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This year, I’ve had the unique honor and privilege of being invited by my Rabbi in our little community synagogue to give a D’var Torah (words of Torah) and a Shiur (a lesson) almost every Shabbat. It began with a small observation I made during one of his lessons. My observation was inspired by the teachings of the late great Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. I was introduced to his brilliant works by my uncle, whom I admire and love dearly, while I stayed with him during a surgery rotation I was fortunate to experience one summer in London as a medical student. 

Most recently, I was asked to deliver a message the evening before the end of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, as we had run unusually a bit ahead of schedule and had a few moments before it was time to start the evening service. “But I didn’t prepare anything!” I told him. “You’ll think of something,” he replied with a knowing smile. 

The question that was posed to us earlier by our Rabbi was why, of all the possible passages and lessons of hope and faith in the Torah, do we focus so much attention on the story of Abraham and Isaac during the “days of awe” (the ten penitential days of reflection from Rosh Hashanah through Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement). Drawing, as always, from the inspiration of Rabbi Sacks’ teaching, and recognizing that my ideas resonated with others who have made similar observations, I feel that if I am to honor the message I delivered, I must share it now with as many people as I can. So here it is – with, if you will permit, a bit of polishing up from my impromptu remarks.  

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We live in difficult times. Pick any place on the globe today, and it is not without unrest. No less so than in the hearts of Jews, who face, once again, the oldest disease in humanity that we have not yet cured – hatred. It may seem bleak and discouraging. But what I want to share with you is a message of hope. For as much as we are required to reflect and treat these next few days with seriousness and awareness of our personal and collective behavior, we are also required to be joyful, not sad, and to share as much joy as possible with our family, our friends, indeed, the world. That is the essence of who we are.

So we were asked by the Rabbi earlier: why do we focus so much attention on the “akedah” – the sacrifice that was and wasn’t? The story of the binding of Isaac, to the very last moment when Abraham was willing to sacrifice the son he cherished and prayed for his whole life, as an act of faith. How can this act, filled with so much tension and contradiction, be the central message of the days that represent the core principles of our faith? Besides the obvious connection with the substitution at the last moment of a ram for Isaac, and the ram’s horn we blow on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur – what makes THIS the most important and yet somewhat improbable passage from which to draw inspiration as we look towards a new year?

If you look at the Torah as a historical narrative (which in addition to its primary religious instruction, anthropologists, theologians, and historians across academic backgrounds affirm that it is), there is a distinct and very deliberate statement that is being made in the story of Abraham and Isaac. Incidentally, if we are speaking strictly as historians, the story takes place on the altar of the very rock which used to be the site of the Temple Mount, and today sits under the “Dome of the Rock” in Jerusalem, for any of our younger “chronologically challenged” idealists. But I digress. 

At the time of Abraham, it was common practice for many of the idol-worshipping sects of that region – indeed, we find similar evidence in many places around the world – to sacrifice their children to their gods in order to find favor. One of the more commonly referenced and well-documented cults of that time were worshippers of “Moloch”, a deity that was served by feeding their children to fire. 

So Abraham’s compliance with the request is not outside the realm of what would have been considered a cultural norm, if you will, of the time and the region. Yet despite that willingness to heed the call, our sages tell us of the fervor with which Abraham prays deeply for a reprieve. Even his son Isaac, who is not a child but actually a 30-year-old man, asks, “But what will we sacrifice?” Abraham answers, “God will provide.” Within the challenge is the answer. Abraham never gives up hope or faith that the heavenly decree will be altered. And so we too are charged with the duty to never give up hope, to pray with every fiber of our being and all the might of our faith that even when things seem bleakest, “God will provide” a favorable judgment and resolution through His infinite mercy. 

But the message is even greater than that. As we know, the reprieve comes at the very last possible moment, in the most dramatic fashion as Abraham draws his knife. Call it a conscious awakening or an angel’s voice, Abraham hears another call and answers, “Here I am!” 

“Do not lay a hand on the boy!” He is told. A ram becomes the substitute sacrifice, and its horn the shofar, the instrument that becomes the alarm to awaken our consciousness, to inspire us to pray from the depths of our souls and declare that “Life is precious! And the most precious is the life of a child.” It is a seismic break from the cultural norm, to declare – “we are different from everyone else around us.” We will never take life for granted. Most of all, the life of a child that represents innocence, renewal and the instrument of instruction and education that we value, through which our most sacred goals and desires are carried from one generation to the next. 

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Look at the death cults that exist today. The popular culture that celebrates terrorists who not only take their lives for granted, and those of their victims, but even their own children, whom they use as human shields and dress as a sacrifice for their cause. Whose deaths they celebrate as “martyrs” for the sake of destruction. It is anathema to everything we believe in. Every foundation of our faith. We are indeed not like them. That is why accusations of “genocide” represent the most profound moral corruption and insult to our sensibilities. Those of us who truly know and understand the lengths to which our people, even our own soldiers at risk to their own lives, will go to protect the life of a child feel the deepest wound from such lies, which are only the latest variation of a modern day blood libel. Look no further than the 25th anniversary of 9/11, or the upcoming anniversary of the horrors of Oct 7 to see just who it is that values life, and who forfeits their own in order to weaponize it. While we fight simply to survive an existential threat, yet again. 

This year, Rosh Hashanah carries an additional unique message and is the one I want to leave you with. Because it falls on Shabbat, we do not blow the shofar on the first day. Our sages and Rabbis tell us that this represents an opportunity to emulate Abraham even more. We must pray even more fervently for our voices to be heard, since the shofar, a clarion call to awaken our spirit, is also a signal to the Almighty to remember us, remember the covenant, and grant us mercy, but remains silent in this unique chronological convergence of Shabbat with Rosh Hashanah. 

Yet I would like to propose a slightly different interpretation. It is said that during the Day of Judgment that is Rosh Hashanah, the “satan” or evil inclination that lies in all of us is used to prosecute the case and present the evidence against us. The blast of the shofar disrupts that prosecution; the prosecution’s case is lost, and we are granted a merciful judgment. So are we at a disadvantage when the shofar is silent on Shabbat? 

Surely not. For as it is often said, “just as the Jews have kept the Shabbat, so too the Shabbat has kept the Jews.” The very fact that we observe the Shabbat to the extent that we give up the instrument of our salvation and rescue at the time we need it the most is a testament to the power of keeping and observing Shabbat. It is as loud and as powerful as the blast of sound of the shofar itself. 

When claims and charges of genocide are leveled against us, when a call of “Zionism” is used to cloak the justification for a boycott that is nothing more than poorly disguised antisemitism, we can respond with more than just the long list of humanitarian, scientific, medical, and technical wonders we have contributed to the world. It is precisely because we are a nation born from slavery that we cherish freedom. It is precisely because we were strangers in a foreign land that we honor and protect the immigrant seeking refuge. It is precisely because we have moral imperatives that we are given the choice to exercise them. It is precisely because our numbers are so small that the miracle of our contributions is so great. It is precisely because the union of two simple yet beautifully complex cells coming together as naturally as they do out of love is the scientific event from which springs the miracle of life that it is the life of a child we cherish above all. 

Yet we can summarize all of that and respond with a very simple reminder: “Have a nice weekend. You’re welcome. We brought that message of God to the world too.” 

So I say to you this year, and for as long as we face these challenges, and beyond, don’t just keep the Shabbat. Proclaim it! Proclaim your Judaism as loudly as the blast of the shofar. That is what defines us. Not the comments on TikTok, or on Instagram, and not the New York Times editorial pages .  It is a response to the nihilistic chants of the world that indeed, we ARE different. We are NOT like you. This is the music of hope and redemption. It is our proclamation of the beauty of life. Shabbat is our call to the world to wake up. Sound the alarm!