Some time afterward, God put Abraham to the test, saying to him, “Abraham.” He answered, “Here I am.”
“Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point out to you.”
So early next morning, Abraham saddled his ass and took with him two of his servants and his son Isaac. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and he set out for the place of which God had told him.
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar.
Then Abraham said to his servants, “You stay here with the ass. The boy and I will go up there; we will worship and we will return to you.”
Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the firestone and the knife; and the two walked off together.
Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And he said, “Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
And Abraham said, “It is God who will see to the sheep for this burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.
They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood.
And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.
Then a messenger of יהוה called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.”
“Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”
When Abraham looked up, his eye fell upon a ram, caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son.
I remember learning about the Akeydah, the binding of Isaac as a child. Growing up in a modern orthodox community in North-West London, I was sent to the children’s service each week. We learnt, with no hint of nuance, that the Akeydah was a story of faith and piety - how great is Abraham’s divine loyalty that he is willing to concede to killing his own son. How much we, as young Jews have to learn from Abraham’s trust in God.
Re-reading these passages in recent months, as newly ordained religious leader and an aspiring scholar of contemporary perspectives on the Biblical text, I found myself engaging in feelings of horror and shame.
I grappled with the perceived notion that this text is about attempted Murder.
I grappled with Abraham’s faith in his visions being stronger than his love for his son. And I grappled with the potential that the real divine test might have been that God intended for Abraham to say “No. No, I will not kill my son.”
In his book ‘The Genesis of Justice (Ten Stories of Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Morality and Law),’ Alan Dershowitz asks some similar questions:
What kind of a God would ask such a thing of a father?
What kind of a father would accede to such a request, even from a God?
Why did Abraham, the man who argued so effectively with God over the fate of the strangers suddenly become so silent in the face of so great an injustice towards his beloved son?
Why did God praise Abraham for his willingness to engage in an act of ritual murder?
And what are we to learn from a patriarch who follows, without question, immoral superior orders to murder an innocent child?
Grappling with this text is immensely challenging - partly, because, as we all know, Jewish scholarship is generally more concerned with questions, rather than answers. And when it comes to arguably murderous acts, it really is answers that we require.
Instead, I invite us to examine together what I consider to be an astute and artful contemporary Midrash on the Binding of Isaac, Leonard Cohen’s song ‘The Story of Isaac’ released on his second album ‘Songs from a Room’ in 1969.
Instead of wrestling with an ancient problem through a inescapably contemporary lens, I instead ask us hope to probe and engage with the challenges of the text by trying to connect an analysis of leonard cohen’s lyrics with the biblical narrative.
I will now share the song with you.
The door it opened slowly, my father he came in,
I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me, his blue eyes they were shining
And his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision, and you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain, I was running, he was walking,
And his axe was made of gold.
Well, the trees they got much smaller, the lake a lady's mirror,
We stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over, broke a minute later
And he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle, but it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar, he looked once behind his shoulder,
He knew I would not hide.
You who build these altars now to sacrifice these children,
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision and you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now, your hatchets blunt and bloody,
You were not there before,
When I lay upon a mountain and my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.And if you call me brother now, forgive me if I inquire,
"just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust, I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform, Man of peace or man of war,
The peacock spreads his fan.
Cohen has paid meticulous homage to the text, particularly with regards to Berashit 22:4
בַּיּ֣וֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁ֗י וַיִּשָּׂ֨א אַבְרָהָ֧ם אֶת־עֵינָ֛יו וַיַּ֥רְא אֶת־הַמָּק֖וֹם
On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place from afar.
Cohen emphasises this viewing ha-makom, the place from ‘afar:’ this distance, this journeying away, with language which is visual, visceral, and sensory: ‘The trees they got much smaller, the lake a lady's mirror, we stopped to drink some wine...then he threw the bottle over, it broke a minute later.’
The trees are getting smaller, the lake looks like a mirror, the bottle is thrown from high up and shatters a relatively long time later.
Afar. Distance. Just as in the biblical passages, Abraham experiences Ha-makom, the place from afar.
Now The word, Hamakom is significant here - in other sections of Berashit and myriad Rabbinic texts, the word ha makom, The place is used interchangeably with God itself:
in Berashit 28 to describe the spot where Jacob falls asleep and has visions of a ladder with angels going up and down. Hamakom is the place where G’d continues the ancestral biblical covenant with Jacob.
We comfort a mourner with המקום ינחם אתכם - may Hamakom comfort you. Sins committed against God are referred to as sins "ben adam la-Makom" -- "Between a man and Ha-Makom"
“On the third day Abraham looked up and saw the place, hamakom from afar.”
In other words, Abraham is sighting ostensibly the literal, spatial place of sacrifice from afar, but is also experiencing God from afar.
This could be interpreted in several different ways: it could mean that at this point in the narrative, Abraham is far away from God, morally, ethically, psychologically because he is perhaps doubtfully, and hesitantly about use his piety to justify attempted murder of his beloved son.
Or, it could imply a questioning on Abraham’s part, a veering towards dissent against God’s murderous demand, that is, what God is asking is so deeply traumatic that Abraham begins to see God from a distant, perhaps more objective and rounded perspective -
That this is a God who has infinite capacity to love and to create (as we see with the creation of the universe in the first chapters of Genesis) and also one who has equal capacity to destroy (as we see in Genesis Chapter six when God destroys the world in parshat Noach.)
Cohen writes the first two verses from the perspective of Isaac, whose voice we never actually hear in the biblical passages.
What we do know about Isaac from the biblical text is, quite simply, is that Abraham loves him:
וַיֹּ֡אמֶר קַח־נָ֠א אֶת־בִּנְךָ֨ אֶת־יְחִֽידְךָ֤ אֲשֶׁר־אָהַ֙בְתָּ֙ אֶת־יִצְחָ֔ק
“Take your son, your favored one, Isaac, whom you love…”
This is the very first time the word ‘love’ appears in the Tanakh.
From a literary perspective, it’s being used here for dramatic effect - despite the fact that offering up a child sacrifice was not unusual in the ancient world, the prospect of potential infanticide for the contemporary scholar is made all the more heinous by the Inaugural use of the word ‘love’. We experience an uncomfortable tension of opposites, love and death:
The prospect of murder is made stark, not just by the Torah’s mention of parental love, but by the first citing of love full-stop.
And Cohen in the voice of Isaac which is missing from the Biblical text, tells us that this love is reciprocal, as is Isaac’s beautiful and innocent respect and honour of his father’s holiness:
‘He stood so tall above me, his blue eyes they were shining...he put his hand on mine...he knew I would
not hide...when I lay upon a mountain and my father’s hand was trembling with the beauty of the Word’.
Within the narrative voice of Isaac in these lyrics, there is no fear.
There is no questioning of his father’s actions. There is instead innocent faith ( remember, in the song lyric, he is only nine) and calm stoicism: he knows from the outset what his father is going to do.
He is, in a sense, replicating the relationship that Abraham has with God: recreating the inevitable subordination of unquestioning faith and piety.
Hineni, God.
Here I am to sacrifice my son for you.Hineni, Father.
Here I am to be offered up as a sacrifice.
In this sense, I suggest that this story, and the song lyrics which depict it are also a homage to Isaac’s beautiful and innocent trust in his father, and the trauma of that trust being broken, begging the existential question - does contact with the divine, or an encounter with a truth which transcends the human invariably involve some kind of sacrifice or breakage? A difficult one, but as I said, our faith is more about the questions than the answers.
In Cohen’s lyrics, Isaac tells us that he was nine years old - the biblical text never alludes to Isaac’s age, though many commentators agree that he was a young adult at the time
Whats we do know for sure is that when Leonard Cohen was nine, his father, the son of a long line of rabbis died; in this we can see a connection - we may see, if we choose to, a parallel traumatic breach in the father-son relationship which is simultaneously a moment of contact with the divine.
It’s often observed that the protagonists of the Torah are relatable because they are flawed - as they make mistakes we learn with them.
I think we can apply this insight to God - through the texts of Torah God is learning, changing, developing. At this point in the early stages of divine-human inaction, God is inexperienced, and dare I say it perhaps confused by the complexity of God’s role; G’d as parent, God as authoritarian, God’s love, God’s anger, God as a loving creator, God as both a giver and destroyer of life.
My honest response to the complexity both of God’s character, and of this text in which that character manifests, is that genuinely truthful answers are impossible; God, as a reflection of the universe and humanity itself is random, cruel, murderous. God’s acts often don’t have clarity or reason, and they lead to tragedy, and death; this is inevitable, constantly occurring, divine.
And God’s acts simultaneously lead to the abundant wonder of creation, the sweetness of community, the beauty of gathering, and the wonder of faith, and the depth of artistry and music.
It is the purpose of contemporary music and art, not to provide answers to the beauty and tragedy of divinity and of human existence, but to act as midrash - to accompany us, and to push us deeper into the text, to step into the story, just as the musical tropes, liturgy melodies of the high holidays enable us to step into the complex emotions which reflect the reality of our lives.
Shabbat Shalom, shana tova, may we each be inscribed in the book of life for a year of love, strength, community, renewal, and blessing.