Student Rabbi Naomi Goldman

Commentary on Simchat Torah 2014

“And God created the human in God’s image; in the image of God S/he created him; male and female God created them”.  Male and female God created them. This is the first account of the creation story that is told twice in different ways.  In this first version we read that when God first created human kind, “they” were created “male and female”. There are two possible readings of this.   One is that in this account, Man and Woman were created at the same time, equally. But the earliest rabbinic commentators, including Rashi, preferred the second reading, which is that the first human was both male and female, a hermaphrodite, someone we might today think of as intersex or maybe transgender, and that the constructs of male and female, were something which occurred later. “


Rosh Hashanah 2014

This year I went to two 60th birthday parties, one 40th,  my parents’ diamond wedding party and quite a lot of 5th birthday parties.  I’m guessing a number of you have marked significant birthdays this year, or at least celebrated someone else’s.  We like celebrating important birthdays and anniversaries – they are markers of life, reminding us that life is significant, but also I guess, that it is fleeting. Time goes by so fast we need to grab the moment, light candles, gather and say we made it to this time.

One of the many names of Rosh Hashana is Yom Harat Olam, the day the world was born. Today is the birthday of the world. Every year we all get a chance to pause for breath, hold the moment, and begin again.  This coming Shabbat, for those enthusiastic enough to go to shul on Shabbat Shuvah, we read about the death of Moses.  Every beginning marks an ending – the older I get, the more I am aware of time that has gone, and chunks of life that have passed, every year.  And then a couple of weeks later, on Simchat Torah, we read about the creation of the world again. The very first beginning.  If today is the birthday of the world, the day in which we all celebrate our humanity, then soon we will recall its actual birth.

But during the High Holydays, the normal cycle of Torah readings are suspended. We pause between birth and death, to consider what comes in between.  That space where we live our lives, and make our mistakes and love and fight and get lonely and work and eat.  A space of extraordinary beauty and sometimes great cruelty.  A world that presents us with huge challenges and incredible gifts.  That’s the space  we are in today.

The link between our two Torah stories today is actually Covenant – the contract between God and the people of Israel – Israel, or those who wrestle with God.  The Akedah affirms the Covenant between Abraham and God which is then re-affirmed at Sinai. If we are forgiven our wrong-doings, it’s because God has already promised to forgive us.

Well like many of you I find this a bit problematic. Because apart from the fact that God clearly doesn’t operate in this way, what kind of contract is it that involved men sacrificing their sons?  Is this a God we want to do business with anyway?

The story begins – vayehi ehar hadverim haeleh – it came to pass after these matters, things, that God put Abraham to the test. What were these things? What has just happened?  And what exactly is God testing?

What happened just before the Akedah was that Abraham turned on his other son, on Ishmael, and cast him out into the desert. Abraham had two sons, and he didn’t behave very well to either of them. Abraham has his first son with his concubine, Hagar.  Later Sarah has Isaac, and some years after that she becomes concerned about her son’s inheritance and tells Abraham to cast Hagar and Ishmael out.  Abraham sends his concubine off into the desert with their son and a bottle of water. It is almost certain death.  Certainly Hagar believes her son is going to die and it is only the appearance of an angel pointing out the existence of a well that saves him.

So when Abraham hears God’s voice he may already be feeling guilty at having expelled his other son.  Is the test perhaps a test of whether he can treat his younger son any better? In which case  Abraham fails miserably.  Or is it in fact a punishment for the sin of expelling his eldest son, his firstborn.

What might the Rabbis be trying to show us by this story and why has it maintained its power over the centuries so that it is still the story we read on this day, on this day of Remembrance, at this season of Return?.

Abraham seems to think he has to do whatever God tells him. But we are creatures of free will. We can choose.  And our fortune and our tragedy is that all of our actions have consequences.  Abraham and Sarah treat Hagar and Ishmael abysmally, like objects.  Abraham, the text tells us, was distressed, when Sarah tells him to cast them out. But he doesn’t deal with the issue.  He doesn’t try to negotiate with Sarah or give Ishmael some kind of negotiated status. He just casts him out.  And his cruelty and neglect comes back to bite him as he is forced to slaughter, or almost slaughter, his one remaining son, as a consequence of his blind faith.

Commentators over the years have suggested that this is a cry against child sacrifice, because the firstborn in many other cultures was sometimes sacrificed to the gods. But if it’s just a history lesson then why bother reading it on this most important day?  Why is it still so disturbing if we can just explain it away as ancient people doing ancient things?

The idea of the sacrifice of children has powerful resonance in our own age.  All wars hit the young hard, whether they are children caught up in the conflict, or 18-year-olds in uniform. The First World War poet Wilfred Owen famously used the Akedah as a metaphor to describe the slaughter of young men in war.  It’s a powerful myth because it touches on a primal relationship between parent and child and, in this case, the abuse of that trust.

Any action has consequences.   I think this story is an inditement of patriarchy, of the kind of inflexible family structure in which there is no debate, and no argument, just one figure who says what goes. But I don’t think that authoritarian figure is God – it’s Abraham.  Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the idea of an omnipotent God is not a Jewish idea, that it’s a concept influenced by Greek thought.  The Jewish God needs humanity to achieve just about anything.   God can say what God likes – the harm is only done when someone is willing to raise a knife, or strap on a bomb, or blow up a house, in God’s name.  And what exactly does Abraham hear anyway when he hears God?  To what extent is any conversation with God a projection of our own inner psyche?

The only thing that actually dies in this story is the ram – God doesn’t ask for anyone or anything to be killed in his name, but Abraham decides something has to be killed in his son’s stead. And so we get the association with the shofar and Rosh Hashanah and a reminder that Sarah too was punished for her role in the expulsion of Hagar and Ishmael.  The next thing we hear of Sarah is her death, and Rabbinic commentators suggest that once she heard that Abraham was going to kill her son, she died of grief. The shofar evokes the sound of weeping and many say it is Sarah’s cries we hear. Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav said that the sound of the shofar creates a bridge between heaven and earth – it is the tears of compassion and grief over unnecessary death, that will take us closer to God.

The Jewish mystics assigned various qualities to each of the patriarchs.  Abraham epitomises kindness, Isaac, strength, and Jacob, truth. In fact these attributes highlight what each character lacks and needs. Jacob is a liar – he pretends to be his brother, so his blind father will give him the blessing. Isaac is weak and in fact never asserts himself throughout his narrative. And Abraham is cruel and fails to treat his children with compassion.  He is a model to us of how not to behave.

If Abraham, did in fact get it wrong, if he was meant to say no ,  what does that mean for us?  Does God forgive Abraham and therefore forgive us too?  Does God accept that Abraham is fragile, human, locked into his own historically limited understanding of what faith entails?  If Abraham can be forgiven after he almost kills his son, does that mean we too can be forgiven our murderous impulses? Can we too start again? As individuals, but also as a community, as a people?

At this time of year we imagine that our lives are recorded in a book.  How would we live if everything was seen, if we had to be accountable before some force that knew exactly what we had been up to?  Days are like scrolls. Write on them what you want to be remembered.  What you want to be remembered for.

At Rosh Hashanah we look back at the past year, the good and the bad, our achievements and our mistakes, and we look at our own vulnerabilities.  And we ask for mercy because we are all flawed and without mercy and compassion we would all be found wanting.

One of the messages of the Akedah, in my view, is that it is always  possible to change our fate and that of our loved ones.  A clue is in the different names of God used. The God that Abraham hears at the beginning of the story is Ha’Elohim. It’s one of the oldest names of God and has a plural ending, the name probably originating from pagan times.  But at the point when the angel tells Abraham not to kill Isaac, the name Y-H-v-H is used.  Maimonides said this name is used for the God of Mercy. The God who says yes, you really messed up and you’ve suffered the consequences, but if you think you can change then I’ll give you another chance. Because this is the season of second chances.  And the teaching here is that love and compassion can turn things around.  It’s a story of a fractured and damaged family – it takes a lot of forgiveness to begin to put things right. And this is the season of forgiving ourselves and others, of returning to the people we truly are.

May we always challenge authorities, religious and secular,  when their rulings go against our ethical instincts. And may we learn from our ancestors’ mistakes to treat each other with respect and love. Ken Yehi Ratson. 

Pages: 1 2