The Binding of Isaac

And God tempted Abraham and said unto him, Take Isaac, thine only son, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah, and offer him there for a burnt offering upon the mountain which I will show thee. – Gen. 22:1-2

On second day Rosh HaShannah we listen and read bits of the story of ‘The Binding of Issac’ during those quick breaths in between the schmoozing.

No one can have a neutral response to this story.

You admire Abraham’s faith, or berate his madness. You may have a reaction of anger toward both characters; Isaac for his absolute lack of agency, and Abraham for his inability to stand up for his child as he did for the evil-doers of Sodom and Gomorra. You may think of child abuse. And your heart will most certainly weep a little for Sarah.

Lately I have been struggling with this event in the biblical narrative which really is the foundation upon which the three major religions are build: In Judaism it is the final test of Abraham which secures his inheritance and relationship with God, in Christianity it has been interpreted as a prelude to the sacrifice of Jesus, and in the Muslim narrative Isaac is replaced by Ishmael.

The text is difficult, dramatic, painful and heart wrenching and leaves me questioning: “Did Abraham replace ‘morality’ for ‘obedience’?”

First I want to analyse the text a little.

The bible is structured upon a technique called ‘gapping’ which means that it couldn’t fit everything into the text so we need to be careful readers and pick up patterns to fill in holes we might find in the text.

One of the first instances this happens in our story is when the God calls to Abraham and commands him to sacrifice Isaac. God could have just said “Oy! Go and kill Isaac” but instead there is this build up and narrowing down of who exactly God wants sacrificed.

There is an almost implied dialogue – word’s in brackets are my interpretation of what’s missing:

God: Take now your son
[Abraham: Who?]
God: “Your only son”
[Abraham: Ishmael?]
God: “The one you love”
[Abraham: Which one exactly?]
God: “Isaac.”
[Abraham: Oh…]

Very similar sentence structure to “Go, from your house, from your birthplace, from the land of your father to the land that I will show you” – the original 'God-Promise' to Abraham that begins this journey. Only here, there is no promise of a reward.

The elongated command to sacrifice Isaac is there to emphasise the love-bond between the two. To explain to the reader that this isn’t someone Abraham wants to kill. With each specification of who to take, the tension increases.

It’s like when a mother gets a call from the police saying; there’s been an accident, someone in your family has been killed, someone you love, your one and only son. It’s a dramatic technique.

Abraham tries to avoid the command, but God doesn’t let him get away easily.

Emmanuel Kant in his book ‘The Conflict of the Faculties’ says:

 “but if God should really speak to man, Man can still never know that it was God speaking, it is quite impossible to man to apprehend the infinite by his senses, distinguish is from sensible being and recognise it as such. But in some cases Man can be sure the voice he hears is not God’s; for if the voice commands him to do something contrary to the moral law, then no matter how majestic the apparition may be, and no matter how it may seem to surpass the whole nature, he must consider it an illusion.”
In Kant’s opinion Abraham failed the test completely, he should have apprehended the voice he heard, saying; “if you want me to butcher my son, you must not in fact be God at all”.

Kierkegaard tries to validate what Kant is denying in his Fear and Trembling, he shares the thought with Kant that the sacrifice is immoral, but he also believes that God’s will transcends the moral order. It is a teleological suspension of the ethical goes on in the story.

They start off early the next morning, Rabbinic tradition interprets that this is a sign of Abraham’s eagerness to fulfil the word of God, but it seems to me that he either only received the vision in his sleep or he delayed starting his trip. Why didn’t he leave straight away?

It gives me chills when I read how the father and son then walk together, the son looks up to his father of the age of hundred and says “my father” to which Abraham responds “yes my son”. The possessive pronominal suffixes “my” solidify the deeply emotional connection between the two.

There are two people with them who are identified by the Midrash as Ishmael and Eliezer; two of the 3 potential heirs to Abraham’s wealth – Isaac being the third. (I don’t include Lot, he’s a douche).

The reason I bring up the ‘heir’ thing is that without an heir to inherit Abraham’s wealth, the promises God made to him cannot be fulfilled.

Abraham stops after 3 days of walking and tells the two unnamed men to wait as they go up the mountain to pray to God. But Abraham says “we will go up, and we will return” (וְנָשׁוּבָה).

Questions:

-          Does this imply that Abraham knows it’s a test?

-          Is he lying to prevent Isaac from freaking out?

-          Or is it both? i.e. is it something he hopes will come true, that they will return together?

Maybe he has faith in the promise from God that he will be a great nation, and he know he can only become a great nation if he has a living son who can procreate. Because if your parents don’t have kids, you won’t have kids.

The wood that is meant to burn his body to ashes as a sacrifice is laid upon Isaac. It’s like making someone dig their own grave.

Side note: It is not absolutely clear how old Isaac is, but he would have to be old enough to be able to carry enough wood to burn his body. Which could also mean that Isaac is 5 years old; a 5 year old can only carry  a small amount of wood but also needs less wood because their bodies are smaller. Morbid mathematics.

“The two walked together” or “walked as one”. The Midrash says Isaac is 37 years old. He knows what’s going on, but he walked with Abraham as though he is on board with the cause.

You would think that, but then Abraham actually needs to tie Isaac up. You don’t need to tie up someone who is willing to be sacrificed. At the same time, Abraham couldn’t tie up his strong son without consent. MAybe Isaac is on board, but is worried he’ll have involuntary flinching and then he’ll get a small cut that will render the sacrifice invalid.

The Book of Jubilees suggests that the reason for the test is that the angels of God could see Abraham loved both God and his son, but want to see who Abraham loved more.

When the countermand comes for Abraham to stop there is a similar dialogue as when Abraham was commanded that the Midrash unravels:

The Rabbinic tradition explains that an angel went down and told Abraham for stop but Abraham responded "The Almighty Himself commanded me to offer my son to Him—only He can countermand the order: I will not hearken to any messenger!"

You would think that if someone was really that apprehensive toward carrying out a task that he would take any opportunity to avoid the task. But not our Abraham, he is caught up in this blind trance and wants to carry through with it.

You can see this because when the ram appears he just goes and kills it!

Firstly, rams belong to people, they don’t grow wild.

Even in Israel today if you find a ram and decide to slit its throat, a shepherd will shoot you.

And secondly, God doesn't commant Abrahab to kill the ram, but he has the kill look in his eyes and needs to carry out the action.

There is a Midrash that says the sheep’s name was Isaac. A direct substitute for Isaac. There is also a Midrash says that Abraham looked identical to his son, only when Abraham’s hair turned grey could people differentiate between them. So the ram becomes a substitute for Isaac, who is a substitute for Abraham.

Verses 15 through 18 are classified by academics as a the earliest interpretation of the Akeida [Binding] which were actually inserted into the text. God speaks to Abraham “A second time” and we get the original promises again from Genesis 12 only here it is a consequence of the obedience of Abraham, previously it was baseless “Go from your land and I will make you a great nation etc.” [paraphrase].

Yay Abraham! You’ve destroyed the relationship with your son, but you get showered in material possessions! A fair trade.

In verse 19 “and Abraham returned to the young men” – Where is Isaac? Abraham descends the mountain alone. There is no dialogue between Abraham and the rest of his family after this event.

The lists of names that come after this break the tension and move the story along. 

Abraham’s brother Nachor has 12 children, a parallel birth of a nation to that of Jacob later on. Nachor has 8 children with his primary wife, and 4 by secondary wife – Jacob too has 8 children by primary wives (Rachel and Leah) and 4 by his secondary wives (Bilha and Zilpa). Abraham’s grand niece, the daughter of Bethuel is Rebeka, Isaac’s future wife and second cousin.

This Akeida is a climax in the Genesis story after that event the story mellows out a bit.

I still have the question “Does Abraham replace morality with obedience?”

Yeshayahu Leibowitz’ in his The Meaning of Halakhah (1953) says:

“Ethics, when regarded as unconditionally asserting its own validity, is an aesthetic category par excellence… The Torah does not recognise moral imperatives stemming from the knowledge of natural reality of from awareness of man’s duty to his fellow man. All it recognises are Mitzvot, divine imperatives… Halakhah [the is, Jewish law and practice] as a religious institution cannot admit the category of the ethical.”

Which is a similar view of Kierkegaard mentioned above, that God’s will is above ethics.

I’m not so satisfied with that, Abraham argued his guts out for the sinner in Sodom and Gomorrah but said nothing to God regarding the life of his son.

Regarding the Ancient Near East and sacrifice we learn that sacrifice doesn’t necessarily involve killing. In Leviticus when they discuss the method of ‘burnt offering’ they don’t mention the killing at all.

The Haftorah for this Torah portion is that of Hannah begging God for a son which she promises to give back to him in service. This is equally as sad but is an example of a sacrifice that doesn’t involve killing at all?

Also in the Temple there were grain and fruit libations which were sacrifices that did not involve killing. (Sorry fruitarians)

And we've all heard our parents say "do you know what I've had to sacrifice to give you this?" - lets just hope its a "what" and no a "who".

So maybe Isaac was sacrificed on that mountain top, but wasn’t killed. Or maybe he was only in the form of a ram. What’s clear to me is that the father-son relationship was what was given up. Abraham chose God over his son. They didn’t walk together as one down the mountain as they did on the way up.

Another point, Kierkegaard sees Abraham as being “double-minded” torn between obedience and faith. When Isaac asks his father “Where is the ram?” Abraham responds “God will provide it.” Abraham cannot bring himself to speak of what God commanded him to do because his faith in God tells him that God will not let him go through with it. His obedience keeps him walking up the hill in “fear and trembling with a dagger in his hand.

Kierkegaard goes on to say that: 

“One may stay ethical, and have a satisfying life. Or one may go farther and embrace in fear and trembling and in dread and awe the faith in ones own choices, facing the terrifying possibilities of being deceived and of deceiving oneself."

Its starts with the “I choose” and continues with the “I shall now act”.

Levinas in Existence and Ethics sees friction between the religious fervour of Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” and morality, he views it as a subversion to ethical foundations and suggests that you need external justification and cannot just rely on the internal isolated passion.

Nietzsche says:

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege for owning yourself.”

Each time Abraham does something separating himself from the tribe, he leaves his environment. He leaves his homeland to become a nation and then he leaves his encampment for the Land of Moriah to sacrifice Isaac. Maybe the real reward Abraham sought after is owning himself.

Let me know your thoughts.

Middle Eastern Predicitons

Arab Spring

This is my 42^nd blog post.

42 – The meaning of life.

Significant in a time in my life where I have chosen to abandon exploring the ‘why’:

-Why are we here?

-Why do I care?

-Why do I need to keep my elbows off the table when I eat?  

And focus more on the ‘what’;  

-What should I do today?

-What should I have for the lunch?

-WTF?

etc.

Distractions. It’s all about the distractions.

One perfect distraction is the upcoming UN delegation and subsequent impending doom on the State I now call home!  

I decided to do a bit of field work and find out what the people of this tiny land actually think is going to go down on that momentous day.

It seems that at most 2 million Palestinian refugees residing in Syria will march toward the Israeli border, partly because they want to reclaim the land of their ancestors, and partly because the Syrian government with mow them down with machine guns.

At least we might see a bit of colourless fireworks near the security fence along the 1967 armistice line.

Most people in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv will wake up as usual, go to their favourite, or most convenient, café and order their usual.

I think there’ll be unrest which could turn violent.

There might be a little fire. There may not. It could go either way. I think it’ll stop/pause some of the internal protests regarding social justice. Sorry for being vague, it’s the nature of my generation. 

I am of Israel

The Journey Outline

These past couple of days I took myself up north and did a bit of a trek. The main, I guess, catalyst for the trip was the line in Baz Luhrmann’s Sunscreen Song: “Do something every day that scares you”.

I don’t have a camping phobia per se. I’m just crap at it.

So I caught me a bus up to Tzfat, holy city which I would have loved to stay in and absorbed all its mystical energies, but I had walking to do. I headed down the hill out of the city to a place called Ein Chovesh which was the start of my trail.

By this stage the sun was well over head and its heat was unrelenting, but I pressed on until I came across a domed hut coated in moss overlooking the valley I planned to toddle through. A perfect place to cook myself a hearty lunch; vegetable curry with rice. This meal made no dent whatsoever in the 20kg I had packed in my backpack.

Oh the backpack, how I learned to hate it, forever imprinted in my shoulders.

I continued down in through Nachal Amud (Amud River), a once gushing stream, now  a rocky unsteady path. I had to scale boulders, and descending down hills covered with pebbles, there were cliff ledges and thorned bushes which loved to get under my skin.

I’ll admit I slipped and fell many times. Birds definitely blushed when they heard the profanities which rolled of my tongue each time I scrapped my knees, knocked my shins, or stubbed my toes.

The first night I found an abandoned overgrown clay oven, which looked like a great place to rest my travel-weary limbs and get shelter from the elements. Little did I think that other things also sought shelter from the elements. I spent half the night checking that the scorpions in the cracks next to my head weren’t advancing and that the mice weren’t digging too much at the mud which held the bricks over my head.

After dark I decided to light myself a small fire in my grotto, a feeble attempt at warding away the wasps nesting on some wild flowers sprouting through the cracks. I ended up smoking myself out of the hut. I at my dinner in the dark outside.

When I came back in I buried the dwindling fire under dirt I scooped up from the ground. The smell of burning garbage and faeces explained that it wasn’t just any old dirt. The dense smoke was replaced by an insufferable stench. My dinner was soiled.

I went to sleep after a cup of overly sugared tea at the responsible hour of 8pm only to be woken up by the sound of squeaking mice and hay being chewed. Wild horses had come to feed outside and then on top my already unstable shelter.

Although I was in my bed for 12 hours, I probably only got about 3 hours sleep.

The next day couldn’t have come faster. I only wish the end of my water didn’t come so quickly.

I managed to get to the motorway with half a litre left, the sun was already starting to bash my head in.

I checked the map (surprised I know how to read one?) and headed the 3km with my 20kg to the nearest gas station. Filled up, recovered, and walked the 3km back to start my day’s trek. Back into the river bed I went.

I met some fellow hikers on the way who commented straight away on how large my pack was. “What!? I had to take a jacket! And my mum would have killed me if she found out I didn’t take 8 days worth of food!”

I completed the rest of the 7 kilometres signing aloud and talking to myself excessively, passing banana plantations and some nice cliffs shaped by wind erosion – so many different layers of sediment! I set up camp on a camping ground next to a goat farm in Ein Nun near a town called Migdal.

Surprisingly less to worry about when you’re sleeping under the stars. Just cats scrounging around for garbage.

From there I took a bus up to Rosh Pina where I met up with a friend and after a much needed shower we heading to the river stream near the Lebanon border where we hiked, played cards, camped and donated blood to needy mosquitoes.  From there we hiked to Kiryat Shemona and bussed back to Rosh Pina where I headed off to spend Shabbat in a small town near Nazareth called Hoshe’a (Hosea) which was just lovely.

I went on this hike to iron out the kinks in my head about the purpose of it all. I needed a chance to think about what exactly I’m doing here, and why it feels more important for me to be in Israel than to be with my friends, my family, those remarkable beaches, the super funky bars in and around Oxford St, and the cafes which actually prefer you to order a specific and complicated cup of coffee where the waitresses should be walking up and down catwalks instead of crooked stairs from the kitchen to the tables. Also why I feel a responsibility to this country when so many other places around the world could use a helping hand. What is the attraction, the magnetism I feel to this people, to the soil.

I didn’t really work out all the answers, and the ones I did work out are difficult to explain. I think put plainly, I feel as Yeats did to his motherland, I just simply feel that I am of Israel.

Northward Bound

For a while now I have been going through a bit of an existentialist saga. Some friends tell me it’s because I expect too much of myself, others say, I don’t do enough.

This feeling of meaninglessness didn’t germinate from a point of depression or from a broken heart. Clichés like that bore my entire generation.

Instead, I think, this feeling of being enveloped by pointlessness sprouted when I was caught up in the routine of work.

I was working then eating, then sleeping just so I would awake for work, to eat, to sleep. Working on sleep eating, and eating sleep at work. I don’t eat sheep, but I need sleep.

As you can see, my world began to unravel at the seams like the psyche of Dr. Suess on acid (or rather, more acid.)

So I turned to the books and to movies. Watched a junk-load of Charlie Kaufman films which were overly unhinged – just the way I like it.

Then to a theological master, Rav Soloveichik’s. I figured his essay Lonely Man of Faith would give me some direction toward the path to meaning.

As eloquent a writer he is, extended metaphors are only good for the first 20 pages. He stretches the Adam and Eve stories (plural, Gen. Ch. 2 & 3) to a point where my stomach convulsed and I vomited out my nose – figuratively.

The essay also ended with a question, which frustrated me though it did help me arrive at a couple of conclusions.

Firstly, that I am not a man of faith. Just a simple Yid. I find it difficult to believe in the Character we call God in the bible. I think it is a juvenile way of conceptualising an ultimate, infinite being and can be almost directly compared with Michel Foucault’s ‘Panopticon’ – a prison design in which the prisoners’ cells encircle a watchtower which they cannot see into. The inmates’ behaviour drastically improves as they never know whether or not they were being watched.

The second and third aren’t developed enough to be published in this ramble.

What is worth mentioning is that on my last day of work the random playlist which shuffles between genres like a prostitute and sexually transmitted infections –  every once in a while you get the same song on again, but mostly it’s just a mixed bag, started playing The Sunscreen Song by Baz Luhrmann.

Listening to that song while mopping whipped cream off the floor, I found myself riding a wave of emotion. I felt both happy and sad and eventually – satisfied.

It was then I decided to listen to the song repeatedly until the message got through my head, and I acted upon at least 70% of his advice. Some are easier than others.

Some examples:

“Dance”  - done, too easy  

“Don’t read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly” – Easy

“Sing” – Always

“Understand that friends come and go” – getting there

“Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults” – Okay

“Do one thing every day that scares you”…

This is one I’m going to start working on tomorrow. That’s not me procrastinating, I’m actually going to.

Tomorrow I’ve decided to hike from Tzfat to Kibbutz Sde Eliyahu.

I can’t say I’ve done it yet, but my bag is packed.

For those who know me, I’m not the manliest of men, and I’m not so good at camping. That’s why I’ve decided not to take a tent…

The hike will go for 4 days, 3 nights and I hope to cover around 80km (ish) – totally doable.

Let you know how it goes. But either way, it'll give me a moment of beauty.

Funemployed 2

I’ve been using my Funemployed time relatively well. I spend the first days of relative freedom (because we can only be ‘relatively free’) in Tel Aviv catching up with friends and drinking pretentious coffee in pretentious cafes. I don’t claim I was an island of pretentiouslessness in those cafes. Sometimes I enjoy sitting with friends who can distinguish between the tightness of the bubbles in their foamed milk and judge whether in fact their beverage a latte of a cappuccino.

Then returning to Jerusalem I found myself dancing at the beer festival with friends who’d followed me from Tel Aviv.

The Jerusalem beer festival attracted more a ‘younger’ crowd than the wine festival. We all know that: Young + Beer = hooligans. I enjoyed trying some cool beers from around the globe we live on.

This past Shabbat we spent hosting people. I made stuffed vegetables.

The meals were great because my new Chicago born roommate and I were the only native English speakers. Despite the supposed language barrier, I found myself completely involved in the discussion. Almost as much as I would have been, had it been in English.

I admit that after I stuffed myself beyond the point of breathing, my eyes began to droop and my bed was looking enticing, my participation in the conversation died down a little. But that’s to be expected.

Shabbats are really social here, and are also a great way to keep track on how my community building is going.

My social groups now vary, and the participants have grown. I’m settling in well.