Dumbassery

So I'm reading this article about Rosh HaShanah in the Gannett Star this morning and something struck my eye and made my brain hurt.

One online Jewish community will stream video of a Rosh Hashanah service that purposefully omits a Torah reading about Abraham's test of faith deemed too dangerous in an age of religious fanaticism.

What? What!? WHAT?????

YOU DUMB FUCKERS.

The Akedah is not about religious fanaticism. Indeed, it is COMPLETELY the opposite.

Bereshit 22:1-19.

And it came to pass after these things, that GOD did test Avraham, and said to him, Avraham: and he said, Here I am! And he said, take now thy son, thy only son Yiṣḥaq, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriyya; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. And Avraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass, and took two of his young men with him, and Yiṣḥaq his son, and broke up the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went to the place of which GOD had told him. Then on the third day Avraham lifted up his eyes, and saw the place afar off. And Avraham said to his young men, stay here with the ass; and I and the lad will go yonder and prostrate ourselves, and come again to you. And Avraham took the wood of the burnt offering, and laid it upon Yiṣḥaq his son; and he took the fire in his hand, and the knife; and they went both of them together. And Yiṣḥaq spoke to Avraham his father, and said, My father; and he said, Here I am, my son. And he said, Behold the fire and the wood; but where is the lamb for a burnt offering? And Avraham said, My son, GOD will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering: so they went both of them together. And they came to the place which GOD had told him of; and Avraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Yiṣḥaq his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood. And Avraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And an angel of the LORD called to him out of heaven, and said, Avraham, Avraham: and he said, Here I am. And he said, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, neither do anything to him: for now I know that thou fearest GOD, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thy only son from me. And Avraham lifted up his eyes, and looked and behold behind him a ram caught in the thicket by his horns: and Avraham went and took the ram, and offered him up for a burnt offering in place of his son. And Avraham called the name of that place Adonay-yir'e: as it is said to this day, In the mount the Lord will appear. And the angel of the LORD called to Avraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself I have sworn, says the LORD, because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thy only son: that I will exceedingly bless thee, and I will exceedingly multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of its enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou has obeyed my voice. So Avraham returned to his young men, and they rose up and went together to Be'er-sheva; and Avraham dwelt at Be'er-sheva.

Somebody had better explain to me how this story is "too dangerous in an age of fanaticism."

The whole point of the Akedah is that Abraham's faith did not waver even when God told him to sacrifice the son of his old age, the only son of Sarah his beloved wife. He did everything God told him to do, and was poised to strike with the knife, when the malach adonai, the Messenger of God, told him to STOP.

A very tough test, to be sure. But Abraham passed it for us with flying colors.

Abraham came from a culture that practiced child and human sacrifice. The Midrash Rabbah actually contains a story about Abraham as a boy that had him thrown into a fiery furnace by the King Nimrod for daring to claim that there was but one god.

The story in Genesis tells us that the God of Abraham no longer expected or desired human sacrifice; that simple faith was sufficient and that fanatical belief to the extent that it wasted human life and potential was no longer acceptable.

The Akedah does not call us to murder and destroy in the name of God.

And the "online community" that thinks it does is flat fucking wrong. It figures that it's centered in Cincinnati, the home of Isaac Mayer Wise's Reform movement.

PS: (added after original post) I worked up this parsha myself for a reading on Shabbat Vayera a number of years ago when I was called to be shalich tzibur. I probably studied it harder than I had ever done before. And what I came away with was a feeling that the very deliberate pacing of the story indicated a strong reluctance on Abraham's part to do what he had been asked to do. Consider: He does this, then he does that, then he does something else. All his preparations are laid out by the narrator -- surely this is from the oral tradition, and the storyteller was building tension all the way to the climax. And finally, as Abraham reaches out for the knife with which to kill his son, where the tension gets so high, it's almost unbearable, the verb used is וישלח (vayishlach).

Now I know that verb. It was the first word of my Bar Mitzvah portion, and it means "and he sent" (as opposed to "and he stretched out" as the translation I used suggests). And I maintain -- in the face of every commentary I've ever read on portion Vayera -- that it implies that Abraham had to consciously act, i.e., force himself, to pick up the knife.

It was the hardest thing he'd ever had to do. "And he sent his hand and picked up the knife to slay his son." I can visualize him trembling with horror that the God who told him to have faith and who had told him that he would be the father of nations was the same God who was telling him to kill the only son of his marriage to Sarah. I can hear him thinking, "I can't do this...but I must."

And I can imagine his relief when the Messenger shouted out to stay his hand.

This is not a man who would kill for his God without a thought. This is a man who continually asked himself, "Why?"

This is a man who knew his God had asked him to do something so cognitively dissonant with everything his God had told him to do before that he actually had to deliberate with himself every step of the way.

This is not a story of fanaticism. It is a powerful story of faith rewarded.

Would that I had Abraham's strength of faith.