Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis Sermons

Selichot, 1999

by Harold M. Schulweis

More powerful than the text is the commentary. It is not what the text says but how you read it. The text I have in mind is read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. It has been, for many commentators, a story prominent and ambiguous. It is read one way through the eyes of Emanuel Kant and another way through the eyes of Soren Kierkegaard; it is read one way by J.B. Soloveitchik, and another way by David Hartman.

For me, it was from my earliest memory, a puzzling, frightening story of a compact and concise nineteen verses. It deals with many voices of God. The voice first came to Abraham, who was commanded by God, "Get thee out of thy country and from thy kindred and from thy father's house unto the land that I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation and I will bless thee and make thy name great and be thou a blessing. And I will bless them that bless thee and him that curseth will I curse." This is the covenant, this is the oath, this is the promise and God keeps His word. Sarah is barren. Abraham is an old man. And there is no fruit in their marriage. How shall Abraham be a father without a child?

And Abraham hears the voice again addressed by God who stands with him beneath the skies: "Look now toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them, so shall your seed be." A child is born, and it brings laughter to Abraham and Sarah. And the child grew, and now without warning a voice is heard, "And it came to pass after these things that God did prove Abraham and said unto him, 'Take now thy son, thine only son whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of."

The commandment is clear enough. It is to murder the child. For what reason such a cruel commandment? What is the motivation that can lie behind such a commandment? God sought to prove Abraham to test him, to tempt him, to try him. But what kind of God plays cat and mouse with his chosen one and takes the very heart out of his disciple? To prove him, does God, the omniscient One, who knows the heart of man not know what is in the heart of Abraham? No, says the medieval Jewish philosopher Saadia. "Nisah" does not mean to try, but it means to publicize, to make known to the nations of the world. "Nisah" comes from the word "nes," which is to set up as a sign, an ensign, as a banner, to publicize. But Ebeneasar says that cannot be. Where is there a witness to this binding of Isaac? There are no representatives of the nations of the world. There is no one there except Abraham and Isaac. Not even the servants are present.

To what end this commandment? To what end this torture? It is, say many of the commentators, to raise Abraham as the great religious model, the "homo religiosus.” To tell you what is asked of the religious man, what is means to find favor in God's eyes. It means what does it mean to love God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might.

It means that to be religious is to be obedient, to submit, to surrender to God's commandment and God's will. In a passage of The Fathers of Rabbi Nathan, (36a) it is written, "If you have done God's will as your will, you have not done God's will. If you have done God's will against your own will, then only have you done God's will." It goes on to say, "Is it your will that you shall not die? Then die, that you do not die.”

With such a view, the rationale for the Akedah, the moral is to teach the life of resignation, subversion and submission. This is the way in which J.B. Soloveitchik reads the story: "The Torah teaches us to love and cherish our children. And brings as an example 'as a father takes pity over his children'. At the very same time, the story of the binding of Isaac is perhaps due here to teach us that parental love must not be transformed into absolute bondage which has idolatrous connotation." In this reading nothing stands above God, not the state or the family or friends. There is nothing as binding as the binding of Isaac. (On Repentance, p. 242)

In another article, Soloveitchik writes, "What was the most precious possession of Abraham; with what was he concerned most? Isaac. Because the son meant so much to him, God instructed him to retreat, to give the son away."

An interpretation similar to this is given by the Orthodox philosopher Isaiah Leibowitz, who compares the Akedah binding with the crucifixion story of Jesus. And in his mind Leibowitz says that the binding is of a different character than the crucifixion. For in the crucifixion God is sacrificed for the sake of man i.e. Jesus is sacrificed for the sake of the salvation of man. But in the binding, man is sacrificed for God. Isaac is prepared to be sacrificed for the sake of God.

This interpretation of the Akedah is found in Christian sources as well. Soren Kierkegaard, for example, in his celebrated essay "Fear and Trembling" praises Abraham as the authentic "knight of faith.” Abraham has heard the voice of God. Which other voices can possibly stand before God's voice? But what about the voice of conscience, the voice of morality, the voice of ethics which tells us that infanticide is indeed immoral? Here, Kierkegaard introduces the idea of "the teleological suspension of the ethical," which means that when there is a conflict between what God commands and what morality or conscience dictates, it is the latter that must be suspended, canceled, nullified, done away with. Abraham is the ideal knight of faith. He has achieved the category of "the single one," which means that he cannot consult anyone, not with anyone in the community, not Sarah and not Isaac, because he has heard himself God's voice.

I understand the power of such an interpretation. There is a search for "commandedness,” a feeling that there are certain things that must be obeyed for no reason of self interest but by reason of the commander, the tetzaveh.

I understand the need for the absolute and for the unconditional authority. I cannot deny that it frightens me and it appalls me, it offends me. And I know that I cannot possibly relate to such a God.

Simply put, because to accept obedience as the end all to surrender my critical, moral intelligence before the voice is to open oneself up to fanaticism, to terror, to the justification of any kind of violence.

I fear people who will not check their hearing, who do not have theological acoustical criteria. As Buber puts it brilliantly in challenging Soren Kierkegaard, "Who is it whose voice you hear? Don't you know that Moloch imitates the voice of God? Do you not know that Satan is a ventriloquist, that he is able to throw his voice, that he can disguise it and pretend that it is the voice of God?"

All of this is not a theological game. It is not a matter of theory. Theology has consequences with ravenous teeth.

David Korish in Waco. Jim Jones in Jonestown. Baruch Goldstein, the murderer of Palestinian Arabs. Yitzchak Amir, the assassin of Yitzchak Rabin. All of them heard God's voice. All of them were prepared to sacrifice their lives and to kill the lives of others. All of them submitted to God. All of them had no need to consult with anybody in the community.

How then do I read this episode on Rosh Hashanah, on the Day of Judgment? I read this episode of nineteen verses as an evolution of Judaism. The first ten verses speak only in the name of Elohim, the conventional God, the God of the universe who is sovereign and who accepts sacrifices of the first born. This is Elohim who accepts the ways of Molech, the idol which accepts child sacrifices in his fiery mouth. This is Molech, child sacrifice that was practiced even in the days of King Solomon and during the kings of Judah, as we find in I Kings 11:7 and II Kings 23:10, and in references made by the prophet Jeremiah (32:35). The break in this conception of blind obedience to God comes with verse 11. It is the Angel of the Lord who calls upon him out of heaven and says, "Abraham, Abraham." And Abraham says "Here am I." "Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him, for now I know that thou art a God-fearing man seeing, thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me." Who is this angel and why is he associated with the term Adonai and not Elohim? This angel is Abraham's moral conscience, which says "no" even to the voice of Elohim. This is the revolutionary moment in the Bible and in Judaism which raises the human being to the level of God.

This is a reversion to another Abraham who, when he hears the voice of God informing him that Sodom and Gomorrah will be destroyed, does not bite his lips or tie his tongue but cries out against God in the name of God: "Shall the Judge of all the earth not do justly? That be far from Thee to do after this manner to slay the righteous with the wicked, that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from Thee. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justly?"

There are times when to obey the voice of God is blasphemy. For the punitive voice of God balances the voice of conscience to make a mockery of faith. An act of goodness is not good because God commanded it. But God commanded it because it is good. That voice of conscience will not follow the commander's orders without examining the character of the order. Immanuel Kant, in the eighteenth century commentary on the Akedah wrote, "That I ought not to kill my son is certain beyond the shadow of a doubt. That You, as You appeared to be our God, I am not convinced and will never be convinced even if Your voice resounded from heaven."

And in the next century, the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "Whatever power such a being God may have over me, there is one thing that He shall not do. He shall not compel to worship Him. I will call no being good who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow creatures. And if such a Being can sentence me to hell for not calling Him, to hell will I go."

I read this episode of the Akedah on Rosh Hashanah as a warning, especially to people who speak in the name of God. Beware of the voice. Do not follow like lemmings walking into the sea. The great prophet Micah (6:7) said, "Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or with ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He, God has shown thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God." The commandment must be evaluated. It must be judged as good. The philosopher Erne Simon spoke these words in a conversation with Gershom Shalom and Martin Buber: "We cannot give up our autonomy. Were someone to demonstrate to me that the oral law understands the commandment 'Thou shalt not kill' as a prohibition against the killing of Jews by Jews only, I would not accept this explanation of the commandment and I would rely on my autonomy." Follow God with your mind and with your moral sensibility, your moral judgment, for the ignorant man is not pious. Faith is not blind nor is it mute.

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