Six Million Akeidot: A Bold Chiddush On Parsha Vayera

“Jeremiah declares: ‘They have built altars to burn their children with fire as offerings unto Baal, which I commanded not, nor did I speak it, nor has it arisen in my thought.’

‘Which I commanded not’ – this refers to Mesha the king of Moab[: ‘while in the midst of a battle with the armies of Edom and Israel, the king of Moab sacrificed his firstborn son atop the city walls, on the assumption that such an offering would be pleasing to G-d,’ see Kings 2:3:26-27, footnote 155, “The Book Of Genesis With Commentary And Insights From 500 Sages And Mystics, R. Yanki Tauber (Open Door Books, NY, NY:2003), p. 228 ];

‘Nor did I speak it’ – this refers to Jepthah’s daughter[: ‘as related in Judges 11, Jepthah made a vow that if he returned victoriously from battle against the Ammonites, the first thing ‘that comes out from the door of my home…shall be G-d’s, and I shall bring it as an ascent offering.’ To his dismay, his only daughter came out of the house to greet him upon his return’ footnote 156, Id.];

‘Nor has it arisen in my thought’ – this refers to Yitzchok, son of Avrohom.” Talmud Bavli.

Q. What is Akeidas Yitzchok doing on this list?

An Answer: To my mind, it’s there because the only way Akeidas Yitzchok makes sense is if it is viewed as a prophetic act,[1a] like Jeremiah’s yoke[1b], Ezekiel lying on his left side[2], Hosea’s marriage to Gomer[3], Isaiah’s walking naked and barefoot[4], Eliyahu and the widow’s jar[5], and Joshua’s circuits of the city in the conquering of Yericho[6].

Despite what Avrohom may have thought, G-d never intended that Yitzchok should be shechted. Midrash Rabbah and Rashi agree on this point:

“Said Abraham to G-d: ‘I do not understand. Yesterday You said to me, ‘In Isaac shall your seed be called.’ Then You said, “Take your son.’ And now You tell me, ‘Do not do anything to him,’

Said G-d to Abraham: ‘Abraham! I shall not violate my covenant and that which emerges from My lips I shall not change. When I said to you, ‘Take your son,’ I did not tell you to slaughter him. I said, ‘Bring him up.’ You brought him up and fulfilled my command. Now take him down.'”

Avrohom might not have known consciously that G-d didn’t intend him to shecht his son, but his body certainly did. Says R. Menachem Mendel of Rimanov:

“So completely had Avrohom dedicated himself to G-d, that his body had become instinctively responsive to the divine will. This explains why Avrohom had to ‘send forth his hand’ to pick up the knife. Up until that point, his limbs did everything – chopping the wood, saddling the donkey, building the altar – freely and spontaneously, as these actions were desired by G-d. But because it was not G-d’s desire that Yitzchok actually be slaughtered, Avrohom’s hand resisted the action, and he had to forcibly send forth his hand.”

Avrohom was nevertheless so engrossed in shechting his son that the angel of G-d who commanded him to drop the knife had to repeat his name twice to get his attention[7], and it was accounted to him as righteousness when he “demonstrated that he was prepared to act cruelly for G-d’s sake.”[8].

The divine will, itself, seemed uncharacteristically cruel, “fraught with incredulity and contradiction – …seem[ing] to deem good to be evil and evil to be good”[9]. All agree that child sacrifice is evil. The Malbim unequivocally states: “If Avrohom had actually slaughtered his son, it would have been an act of murder and [an] abomination abhorrent to G-d. So, also, Avrohom’s soul, so perfectly attuned to the divine will, was opposed to this deed.”

So, to my limited mind at least, it makes no sense at all that Avrohom Avinu is praised for setting out to shecht his son. If all agree that child sacrifice is evil, is it meritorious to do evil for G-d’s sake? Does that even make sense?

What’s going on here?

One clue to deciphering this mystery is that Akeidas Yitzchok happened after the Covenant Between the Parts, wherein Avrohom Avinu saw the whole of Jewish history – including the wars, the exiles, the persecutions, the pogroms, the holocaust, the war of Gog U’Magog – what was destined to happen to each and every one of his descendants in the future, near and far.[10] And he – and we – agreed to all of it. [10a]

The second clue is the miraculous appearance of the ram[11] on the scene:

“All day long Avrohom saw the ram tangling in a tree, leaping free, tangling in a shrub, leaping free, tangling in a bush, leaping free.

“Said G-d to him: ‘Avrohom, so will your children keep getting caught in their sins and tangling in the empires – from Babylon to Media, from Media to Greece, from Greece to Rome.’

“Said Avrohom: ‘Shall it go on like this forever?’

“Said G-d to him: ‘In the end, they will be redeemed with the horns of this ram.”[12]

That’s why Akeidas Yitzchok was a prophetic act: Yitzchok lived because G-d does not go back on his promises, and G-d had many times before this promised Avrohom Avinu descendants from Yitzchok “as numerous as the stars in the sky.” Avrohom dropped the knife when the angel of G-d spoke to him and he realized that G-d did not desire him to shecht Yitzchok, but desired him to shecht “the ram” instead:

Says R. Betzalel of Kobrin:

“When Yitzchok was bound on the altar, his original soul left his body and entered into the ram. Thus, the sacrifice of the ram was regarded as if Yitzchok himself was being sacrificed.”

So “Avrohom transferred his act of sacrifice to the ram. With every action he did, he imagined himself doing the same to his son. So completely did he insert himself in this role that, emotionally and psychologically, the experience was virtually identical to what it would have been had he actually sacrificed his son: to the extent that our sages use the expression ‘the ashes of Yitzchok’ when referring to the ashes of the ram which remain mounded on the altar as an eternal remembrance of Avrohom’s deed.”[13]

Midrash Tanchuma and Rashi agree: “With each action Avrohom performed with the ram, he prayed to G-d : ‘May this be as if I am doing it to my son – as if my son is being slaughtered – as if my son’s blood is being sprinkled on the altar – as if he is being skinned – as if he is being burned and made into ashes.”

Avrohom Avinu understood that, when he did these things to the ram, every one of them would happen to his children by Yitzchok. And more. For like the sacrificial ram, whose every part was put to good and holy use[14], our enemies throughout the long centuries have used our holy bodies in many novel, unholy, and macabre ways. We’ve been skinned alive and our flesh has been used for lampshades. Our fat has been rendered and used for soap. The gold in our teeth has been extracted from our corpses and used to fund our extermination. Our hair has been shaved and used to make slippers for Nazi submarine crews. We’ve been slaughtered like cattle. And forget about “sprinkling the blood…on the altar”: the blood on the floor of the Kadosh Kadoshim of the Second Beis HaMikdash during the churban reached the height of a man’s knee. Our babies have been baked in bricks, cut out of their mother’s wombs, and dashed against the rocks. We’ve been hung and beaten and burned alive at the stake and in the Nazi ovens. We have been made into a mound of ashes as tall as Mount Moriah.

It’s so obvious.

We are Yitzchok’s ram[15].

And the meaning of Akeidas Yitzchok is that it’s our self-sacrifice which completes that of Avrohom and Yitzchok[16]. What Avrohom did in Akeidas Yitzchok will precipitate the redemption, which completes his holy mission on earth[17]. May this redemption come swiftly and in our lifetimes, and may we see it with our own eyes!!

NOTES:

[1a] “Here I will relate a principle which you should apply to all subsequent chapters describing the lives of Avrohom, Yitzchok, and Yaakov…Know [that] everything that is decreed on them from on high is brought forth from its potential state into the realm of actuality by means of a symbolic action, so that it should subsequently be fulfilled. We find examples of this in the symbolic actions performed by the prophets, as when Jeremiah instructs to cast a scroll into the Euphrates (to allude to the sinking of Babylon), or when Elisha places his hand on the bow of Joash (in foretelling the defeat of Aram), and so on.” See Jeremiah 51: 59-64; Kings 2:13-19.” R. Nachman of Breslov.

~ See also Rambam, Moreh Nevuchim 2:42:1-3: “We have already shown that the appearance or speech of an angel mentioned in Scripture took place in a vision or dream; it makes no difference whether this is expressly stated or not, as we have explained above. This is a point of considerable importance. In some cases the account begins by stating that the prophet saw an angel; in others, the account apparently introduces a human being, who ultimately is shown to be an angel; but it makes no difference, for if the fact that an angel has been heard is only mentioned at the end, you may rest satisfied that the whole account from the beginning describes a prophetic vision. In such visions, a prophet either sees God who speaks to him, as will be explained by us, or he sees an angel who speaks to him, or he hears some one speaking to him without seeing the speaker, or he sees a man who speaks to him, and learns afterwards that the speaker was an angel. In this latter kind of prophecies, the prophet relates that he saw a man who was doing or saying something, and that he learnt afterwards that it was an angel.

“This important principle was adopted by one of our Sages, one of the most distinguished among them, R. Ḥiya the Great (Bereshit Rabba, xlviii.), in the exposition of the Scriptural passage commencing, ‘And the Lord appeared unto him in the plain of Mamre’ (Gen. xviii.). The general statement that the Lord appeared to Abraham is followed by the description in what manner that appearance of the Lord took place; namely, Abraham saw first three men; he ran and spoke to them. R. Hiya, the author of the explanation, holds that the words of Abraham, ‘My Lord, if now I have found grace in thy sight, do not, I pray thee, pass from thy servant,’ were spoken by him in a prophetic vision to one of the men; for he says that Abraham addressed these words to the chief of these men. Note this well, for it is one of the great mysteries [of the Law].

“The same, I hold, is the case when it is said in reference to Jacob, ‘And a man wrestled with him’ (Gen. 32:25); this took place in a prophetic vision, since it is expressly stated in the end (ver. 31) that it was an angel. The circumstances are here exactly the same as those in the vision of Abraham, where the general statement, ‘And the Lord appeared to him,’ etc., is followed by a detailed description. Similarly the account of the vision of Jacob begins, ‘And the angels of God met him’ (Gen. 32:2); then follows a detailed description how it came to pass that they met him; namely, Jacob sent messengers, and after having prepared and done certain things, ‘he was left alone,’ etc., ‘and a man wrestled with him’ (ibid. ver. 24). By this term ‘man’ [one of] the angels of God is meant, mentioned in the phrase, ‘And angels of God met him” the wrestling and speaking was entirely a prophetic vision. That which happened to Balaam on the way, and the speaking of the ass, took place in a prophetic vision, since further on, in the same account, an angel of God is introduced as speaking to Balaam. I also think that what Joshua perceived, when ‘he lifted up his eyes and saw, and behold a man stood before him’ (Josh. 5:13) was a prophetic vision, since it is stated afterwards (ver. 14) that it was ‘the prince of the host of the Lord.’ But in the passages, ‘And an angel of the Lord came up from Gilgal’ (Judges 2:1); ‘And it came to pass that the angel of the Lord spake these words to all Torah ” (ibid. ver. 2); the ‘angel’ is, according to the explanation of our Sages, Phineas. They say, The angel is Phineas, for, when the Divine Glory rested upon him, he was ‘like an angel.'”

[1b] See Jeremiah 27: Jeremiah wore a yoke around his neck to symbolize the impending Babylonian captivity and the submission of Judah to Babylon. This act served as a visual representation of God’s message about the people’s need to submit to the Babylonian rule.

[2] See Ezekiel 4: God instructed Ezekiel to lie on his side for a specified number of days, representing the years of judgment for Israel and Judah. Ezekiel also had to build a model of Jerusalem under siege to illustrate the coming destruction.

[3] See Hosea 1-3: Hosea’s marriage to an unfaithful woman named Gomer symbolized God’s relationship with the unfaithful Israel. It demonstrated the forgiveness and restoration God desired for His people despite their waywardness.

[4] See Isaiah 20: Isaiah walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign against Egypt and Cush. This symbolic act represented the shame and humiliation that these nations would experience when Assyria conquered them.

[5] See 1 Kings 17: Elijah asked a widow in Zarephath to provide him with food during a severe drought. Despite her dire situation, the widow followed Elijah’s instructions, and miraculously, her jar of flour and jug of oil did not run out until the drought ended.

[6] See Joshua 6: God instructed Joshua to march around the walls of Jericho for six days, and on the seventh day, the walls of the city would fall when the people shouted. This prophetic act demonstrated obedience and trust in God’s plan for victory.

[7] Alsich, Keli Yakar.

[8] The GRA.

[9] R. Menachem Mendel of Horodok.

[10] “Shall I hide from Avrohom what I am doing?”

[10a] See “Sha’ar HaEmunah VeYesod HaChassidut, by R. Gershom Henoch Leiner, translated and annotated by Betzalel Phillip Edwards, Sefaria Version:

“Even all of the pain that man suffers will not be ignored by God. God will comfort every soul that suffers. Since God knows the final purpose of everything, and that it is better for the creation to have been created than not. He shows this understanding to a person’s soul while he is still in potential, before he enters the world. Then the soul agrees that it is better for him to be created, as it is written in the Zohar (Vayehi, 233b): But come and see! Before they descend into the world, all the souls that exist from the very first day of creation stand before God, in the very form that they will take on after they come into the world. They stand above in a body that looks just like the body they will enter. When the time comes for this soul to descend into the world, the soul stands before the Holy One, blessed be He, in the exact form it will take on when it enters the world. At this time, God has the soul swear that it will keep the commandments of the Torah and not transgress the statutes of the Torah. From where do we derive that the soul stands in this way before God? As it is written (Melachim 1, 17:1), “I swear by the Living God, whom I stood before…” God shows the soul its entire structure, his characteristics, abilities, and even its physical attributes. The soul agrees to it all, down to the last detail. From man’s point of view, it is difficult to understand how the soul could agree to all of the pain it will have to endure in this world.”

[11] This is the ram created at twilight on the sixth day. “Day represents love and night represents awe. Hence, the ram that is the personification of Akeidas Yitzchok – the fusion of love and awe – is a creature of the primordial twilight, the fusion of day and night.” Tzemach Tzedek. The right horn of this ram was blown at matan Torah and the left horn of this ram will be blown on the day of judgment. Pirke D’Rabbi Eliezer.

[12] Talmud Yerushalmi.

[13] The Rebbe.

[14] “This ram was created at twilight at the close of the sixth day of creation, and every part of it has a use. Its ashes form a foundation upon the holy Temple; its sinews are the ten strings of Dovid’s lyre; its skin is Elijah’s belt; its left horn is the shofar that was sounded at Mount Sinai, and its right horn will be sounded at the future redemption.” Pirke d’Rabbi Eliezer.

[15]”In offering up Yitzchok as a sacrifice to G-d. Avrohom offered up the whole of the people of Israel – who were concentrated in the person of Isaac at that point in time — elevating them to the highest level of closeness to G-d.” Hasdai Crescus. This is why the Korbanot section of Shacharit follows the recitation of the Akeidah. Because, when we offer the Tamid, we are offering OURSELVES. This is also why we affirm our willingness to die for Hashem in the holy Shema, which we are obligated to recite every day.

[16] See Isaiah 53: The “suffering servant” of Isaiah 53 is klal Yisroel.

[17] See R. Kalonymous of Piaseczno, who was murdered by the Nazis on November 3, 1943:

“Avrohom’s sacrifice was enacted with the full intent and desire to give up to G-d what was most precious to him; only the deed was absent. On the other hand, we have the many martyrs who, throughout Jewish history, have had their lives and the lives of their children taken from them in actuality, against their intent and desire. Together, these complete the sacrifice. The desire is joined to the action.

“Thus, the Torah writes, ‘And it was after these things that G-d tested Avrohom,’ It is only after all these generations of Jewish sacrifice that the Binding of Isaac will be fulfilled.” See Tauber, “The Book Of Genesis With Commentary And Insights From 500 Sages And Mystic,” p. 281 and footnote 161 (Open Door Books, NY, NY: 2003).