It was five years ago when I first stood on this pulpit on Rosh Hashana. I shared with you at that time my struggle with, and my image of, this morning’s Torah portion. So famous, or infamous is the section that we read on this birthday of the world, that it has it’s own one word title: Akeda, Binding. We virtually never speak of it as being taken from the portion Va’era in Genesis, but simply as the Akeda, the Binding. So ingrained in the Jewish psyche is this story that we even teach it to our children. We know this is Isaac’s story. We typically assume that we all know that this is the place in the Torah, the only place, that recounts the story of a father who came O so close to slitting the throat of his son. Not just any son, in the words of the text, he is Abraham’s only son, the one he loved, Isaac. In Traditional Jewish circles, this section is seen as so compelling, so difficult and so important that it is read everyday. If nothing else, one is to satisfy the obligation to study Torah by reading this story.

The connection is made between this passage and Rosh Hashana because of the ram that, caught by its horns in a thicket, was offered up in place of Isaac. We honor the memory of that ram with the sound of the shofar, the ram’s horn on this day. Its plaintive sound is supposed to call to mind all of our collective memories of this event. It also is meant to thereby remind us of the fragility, the uncertainty of life. How much more uncertain a world can we envision than one in which a father might willingly sacrifice his son? Sadly, given the prevalence of suicide bombings in our times, perhaps we do not live in a world all that different from Abraham’s. There are people who encourage the sacrifice of children, and they may truly believe, just as in the ancient world, that they are doing God’s will.

Jewish Tradition has worked very had to make Abraham ultimately stand apart from such practices. Abraham is supposed to be a role model for us. The Tradition tries to shape our understanding so that we come to see our ancestor, the very first Jew in the entire world, as someone forging a path we should follow. First of all, he listens to God. Therefore, so should we. After all, as we know the story, it worked out. It was a test, and God keeps anything bad from happening.

Second, Abraham is rewarded for his loyalty. Simply put, our very existence is the proof of that reward. Although the rabbis in Pirkei Avot warn us not to serve God on the chance that we might be rewarded, Abraham’s story holds that very possibility out to us. In theory, at some point, with proper loyalty, we too may be rewarded. While I would really like to reject this approach out of hand, Deuteronomy seems to revolve around the concepts of reward and punishment. There is, however, a counter balance to this particular theological approach to be found in our own Bible. Two books, Ecclesiastes and Job, take the opposite approach. Both books seem to indicate that justice is not necessarily so apparent in our world.
Third, Abraham, in the end, does not sacrifice the life of his son. There is however at least one Midrashic version of the tale that does in fact have Abraham carry out his grizzly task. It, by the way, resolves the resulting dilemma by having Isaac brought back to life since he was going to be protected because he was in the process of fulfilling a mitzvah. Generally though, we do not have endings to the story which feature Abraham as a murderer. Instead, we are usually taught that this ultimate non-act on the part of Abraham shattered the long standing custom of child sacrifice, at least for us. Our children were to be safe. We were not to sacrifice, and in fact have not sacrificed, our children the way the ancient Canaanites did since the days of Abraham. For this, we and a good part of the world, owe Abraham an enormous debt. The debt of countless lives that have been spared, including my own.

The story is set in motion with the words, “V’ha-elohim nisaw et Avraham, And God tested Abraham.” Typically, our Tradition takes the approach that Abraham passed the test by doing just what God asked of him. A supposition that I told you five years ago that I reject. I still do. I did not believe then, nor do I now, that what God really wants from us is blind, unthinking, uncritical obedience. I believed then, and I do now, that to follow such a path robs us of our very humanity. It robs of the two most precious and dangerous of all human gifts from the Divine, the gift of free will and the gift of intellect. I also have a great deal of trouble with the idea of a God who has to test us, let alone a God that first asks one thing of us, and then the opposite.

So with the words of Pirkei Avot regarding the Torah text (examine it and examine it and grow old with it because everything is in it) in my heart, I went back to the text yet again. This time though, my role model was like Moses. No, not that Moses, but Moses Maimonides. Maimonides felt, while steeped in Jewish Tradition and observance, that he was free to reinterpret the text. What he was uncomfortable with, he allegorized. Some of it he used as simply a pointer to direct us to knowledge, and some of it he used to point us away from things he did not like or comprehend, like corporeal descriptions of God.

So, I began this time with the name of God. Torah uses Elohim as God’s name at this point, not Adonai. Oddly, the text does not tell us that God appears to Abraham, only that Abraham hears a voice and responds to Elohim. In fact, it is that way throughout this story. Abraham is responding to a voice, the voice of Elohim. On the other hand, when Moses gets laws for us, Adonai is the name of God that is used. The names for God Traditionally are used to connote different aspects of God’s nature. Elohim is used to describe the more transcendent, providential nature of God, rather than the more immediate, communicative, “I am in your presence,” aspect of God. Elohim is almost the generic for God, coming as it does from the word El, which does just mean, a God. So, think of Abraham those thousands of years ago, nearly alone in his belief in one God. Deep within himself he hears a voice. It is the voice of conflict and anguish. It is not the voice of mercy. This is the voice of justice demanded, this is Elohim.

Abraham knows well that in the world around him, people kill not just animals for God, but their children as well. For 13 years he has struggled. Finally, he can avoid the conflict no longer, the test is upon him. Isaac is growing up, God has asked nothing from Abraham so far, except his allegiance. Will this God ask of Abraham that terrible act? Imagine the anguished conversation in Abraham’s mind. He (Isaac) is my son. “He is my only son from Sarah and her only child. I love him with heart and soul, and he is the fulfillment of God’s promise to me. Are the Canaanites right, does God require the life of my son?” Ultimately, Abraham escapes to the wilderness. He escapes wife and camp and entanglements. He seeks a place where he can listen to the voices of mind and heart. So it is that he takes his son on their eventful journey to the wilderness of Judea.

As they come to climb Mount Moriah together, Abraham says to Isaac that God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice to come. Is it a statement to calm his son? Is it a prayer? Is it a hope or perhaps a lie? Is it an insight into Abraham’s anguish on a journey which convention demands but which he knows in his heart, at the core of his being, somehow to be wrong? This is the Abraham I yearn for. The one who inherently knows that the act he is contemplating is wrong. God does not ask of us, or even condone, the sacrifice of our children.

Yet, convention, the societal norms of the time, carry the two of them, father and son, up the mountain of destiny. With a single heart, the commentators tell us, bound up in a singular, Divine purpose, they ascend. So close, so close does Abraham come to the unthinkable act. The father himself is the one who ties his son’s hands and feet together in preparation for the slaughter, the swift sure stroke of the knife is to follow. The knife is in Abraham’s hand, and he moves it to the exposed, vulnerable throat. Only at the very last possible moment does Abraham cease in his pursuit of the fatal arc. Torah says a messenger of Adonai calls out to him. Note the change in the name used for God. It is not random.
I ask though, if that messenger, that angel, is not in the heavens, but is Abraham’s mind, and conscience and heart. The Torah perceives it as a message from on high. In reality it is not a message at all. It is Abraham cresting the summit of the highest echelon of human existence. Abraham is thinking, reasoning and deciding. Struggling between love of son and love of God. The moment has come for him to act like, and be, a human being. As he has struggled with what a God might require of him, he comes to realize that he is not just in a covenant with a God. Rather he is in a covenantal relationship with Adonai. As in “Shma Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu,” listen: Adonai is our God. Adonai Echad, Adonai is different. Adonai requires of you to do what is right. Think, reason, look into your heart, and you will know what is right, what ought to be done. I, Adonai, the God who is capable of mercy and forgiveness, have given you all the tools you need for the task. The same capacities of mercy and forgiveness. You know the difference between right and wrong. Choose right, choose blessing, choose life that you and your children may live. Deep within himself, Abraham hears the call to right, to righteousness, and heeds the plea to stop.

In that moment of true epiphany, Abraham becomes my hero and my role model. He is my hero not because he passed a test forced on him by some capricious God. He is my hero precisely because he ultimately disregards the test completely. He listens to what he knows must be the right thing to do. In an act of unparalleled courage, Abraham turns aside from what everyone else in the world might have told him God wants, and finds a new, different, righteous path. He allowed himself to be guided not by what others might say to him or about him, but by what he knew needed to be done. Namely, the shattering of old, fear-based concepts of God. The kind of concepts that create an image of a God demanding human life for supplication. Demanding human death to ward off disaster. Demanding a parent slaughter a child as if it were a barnyard animal. Abraham is unable to abide such a God. Clearly, this is not Adonai.

The Rabbis in the Midrash ask, how is it that God chose Abraham. They then tell us the story of Abraham, growing up with a father who make idols for a living. One day, Abraham goes into his father’s workshop and begins to smash the idols. When his father, hearing the noise, comes in and sees the destruction, he demands to know who has smashed the idols. Abraham points to the biggest of them and tells his father that the idol was jealous of the others. His father scoffs at him, and tells him that an idol could not do that. So Abraham asks his father how he could worship the work of his hands as the creator of the world. Thus we are taught that Abraham chose God before God chose Abraham. More than that, we see that Abraham was called (according to the Midrash) at a young age to shatter conventions about God, to destroy idolatrous images, notions and beliefs.

And now what about us? We are to tread a path that was forged though the wilderness of ignorance and fear by Abraham 4,000 years ago. It is a path that has been affirmed by our Tradition ever since. I still believe that Abraham failed the test per se as the text states it, and I still believe that he was supposed to. Yet, in Abraham’s failure was not defeat, but final victory. A victory which has allowed us to survive, and more than that to live, and affirm life.

Is it easy? As we sit here on this Rosh Hashana at the start of the year 5767 since the birth of the world what does it really mean to be followers of Abraham? It means that we are to listen to heart and soul and mind and let, or better make them, them lead us to do that which we know to be right. It means that we can not allow ourselves the luxury of complacency. It means that we are to open our hearts to the plight of others. It means that, perhaps, we should be atheists. The Kutzger Rebbi is the one who said that by the way: When you see someone else’s pain, you should be like an atheist. Do not assume that the pain comes from God and is deserved. That is too easy and too self serving a judgement. I would add as well, do not assume a faith based attitude - God inflicted it, so God will heal it. As atheists, we should know that no one will heal the pain we see in the world unless we do it ourselves. And if that will require some small sacrifice on our parts, then I say to you that is exactly the kind of sacrifice that God does require of us.

When the prophet Elijah went into the wilderness, he came there to a cave, and lodged there; and, ... behold, the word of the Eternal came to him and said to him, What are you doing here, Elijah? And he said, I have been very zealous for God; for the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant ... And behold, the Eternal passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before God; but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake; but the Eternal was not in the earthquake; And after the earthquake a fire; but the Eternal One was not in the fire; and after the fire ... there was a still, small voice.”

That was the voice that Abraham heard crying out to him so many years before. It is the voice that asked Abraham, with his knife in his hand at the throat of his son, “What are you doing here?” That same voice, if we will only take a moment out of the chaos of our lives to listen, asks each one of us, “What are you doing here?”

What are we doing here on this New Year’s day? What are we doing with the gifts that God has given us? We do not live in the age of Abraham, where social norms call on us to kill our children. We face other dangerous forces. We live in an age that entices us to ignore the plight of the world we will leave to our children. Can we break those bonds of irresponsibility, and be like Abraham? Can we resist the blandishments of our society and seek what we know in our hearts to be right?
What are we doing? Are we healing the sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, sheltering the battered, or protecting the disadvantaged? What are we doing in the cause of making this new year into a good year? When we stand before the Ark and dutifully recite and then sing Avinu Malkeinu, we are not just asking God to grant us our wishes like some fairy godmother. We are asking God to give us strength, to partner with us, as we seek to dispossess oppression from its residency in our world. We are asking God to give us the strength to banish hunger from our community. We are asking God to give us the strength to comfort the broken hearted, to welcome the stranger, and to champion the disenfranchised in our society.

All of this leads us to the following question about the imagery associated with the Days of Awe. I have no doubt that there is a Book of Life. Each one of us, as we live our lives in the coming year, just as we did in the last year, and the year before that, fill in the blank space on the pages allotted us. Therefore, each of us must ask what signature are we adding for ourselves at the end of the pages in the Book of Life? Will that signature attest to the fact that there is yet some measure of kindness in the stone encased hearts that beat within our chests? Counting today, because it is never too soon to start, we have ten days to decide. We have ten days before the sentence is sealed. We have ten days to change for the better. The sound of the Shofar is meant to awaken awareness in us. May it open our eyes on this day to all of the possibilities that exist to make our lives, and the lives of our families better. May these Days of Awe with their story of Abraham’s triumph over inertia and common expectations, motivate all of us, as they have never done before, to seal our places by our own hands, in the book of life, blessing and peace. Amen.