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REALITY AT THE ROOT OF REPENTANCE
On the surface, at least, the Torah reading for the first two days of
the New Year seem startling, even contrary to the spirit of Rosh
Hashana. While the visitor to the synagogue on these days might expect
to hear stories to uplift and inspire, the portions chosen by the sages
tell of two collosal failures by the founding family of the Jewish
people -- Sarah and Abraham.
The passages read in a special festive chant are taken from Genesis
chapters 21 and 22. They focus on two late incidents in the lives of
the first patriarch and matriarch. The former deals with the exile and
near death of Ishmael and his mother Hagar, the second with the binding
or akeda and near death of Isaac by his father Abraham.
These incidents do not come out of a vaccum. They are already
anticipated in the texts and subtexts that precede them.
According to the sages, Abraham's path to God came by way of
contemplating the nature of the heavens and the earth. He wondered
what moved all these individual phenomena -- only to conclude that
there had to be one principle that unified the constellations of the
planets and the stars with "the force that through the green fuse
drives the flower." (Dylan Thomas)
A hint of the patriarch's discovery may be gained by a fanciful
observation made by the sages as to the origin of the daily prayers.
One opinion states that "tefilot avot tiknoom" which we usually take to
mean that the patriarchs fixed the morning, afternoon and evening
prayers (TB. Brachot 26b). Yet the verb tiknoom can also mean
repaired, corrected or mended. Which is to say that the patriarch's
contemporaries also contemplated the sun, moon and stars in all their
wondrous phases and movements. They, too, observed and must have
marvelled at, the sunrise and sunset, the passing of the seasons, the
burgeoning and demise of countless flowers, fruits and plants, the
endless cycles of birth, copulation and death.
Yet only Abraham, Isaac and Jacob perceived that behind this rich
orchestra of nature was a unique creative force who, unseen and
anonymous, conducted this whole cosmic concert. While others
worshipped the sun, moon, trees, animals or mountains, the patriarchs
"mended" these prayers, moulding them into what would eventually become
our daily round of praises, meditations and requests.
It might be expected that after this revolutionary insight, the lives
of Abraham and Sarah would be a bed of roses. But, if anything, the
opposite is true. They were, in the phrase of the rabbis, tested with
ten trials that accompanied them on their life-long journey of
spiritual development.
The roots of this journey are examined by Michael Lerner in his best
selling book "Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation,"
where he probes the very beginning of Abraham's life.
The well-known legend has it that young Abraham broke the idols in
his father Terach's idol-making shop, in an attempt to demonsrate just
how meaningless idolatry was. In response, the father takes his
rebellious son to the king Nimrod who hurls the unrepentant youngster
into a fiery furnace. Though the sages comment that Abraham emerges
unharmed physically, and that even his clothes are unsinged by the
furnace, Lerner questions whether or not this is the whole truth.
Having been shown the true nature of his father's fanaticism and the
unbridled power of the state, Abraham would surely have been
traumatised.
Lerner (one of whose doctorates is in clinical psychology), suggests
that this rabbinically conceived 'incident' has a long lasting effect
on Abraham's adult life, and helps explain some of his strange
behaviour resulting from the blocking out of his true feelings. This
allows him, for example, to abandon his wife Sarah twice (Genesis
12:11-19; 20:2-18) and ultimately to accept God's command to sacrifice
his beloved son Isaac (Genesis 22:1-19).
Abraham does reconnect to his feelings of human empathy ("and he
returned to his young men" ibid, verse 19) and is reconciled with God,
but not before losing Sarah (Genesis 23) and Isaac who disappears (some
say to study Torah in the Garden of Eden).
Interestingly, a reading of the akeda by Rabbi Yitzhak Meir of Gur --
the "Sfat Emet" -- reinforces Lerner's thesis. Commenting on the fact
that the patriarch took three days to journey from Beersheba, where he
was commanded to offer up Isaac, to Mount Moriah where he was to bind
him, he quotes Rashi to the effect that God did not wish Abraham to
come to a snap decision, but rather gave him sufficient time to
contemplate what he was doing. During these three days, says the Sfat
Emet, Abraham prepared himself mentally and spiritually to carry our
what he perceived as God's will (Rashi on Gen. 22:4).
Yet when confronted by an opposite voice -- that of the angel who
tells him not even to touch his bound son -- Abraham complies, offers
up the substitute ram and then "returns to his young men awaiting him
at the bottom of the mountain." He thus, concludes the hassidic sage,
turns away from fanaticism, and restrains himself despite the
tremendous spiritual preparations he had undergone in the previous
three days. This was the trial, and it was one Abraham passed with
flying colours.
On the basis of his suggestive reading of the text, Lerner weaves a
powerful theology, whose thesis is that Abraham's many trials come to
teach him that he does not have to respond to violence with violence.
Just as Abraham, ultimately with God's help, transcends his desire to
revenge his own damaged childhood -- by visiting upon Isaac the exact
same violence that his father and Nimrod had visited upon him -- so his
descendants are duty bound not to seek revenge on those who have done
us harm -- and certainly not just in order to show that we, too, can be
violent.
It is this akeda text that is read on the second day of Rosh Hashana.
Isaac is saved not by his father's self-restraint but by the appearance
of an angel who shows Abraham a ram substitute (hence one of the
origins of the shofar, whose hundred-fold blowing is meant to make this
message loud and clear).
Yet the reading on the previous day is an almost exact parallel of
this near fatal story. Ishmael, banished by Sarah, is sent into the
burning desert of Beersheba only to be miraculously saved by an angel
pointing the mother Hagar to a well of water (Genesis 21:17-19).
In both stories, the protaganists -- Sarah in the story of Hagar and
Ishmael, Abraham in that of Isaac -- are seemingly tested beyond human
endurance. Both sons undergo a symbolic death only to be revived and
go on to found independent nations whose destinies will shape world
civilization.
What emerges from these stories is that even the most God-fearing
persons -- in their very desire to fulfill what they perceive as God's
will -- can make tragic mistakes that only angels can rectify.
The late Nechama Leibovitz made a similar point by observing that
Sarah's "mistake" was precisely in that she tried to be too altruistic
in suggesting that Abraham fathers a child with their concubine Hagar.
This selfless act -- pure in itself -- brought with it an only too
human reaction.
Just how flawed our ancestors were, is the subject of another recent
book "The First Father - Abraham" by Jungian psychoanalyst Henry
Abramovitch. In his analysis, the founding father of the Jewish people
is shown as a minefield of inner tensions and unresolved conflicts.
His relationshiop with Sarah, for example, is shown to be none too
solid. In contrast to Isaac and Rebekah and Jacob and Rahel, the word
love is never to describe the relationship between the first Jewish
couple.
"By the akeda, and certainly at the time of Sarah's death, the couple
had become estranged and were, in fact, living apart." This would help
explain how Abraham was able to hide the akeda from Sarah -- she was no
longer at home!
Abramovitch explains this turn of affairs by pointing to Abraham's
resentment of Sarah for forcing him to divorce Hagar, and that he
eventually gives gifts to the sons of his next wife Keturah (whom the
sages identify with Hagar -- see Rashi on Genesis 25:1), gifts he had
been prevented from giving to Ishmael.
This view of Abraham and Sarah might be very opposite of a
traditional view of perfect parents of the Jewish people. Yet their
very vulnerability, their potential to err, is precisely the lesson the
sages seem to offer us by choosing these texts as the readings for the
Day of Judgement. Teshuva is for human beings, not angels.
Abraham and Sarah are active people -- rich, strong, forceful
individuals, missionaries for their new faith. Yet their response to
God's commands -- literally their teshuva -- is what shapes their inner
lives. Just acknowledging God's existence is insufficient, merely lip
reading belief is not enough. Our innermost lives are formed by our
reaction to the environment, but that environment is forever changing,
it is dynamic not static, a replica of the most fundamental laws of
nature in which cells, proteins, DNA, molecules, neurons and so forth
are continually interacting and reorganizing themselves.
Thus, too, Abraham's first and last commands are lech lecha (Genesis
12:1 amd 22:1) literally, go forth, move. Teshuva is more than a once-
a-year ritual. It is the very essence of our earthly lives.home Rabbi Zeitlin Mordechai Beck Rabbi Simkovich Rabbi Friedman Recommended Reading
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