodus, “the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but instead saved the male-children alive.” So, why does Abraham prove that he fears God by almost killing his son, while the midwives prove that they fear God by saving sons?
In her contemporary midrashic piece, “The Midwives Saw and Feared,” Orna Pilz has the midwives asked the question, “From where did you get your fearful awe of God? They answered: From the great and deep things that we saw at the birth stool, from the mystery that embraces us morning and evening: human being after human being coming into the world; where does he come from and what does she bring with her? The goodness that her mother sees in him, the compassion and the love that she awakens, crying babies bursting forth from exhausted bodies, and the soft seal of God’s finger imprinted on their faces.”
Note the phrase that is used – fearful awe. In Hebrew, fear and awe are the same word – yirah. Pilz continues with the midwives facing the following challenge – “Didn’t it happen at Sinai that “all the people saw (ro’im) the thunder and the lightning and the voice of the Shofar and the smoking mountain and the people saw it and trembled and stood far off… and Moses said to the people do not fear (al ti-ru), for God has come to test you, to keep the fearful awe of God … before you so that you will not transgress. The fearful awe of God,” says this challenge, “comes from the place of thunder and lightning!” Or, we might say, it comes from terrifying displays of Divine power and might.
But the midwives respond to that challenge by saying, “There is fearful awe … that comes from external seeing … and there is fearful awe that comes from internal vision…; a person can be frozen in terror, witnessing a supernatural miracle, which awakens and strengthens her sense of fearful awe. But for us, it doesn’t work like that. Our fearful awe is not in the heavens. Our fearful awe of God arises precisely from within nature, from within the pain of what we witness on the birth stool. From there, we learn to choose what is good, to protect life, to fight against death, and to resist evil.”
This beautiful commentary by Orna Pilz totally opens up the concept of yirah, of fear, for us. There are two ways to acquire yirat HaShem or yirat Shamayim, the fear of God or the fear of Heaven. The first (Abraham’s method) is through awesome displays of power, the second (the midwives’ method) is through the awesome recognition of the fragility of life. One could suggest that these two expressions of power tend to be gendered. After all, before the terrifying revelation at Sinai, Moses is very clear that the men must separate themselves from the women in order to receive the revelation, and the Akeidah is very much a story only about men and displays of masculine power on top of a mountain, while the story of the midwives is definitely a story of women standing up to male violence. Gendered or not, what I take from Pilz’s piece in the context of the Akeidah is that fear of God can be expressed by engaging in blind obedience even to the most terrible command, or it can be expressed by rejecting it. If our fearful awe of God is fear of God rewarding and punishing us, then that fearful awe will tend toward fear and will be manifested in favoritism and in violence. That, then, explains why Abraham is so happy to send away Hagar and Ishmael just after he has witnessed the violence of Sodom and Gomorrah. The midwives, though, have seen no such violence from God, only from Pharaoh, so their fearful awe of God is closer to awe than fear, and that leads them to preserve life.
There are, then, two ways to express fearful awe of God, and I believe that we read the story of the Akeidah to force us to reflect on how we ourselves express our own fearful awe of God. In that reflection, we can ask whether or not the Rabbis approve of Abraham’s expression of fearful awe. If they don’t approve, we can read this story on Rosh Hashanah as a critique of Abraham’s actions. In such a reading, God is saying, “Put down the knife, psycho, and don’t harm your boy, because now I’ve uncovered exactly what you think fear of God actually is.” In that reading, the test was to see how Abraham understood fearful awe and, crucially, Abraham failed the test. Because Abraham’s response is so disturbing, then, Torah needs to include another example of fearful awe of God later – the example of the midwives – who in this reading essentially serve as a critique of Abraham’s understanding of fearful awe of God. The Book of Proverbs says, yirat Adonai l’chaim – the fear of God leads to life. Abraham’s understanding of fearful awe of God led to death, not life. So, this first approach suggests that we read the Akeidah on Rosh Hashanah in order to learn how not to express fearful awe of God.
A second, far more challenging reading, has Judaism acknowledge not that one way is right and one is wrong, but that there are multiple, equally valid ways to express fearful awe of God. As much as that may be difficult for our modern sensibilities, there’s definitely a case to be made for this approach. After all, Deuteronomy says, “And now, O Israel, what does the Eternal your God ask of you but to fear the Eternal your God and to walk in obedience to God…” That means that no matter what God asks, we do, including offering up a son in sacrifice. Maybe, then, there are two equally valid expressions of fear of God in Judaism, and we have to decide which is appropriate for us. That’s a potentially painful position because it can mean that the passive life-affirming version of fearful awe of God holds the same moral weight as the aggressive, violently expressed version of fearful awe of God, but I think that’s true in our tradition. That’s why, for example, the Biblical commentator Nachmanides says that at the beginning of the Akeidah, Abraham’s fearful awe of God was latent and had not yet become actualized through any great deeds, but at the end of the Akeidah it was known in actuality. Nachmanides sees Abraham’s actions as a totally valid expression of fearful awe of God. Similarly, the 16th century commentator Sforno says that the words “Now I know that you fear God…” are not the words of God but the words of the angel, essentially saying to Abraham “Now I understand why God elevated you above us.” These commentaries are some of many that affirm that Abraham’s actions appropriately expressed his fearful awe of God. To return to the potential gendered nuance of interpretation, of course, all of the commentaries that validate Abraham’s behavior as a valid expression of fearful awe of God were written by men, so that positive interpretation may not be surprising.
I believe that we read the Akeidah on Rosh Hashanah to help us explore what it means for us to express our fearful awe of God during these Days of Awe. Fearful awe of God is not something we often talk about, but is an essential part of Judaism, to the point that Rabbi Louis Jacobs once wrote that without it, our Judaism “is no more than a sentimental attachment to ancient forms from which the spirit has departed." Medieval commentator Bachya ben Asher says that fearful awe of God is the foundation of the entire Torah. Abraham Joshua Heschel says that “Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. Awe rather than faith,” he says, “is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.”
Our question, then, is not whether we should feel fearful awe, but how we should feel it? And particularly, how do we express it? Do we do so in displays of fear and might, or in displays of awe and humility? I believe that Torah helps us to develop a sense of fearful awe first by introducing us to how Abraham understands it and then by introducing us to how the midwives understand it. Both are valid expressions of fearful awe of God, it’s just that when compared with the midwives’ expression, Abraham’s - the first to be recorded - is less advanced, less humane, and more filled with fear than with awe. Returning to our original verse, then, we can now read it as “Now I know that you fear me, but the midwives were in awe of me.”
So, may we on this Rosh Hashanah explore what it means for us to live in fearful awe. May we search not for obedience but for wonder. May we not lean towards fragility in the face of Divine command, but instead towards humility in the face of Divine grandeur. May our fearful awe lead us to transcend the trite and the cruel so that we might through atonement remove the darker elements of our selves. And may we engage in true teshuvah by acting not out of fear but out of awe. May this year be a year of fearful awe and humility in the face of the wonder of the world around us, and let us say, Amen.
For all of those reasons, then, since they are not the reading, I would suggest that we read the Akeidah for a totally different reason to the ram’s horn / shofar connection. Once they reach Mount Moriah and Abraham is moments from killing his son, “an angel of the Eternal God called out to him from the heavens, and said, “Abraham! Abraham” He said, “Hineini, here I am.” The angel said, “Do not put your hand on the boy and do no harm to him, ki atah y’dati ki y’rei Elohim atah - for now I know that you fear God.” The crux of the passage, the purpose of the test, seems to be in God recognizing how Abraham fears God. That’s not an easy thing for us modern readers. “Now that you have woken up early, saddled your own ass, travelled for three days, brought your son up the mountain, tied him to an altar and were just a moment from killing him, now I know that you fear God.” Really? That’s how we prove that we fear God? That can’t be right. Thankfully, it’s not… and I wouldn’t lie – it’s Rosh Hashanah!
Last night, I spoke of how our fear for the future should motivate us to act and that the infinite potentiality of the present leads us to act morally so that the arc of the moral universe might bend toward justice. But Abraham’s actions here are horrific – they don’t bend the arc of the moral universe anywhere decent. Why is that? Following on from what I said last night, I believe that it’s because Abraham has no fear of the future – he has already been promised that his descendants would be blessed. He is therefore not compelled to act morally - he doesn’t need to do anything to secure a positive future for his family. If anything, instead of carefully assessing the moral situation, Abraham rushes forward blindly following any command. Vayashkem Avraham baboker, says the text – Abraham hurried to get up in the morning. So secure is he in the future, so lacking in any kind of fear of the future, that he rushes to kill his own son, blind to the consequences of his actions. So, how is that fear of God?
The question becomes even more pertinent when we consider another story which involves not only fearing God but also mentions children on the verge of life and death – the story of the midwives at the beginning of the Book of Exodus. There, Pharaoh has decreed the death of all Israelite baby boys as they are born but, we learn from Exodus, “the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but instead saved the male-children alive.” So, why does Abraham prove that he fears God by almost killing his son, while the midwives prove that they fear God by saving sons?
In her contemporary midrashic piece, “The Midwives Saw and Feared,” Orna Pilz has the midwives asked the question, “From where did you get your fearful awe of God? They answered: From the great and deep things that we saw at the birth stool, from the mystery that embraces us morning and evening: human being after human being coming into the world; where does he come from and what does she bring with her? The goodness that her mother sees in him, the compassion and the love that she awakens, crying babies bursting forth from exhausted bodies, and the soft seal of God’s finger imprinted on their faces.”
Note the phrase that is used – fearful awe. In Hebrew, fear and awe are the same word – yirah. Pilz continues with the midwives facing the following challenge – “Didn’t it happen at Sinai that “all the people saw (ro’im) the thunder and the lightning and the voice of the Shofar and the smoking mountain and the people saw it and trembled and stood far off… and Moses said to the people do not fear (al ti-ru), for God has come to test you, to keep the fearful awe of God … before you so that you will not transgress. The fearful awe of God,” says this challenge, “comes from the place of thunder and lightning!” Or, we might say, it comes from terrifying displays of Divine power and might.
But the midwives respond to that challenge by saying, “There is fearful awe … that comes from external seeing … and there is fearful awe that comes from internal vision…; a person can be frozen in terror, witnessing a supernatural miracle, which awakens and strengthens her sense of fearful awe. But for us, it doesn’t work like that. Our fearful awe is not in the heavens. Our fearful awe of God arises precisely from within nature, from within the pain of what we witness on the birth stool. From there, we learn to choose what is good, to protect life, to fight against death, and to resist evil.”
This beautiful commentary by Orna Pilz totally opens up the concept of yirah, of fear, for us. There are two ways to acquire yirat HaShem or yirat Shamayim, the fear of God or the fear of Heaven. The first (Abraham’s method) is through awesome displays of power, the second (the midwives’ method) is through the awesome recognition of the fragility of life. One could suggest that these two expressions of power tend to be gendered. After all, before the terrifying revelation at Sinai, Moses is very clear that the men must separate themselves from the women in order to receive the revelation, and the Akeidah is very much a story only about men and displays of masculine power on top of a mountain, while the story of the midwives is definitely a story of women standing up to male violence. Gendered or not, what I take from Pilz’s piece in the context of the Akeidah is that fear of God can be expressed by engaging in blind obedience even to the most terrible command, or it can be expressed by rejecting it. If our fearful awe of God is fear of God rewarding and punishing us, then that fearful awe will tend toward fear and will be manifested in favoritism and in violence. That, then, explains why Abraham is so happy to send away Hagar and Ishmael just after he has witnessed the violence of Sodom and Gomorrah. The midwives, though, have seen no such violence from God, only from Pharaoh, so their fearful awe of God is closer to awe than fear, and that leads them to preserve life.
There are, then, two ways to express fearful awe of God, and I believe that we read the story of the Akeidah to force us to reflect on how we ourselves express our own fearful awe of God. In that reflection, we can ask whether or not the Rabbis approve of Abraham’s expression of fearful awe. If they don’t approve, we can read this story on Rosh Hashanah as a critique of Abraham’s actions. In such a reading, God is saying, “Put down the knife, psycho, and don’t harm your boy, because now I’ve uncovered exactly what you think fear of God actually is.” In that reading, the test was to see how Abraham understood fearful awe and, crucially, Abraham failed the test. Because Abraham’s response is so disturbing, then, Torah needs to include another example of fearful awe of God later – the example of the midwives – who in this reading essentially serve as a critique of Abraham’s understanding of fearful awe of God. The Book of Proverbs says, yirat Adonai l’chaim – the fear of God leads to life. Abraham’s understanding of fearful awe of God led to death, not life. So, this first approach suggests that we read the Akeidah on Rosh Hashanah in order to learn how not to express fearful awe of God.
A second, far more challenging reading, has Judaism acknowledge not that one way is right and one is wrong, but that there are multiple, equally valid ways to express fearful awe of God. As much as that may be difficult for our modern sensibilities, there’s definitely a case to be made for this approach. After all, Deuteronomy says, “And now, O Israel, what does the Eternal your God ask of you but to fear the Eternal your God and to walk in obedience to God…” That means that no matter what God asks, we do, including offering up a son in sacrifice. Maybe, then, there are two equally valid expressions of fear of God in Judaism, and we have to decide which is appropriate for us. That’s a potentially painful position because it can mean that the passive life-affirming version of fearful awe of God holds the same moral weight as the aggressive, violently expressed version of fearful awe of God, but I think that’s true in our tradition. That’s why, for example, the Biblical commentator Nachmanides says that at the beginning of the Akeidah, Abraham’s fearful awe of God was latent and had not yet become actualized through any great deeds, but at the end of the Akeidah it was known in actuality. Nachmanides sees Abraham’s actions as a totally valid expression of fearful awe of God. Similarly, the 16th century commentator Sforno says that the words “Now I know that you fear God…” are not the words of God but the words of the angel, essentially saying to Abraham “Now I understand why God elevated you above us.” These commentaries are some of many that affirm that Abraham’s actions appropriately expressed his fearful awe of God. To return to the potential gendered nuance of interpretation, of course, all of the commentaries that validate Abraham’s behavior as a valid expression of fearful awe of God were written by men, so that positive interpretation may not be surprising.
I believe that we read the Akeidah on Rosh Hashanah to help us explore what it means for us to express our fearful awe of God during these Days of Awe. Fearful awe of God is not something we often talk about, but is an essential part of Judaism, to the point that Rabbi Louis Jacobs once wrote that without it, our Judaism “is no more than a sentimental attachment to ancient forms from which the spirit has departed." Medieval commentator Bachya ben Asher says that fearful awe of God is the foundation of the entire Torah. Abraham Joshua Heschel says that “Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith. Awe rather than faith,” he says, “is the cardinal attitude of the religious Jew.”
Our question, then, is not whether we should feel fearful awe, but how we should feel it? And particularly, how do we express it? Do we do so in displays of fear and might, or in displays of awe and humility? I believe that Torah helps us to develop a sense of fearful awe first by introducing us to how Abraham understands it and then by introducing us to how the midwives understand it. Both are valid expressions of fearful awe of God, it’s just that when compared with the midwives’ expression, Abraham’s - the first to be recorded - is less advanced, less humane, and more filled with fear than with awe. Returning to our original verse, then, we can now read it as “Now I know that you fear me, but the midwives were in awe of me.”
So, may we on this Rosh Hashanah explore what it means for us to live in fearful awe. May we search not for obedience but for wonder. May we not lean towards fragility in the face of Divine command, but instead towards humility in the face of Divine grandeur. May our fearful awe lead us to transcend the trite and the cruel so that we might through atonement remove the darker elements of our selves. And may we engage in true teshuvah by acting not out of fear but out of awe. May this year be a year of fearful awe and humility in the face of the wonder of the world around us, and let us say, Amen.