Akedah

As he was walking towards Moriah, Avraham did not listen to Sarah.

He ignored her pleadings.  Why do you have to be the one to be so obedient to Adonai? Take some wheat.  Some flour maybe?  But Avraham persisted, and forever scarred Isaac’s psyche, even if he…

Well, almost.  And so we thought, well, we are done with that chapter of human history.

Our people will never do that again.  After all, we are not the Mayans.  We are not the Aztecs.  We are not the ancient Greeks after Troy…

Did Ya’akov not listen to his wife Shoshana when he went to the Olympic Games in Munich in 1972? Did he not heed the whisperings from the deepest recesses of his soul?

And then there was Nachshon.  Had he also ignored the pleadings of his parents?  Please son!  Please.

Amir, our platoon medic, did not his sister beg him to come back? Did not we all mourn him, this beautiful, tall, intelligent young man who knew how to care for us all?

Let me never forget Avinoam, whose three brothers were also there and returned unscathed.  His parents broken into a thousand shards.  Uzi, whose father tried to stop him from the grave; listen to me my son, listen to me Uzi, I gave up my soul in 1948.  There is no need for you to do the same.

And Dudu and Daniel?  Was their sacrifice so needed to appease you?  Could you not have been happy with sending the ram as Avraham was about to plunge his knife into Isaac?  Just send another ram? And why not?

But no, you had to take even more, when you took Ami and Beno and Amatzia.  You had to take them from their wives and their sons and their daughters and their families and their friends.

And you had to leave me behind to write stories about them with tears streaming down my face, hoping that this Akedah would end one day…