The
Akeda: Avraham Avinu as
God-Defier
Second Day Rosh Hashanah, September 26, 2014
Richard Stern
We have just read the story of the Binding of Isaac. I want
to focus on an inherent tension within that text: In both preparing to
slaughter and in ceasing from slaughtering his son, to what extent is Abraham
acting on his own, and to what extent is he acting at the direction of god or an
angel? When Abraham “is called” to slaughter his son and also when he stops,
who is doing the calling, the listening, and the acting? In some ways this is the
bind that Abraham -- and all of us -- are in. Who has the
authority and responsibility?
Both poles of this tension, and all the points in between,
are part of our tradition. We can read the story as god calling Abraham,
guiding him, ordering him, practically moving his muscles for him; or at the
other extreme, we can read the story as Abraham struggling within himself,
perhaps in the form of voices or inclinations in his own head. Even if Abraham
were seeing and hearing an external force, how does he decide whether to comply
-- which is god and which is some devil? In my view, it is Abraham who must
decide.
The Yamim Noraim are perhaps most primarily about
this question: which of our actions over the last year are sins, and to what
extent are we responsible for them? If we have missed the mark, to whom must we
make amends: To people (ben adam l’chavero) or to god (ben adam l’makom)?
While the concept of sins against people makes perfect sense
to me, I find myself struggling with the very notion of sins against god. What
does it mean to be responsible to god, to owe something to god, to require
forgiveness from her? In my view, all of these notions can be false idols that
risk diminishing our individual and communal responsibility for our own
actions, and make it less rather than more likely that we can adequately and
productively atone.
We, as individuals and collectively, are responsible for our
actions – we must decide whether the voices we hear are unconscious parts of
our own minds versus from some external source -- and whether they are for good
or bad. The way I see it, we converse with ourselves, or we converse with other
humans – and not with any actual gods or spirits, whether external or internal.
I am suggesting that believing that we are speaking to a god that exists
independent of us can diminish the quality of our listening and talking to
ourselves and to our peers – our t’shuvah and tzedakah -- and ultimately make
us less ethically responsible to
ourselves and to one another. Perhaps, claiming
to listen to god, or that god has a plan, or that god says to do it this way
versus that way, could make it harder rather than easier to truly atone.
As you know, the traditional reading of the Akeda is of god
commanding Abraham to sacrifice his long awaited and beloved son, as a way of
testing Abraham’s faith. In this reading, the god character sends his angel to
stop Abraham only after god sees that Abraham is willing to go through with the
sacrifice. However, a number of commentators in our tradition have offered
readings of the Akeda that highlight Abraham’s responsibility for his own
actions, and downplay the role of the god character in the story.
For example, Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi, a 14th century Spanish
commentator, wrote that Abraham's own "imagination" led him astray,
making him falsely believe that he had been commanded to sacrifice his son.
And it has widely been noted, perhaps first by Rabbi Joseph
Herman Hertz, that child sacrifice was the ethical norm, a duty of the pious
among ancient Near Eastern peoples. Perhaps most centrally, our tradition has
repeatedly asked, “by what authority does Abraham follow the angel’s command to
spare Isaac, rather than god’s command to kill him?”
Based on evidence from the “documentary hypothesis,” which
analyzes the various authors who contributed to Torah, a number of modern scholars
have focused on the fact that an angel appears twice to Abraham: first to stop
him from sacrificing his son and next to reward him for his faith. Many argue
that god’s original command and the two angelic appearances were composed by
different authors at different times, each to put a particular spin on the
story. A reading by contemporary scholar Omri Boehm suggests that the original
version did not contain verses 11 and 12 (in which the angel tells Abraham not
to slay his son), but that these verses were added later.
On Boehm’s reading, in the original version of the Binding (most
probably written by the author E), Abraham disobeys and defies the
command from the god character. That is, Abraham sacrifices the ram “instead of
his son” (v.13) on his own responsibility and without being stopped by an
angel. Here, without verses 11 and 12, the story reads: "And
Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son (verse
10); but Abraham lifted up his eyes and looked and there, behind him was a ram,
caught in a thicket by his horns; and Abraham went, and took the ram, and
offered it up as a burnt offering instead of his son " (verse 13). Boehm’s
theory is that by interpolating the first appearance of the angel, a
later redactor shifted responsibility for halting the slaying from Abraham to
the angel (v. 11–12); and, due to that shift of responsibility, the second
angelic appearance (v. 14–18), in which Abraham is rewarded for his obedience,
became necessary.
So this theory suggests that the angels were added into the
story at a later time, perhaps to give the god character a righteous and
central role. That is, there is some evidence very deeply inherent in the Akeda
that Abraham himself, and not the god character or her angel, can be seen as
responsible for the impulse both to slay and not to slay Isaac.
The Risks of Believing in any god
Some background: As most of you know, I am a proud and out,
ritual loving, machmir atheist Jew. As part of my practice, I have been
studying for the past 3 years in chevruta with Reb Shai Gluskin, chiefly
about the role of god in torah, prayer, and modern life.
So I am encouraging us today to consider the risks of believing in any god or angel,
whether our own or those from other traditions.
As you know, this sort of god-wrestling discussion -- about
the interplay among the god of the bible, the god of prayer and the rabbis, and
the god of modernity -- is profoundly Jewish, and very much within our tradition.
The Akeda is a deeply uncomfortable, disturbing story. I
believe it’s a credit to our tradition that we have chosen to make this
challenging segment of Torah a central reading during the High Holidays. I love
that our tradition has such a brave willingness to engage with tough core
issues.
In my view, the power we small beings have is certainly
limited. Surely there is great value in recognizing something larger than
ourselves, in our seeing ourselves as part of the deeply interconnected web of
life. There are dangers in imagining that we humans have more power than we do.
My worry is that saying that a transcendent “god (or angel) told me to do it,”
-- offloads the limited power and responsibility we do have. Even the immanentist version of this – such as “I felt the
spark of god within” or the new age versions of this, such as “I felt the
spirit saying” – are betraying the thinly veiled supernaturalism that seems to
be lurking, for me at least, in any god language.
I find myself worrying that admitting any god makes the
world safe for so many fundamentalists, who fail to take responsibility for
their views and actions by claiming that god is on their side or within them. I
think it’s more powerful and ethical of us to say, “when I or we do something, or
interpret scripture this or that way, it is I or my community who do it.” The
risk is that by empowering a non-existent entity, we disempower ourselves: we
give up some of our responsibility to act justly and morally in the world.
Abraham's Bind
So we can read the Akeda as less about God testing Abraham’s
faith, and more about Abraham’s struggle within himself. Perhaps, the larger
truth is in the paradox that Abraham wants both to kill and to protect
his son. Indeed we are wired with both
the impulse for killing and the impulse for protection/attachment, and these
impulses can generate a struggle within us. The Akeda, in the magical way that
myth can, resolves the paradox by integrating both elements into the plotline. The
English word bind, you’ll note, comes from the same root as the word “bond,”
which can mean both a shackle (as in slavery) and a life giving connection
(as in the parent-child attachment bond). Perhaps it is Abraham, and not Isaac,
whose bind arises and is resolved in the story.
Binding and Blinding
In my view, a persistent theme in torah is our proclaiming
that “our god is better than their god!” We practice this way, and not that
way like our neighbors. As contemporary scholars note, we contrast ourselves
with other groups by the god we worship; and
via how that god commands us to do holiness, sacrifice, kashrut, and purity. John
Haidt, a moral psychologist in the tradition of Piaget and Kohlberg,
demonstrates how our ethical, religious, and even our political beliefs,
rituals, and practices bind us -- but also blind us. They bind us together in groups; they are the
engine of group identity and community (which is one of the reasons religion
and tribal affiliation are selected for by evolution). But our practices and
observances and our group identities also blind
us to the humanity of other groups, and can lead us to condescension,
xenophobia, and externalizing blame – sins we will soon address in the Al
Chet.
Ultimately, the risk, I think, is that we can make an idol of even our god -- even the “universal” Reconstructionist
god. In some ways, we Jews take proper credit for monotheism, for paring down
the number of gods from many to one. Our ancient ancestors brilliantly saw the
risks of idol worship. And Maimonedes wrote of paring down the concept of god,
from the god of biblical sacrifice to the god of prayer. Likewise, many of us
moderns, including Reconstructionists, have again pared down the concept of
god, excluding elements here and there of the god of the bible, the supernatural
god, the petitionary god, the vengeful or merciful god. Perhaps the natural
evolution of the radical Jewish concept of monotheism is to continue paring
down god until we get to zero. If we are genuinely seeking god, trying to
connect with the ground of all being, the source, we have to embrace that there
may not be one. Perhaps all gods – even our own -- are idols.
So the reading of the Akeda that inspires me most is that in
shifting his focus off of Isaac and onto the ram, in seeing the ram, in
defying god, Abraham is acting in his capacity as the original idol smasher,
described in midrash. This is the Abraham that I revere.
In order to continue
this discussion after today, I am starting an atheist and questioning
discussion group, right here at GJC. Please contact me if you are interested.
References:
O. Boehm, The Binding of
Isaac: A Religious Model of Disobedience, New York
To respond personally to Richard: sternpsychology@gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment