Akedah 5783: The Quest for the [Un]/Binding of Isaac

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