Tag Archives: Midrash Rabbah

Did Abraham Pass the Test?

This week’s parasha, Vayera, contains one of the most difficult passages in the entire Torah, the Akedah or “Binding of Isaac”. Just about everyone reading this narrative will inevitably ask: how could Hashem have commanded child sacrifice? Even though He stopped it from happening, and Abraham didn’t go through with it, how could this have even come up? How is it that Abraham is seemingly blessed for “not withholding” his son from Hashem (Genesis 22:12)? Does God really want child sacrifice, or demand that level of obedience? Is it even morally acceptable? Many more questions emerge from the narrative:

Why is it that here, with the Akedah, Abraham does not question God at all? Previously, when God tells Abraham that He is about to obliterate everyone and everything in Sodom, Abraham challenges God. Yet here, Abraham is silent. Why is that the Torah says “Abraham returned to Beer Sheva” (22:19) but Isaac is not mentioned? In fact, Isaac doesn’t go to Beer Sheva at all, but lives in a totally different place in Be’er Lachai Roi (24:62). We don’t see Abraham and Isaac speaking ever again, and strangely Abraham does not even bless Isaac on his deathbed, as we find with all the other forefathers. It’s not only Isaac that seemingly never speaks to Abraham again, but neither does Sarah, who tragically passes away immediately upon hearing of the incident. Finally, we don’t see Hashem ever speaking to Abraham again either! It begs the question: Did Abraham really pass the test?

Of course, the Torah explicitly tells us that he did, and that God blessed him for it. The Mishnah in Avot adds that Abraham passed all ten of his tests (5:3). But we also know that there is a difference between passing a test with a C grade, and passing with an A+. Surely and undoubtedly, Abraham was a huge tzadik and beloved by Hashem, as the Torah repeats multiple times. That said, many of our Sages questioned the whole Akedah episode, and struggled with its mysteries and implications. The Midrash (Beresheet Rabbah 56:8) states that Abraham misunderstood the test:

Rabbi Aha said: Abraham began to express his confusion, [saying to God]: “These events are nothing short of bewildering! Yesterday, You said: ‘For it is through Isaac that will be called your descendants’ (Genesis 21:12), then You said: ‘Take you your son […and offer him up]’ (Genesis 22:2), and now You say to me: ‘Do not extend your hand against the lad’? This is bewildering!” The Holy One blessed be He said to Abraham: ‘“I will not violate My covenant, nor alter the utterance of My lips’ (Psalms 89:35) – when I said to you: ‘Take you your son,’ I did not say: ‘Slaughter him,’ but rather, ‘elevate him.’ I said this to you in affection. You have elevated him and fulfilled My word, now take him down!”

The Midrash points out that God never told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac; He literally just said to “elevate” him! Of course, there was never any intention of an immoral child sacrifice. The Midrash continues:

They said a parable; this is analogous to a king who said to his friend: “Bring your son up to [eat at] my table.” He brought him to him, knife in hand. The king said: “Did I say to bring him up in order to eat him? I said: Bring him up out of affection for him!” That is what is written: “[They built altars on which to burn their sons and daughters in fire, something that I never commanded] and which never entered My heart” (Jeremiah 19:5) – this refers to Isaac.

When Jeremiah, like many prophets, critiques the idolaters for their cruel pagan child sacrifices, he quotes Hashem as saying that such “devotion” never entered God’s heart. The Midrash says this refers to Isaac himself, and God never wanted nor commanded a child sacrifice. Abraham misunderstood the assignment. Yes, he passed the test on one level, and showed his unwavering devotion. But that wasn’t quite the point. The point was to recognize that God would never demand an immoral child sacrifice. It was to realize that Judaism is not pagan, and would never involve any kind of human sacrifice, God forbid. Even if God Himself commands a person to do something like this, the correct response is to refuse! This is similar to the way Moses refused God’s offer to expunge the Israelites following the Golden Calf and make a new nation out of Moses. Moses boldly countered: “Erase me, then, from Your book!” (Exodus 32:32)

It is also similar to Rabbi Yehoshua’s bold reply to the Bat Kol during the incident of Tanur shel Achnai. Even when God’s own voice resonated through the study hall to insist that Rabbi Eliezer was correct in his halakhic ruling, Rabbi Yehoshua looked up and said lo bashamayim hi, “It is not in Heaven!” (Deuteronomy 30:12) The rabbis overruled God. When Rabbi Natan later met Eliyahu and asked how God had responded up in Heaven, Eliyahu related that God laughed and said nitzchuni banai, “My children have overruled Me!” Our rabbis passed the test by refusing to heed the Bat Kol! Moses, too, passed the test by refusing God’s offer. God gave us a divine intellect and commanded us to use it wisely. He made us His partners in Creation, and wants us to think for ourselves. We are not meant to be brainless drones. This is the very meaning of the name Israel, “for you have struggled [sarita] with Elohim and with people, and prevailed!” (Genesis 32:29)

The Role of Satan

The Zohar (I, 10b) takes a very different approach to the Akedah, and suggests that the whole thing was a punishment:

Whom do we have in the world greater than Abraham, whose benevolence extended to all creatures? However, on the day that he prepared a feast—as it is written: “And the child grew, and was weaned. And Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned” (Genesis 21:8)—to that feast Abraham invited all the great men of the age. Now we have been taught that whenever a banquet is given, that “Accuser” [Satan] comes to spy out whether the host has first dispensed charity and invited poor people to his house. If he finds that it is so, he departs without entering the house. But if not, he goes in and surveys the merry-making, and having taken note that no charity had been sent to the poor nor had any been invited to the feast, he ascends above and brings accusations against the host.

Thus, when Abraham invited to his feast the great men of the age, the Accuser came and appeared at the door in the guise of a poor man, but no one took notice of him. Abraham was attending on the kings and magnates… The Accuser then presented himself before the Holy One, blessed be He, and said to Him: “Master of the world, You have said “Abraham is My beloved”, yet he has made a feast and has not given anything to You nor to the poor, nor has he offered up to You so much as one pigeon…

Said the Holy One, blessed be He: “Who in this world can be compared to Abraham?” Nevertheless, the Accuser did not stir from there until he had spoiled all the festivity; and God then commanded Abraham to offer up Isaac as an offering, and it was decreed that Sarah should die from anguish on account of her son’s danger—all because Abraham did not give anything to the poor!

The Zohar states that both the Akedah and the death of Sarah was because of a lack of kindness and charity on the part of Abraham, who was usually the very epitome of kindness and charity. It appears the test itself came much earlier, at the weaning feast of Isaac, and Abraham the paragon of Chessed was tested with Chessed. The Zohar suggests Abraham failed this test, and the punishment was the Akedah!

It is worth noting that the ancient apocryphal Book of Jubilees has a similar suggestion, saying that the whole Akedah was Satan’s doing. In Chapter 17, Satan (called “Mastema” here) comes before God and questions Abraham’s devotion. The passage is reminiscent of the way Satan appears before God in the Book of Job, and gets permission to harm and test Job. Satan suggests the Akedah to prove that Abraham’s devotion is complete. Apparently, it was Satan’s idea! That would explain both the Midrash quoted above where God says He never commanded the Akedah (and it never “arose in His heart”); as well as the well-known Midrash that Satan tried to stop Abraham from going up to the Akedah, including by creating a mirage of a raging river to block Abraham’s journey. Satan had to do what he could to stop it, since it was his idea to begin with, and he thought Abraham would never go through with it!

A Diversity of Perspectives

While we commonly hear rabbis praising Abraham for being so devoted to Hashem that he was willing to sacrifice his own son, others were far more critical. Perhaps the most explicit statement came from the Rosh (Rabbeinu Asher ben Yechiel, c. 1250-1327), in his comments on the verse “Jacob is God’s own allotment” (Deuteronomy 32:11). The literal reading of the verse, Ya’akov chevel nachalato, implies that Jacob is the start of God’s “rope” of inheritance. The Rosh asks: why Jacob? Why not Abraham, the first patriarch? And he says it is because “Abraham was cruel [akhzari] to want to sacrifice his son and not pray for him instead… But Jacob had compassion for all of his children.” Jacob thus merited to be “Israel”.

Indeed, the Tanakh speaks out so many times against cruel human and child sacrifices, and calls out the wicked Canaanites, Moabites, and others for engaging in these practices and sacrificing children to their gods Molech and Chemosh. It is one of the 613 commandments not to sacrifice a child or “pass a child through a flame” (Deuteronomy 18:10). So how could God ever demand such a thing, and how could Abraham ever think to go along with it?

Some rabbis held that the whole Akedah episode must have only been a dream, and didn’t physically happen. (This was explored fully in Garments of Light, Volume Two, in the chapter titled ‘The Shocking Opinion that the Akedah Never Happened’.) According to this view, Abraham only saw the Akedah in a vision, and proved his devotion virtually. Of those who held this view, perhaps the most notable is the Rambam (Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, 1138-1204) who, as a general rule, believed that any time an angel is mentioned in the Torah, it must be a dream. The Rambam wrote that “in the case of everyone about whom exists a Scriptural text that an angel talked to him or that speech came to him from God, this did not occur in any other way than in a dream or in a prophetic vision.” (Moreh Nevukhim, Part 2, Ch. 41)

Yet a third approach holds that the test was not Abraham’s at all, but Isaac’s! Targum Yonatan records:

And it was after these things that Isaac and Ishmael contended; and Ishmael said: “It is right that I should inherit what is our father’s because I am his firstborn son.” And Isaac said: “It is right that I should inherit what is our father’s, because I am the son of Sarah his wife, and you are the son of Hagar the handmaid of my mother.” Ishmael said: “I am more righteous than you, because I was circumcised at thirteen years; and if it had been my will to hinder, they should not have delivered me to be circumcised; but you were circumcised a child eight days; if you had knowledge, perhaps they could not have delivered you to be circumcised!” Isaac said: “Behold, today I am thirty-six years old; and if the Holy One, blessed be He, were to demand my whole body, I would not delay.” These words were heard before the Master of the Universe, and the Word of God immediately came to Abraham, and said to him: “Abraham!” And he said, “Here I am”…

The Targum suggests it was Isaac’s test more than Abraham’s, to prove his devotion to God and to prove himself more worthy than his half-brother Ishmael.

Whatever the case, what we can say for sure is this: the Torah explicitly forbids child sacrifice, and it is one of the 365 prohibitions of the 613 mitzvot. God does not demand such cruel obedience, and never did. Judaism is a religion of life, not death. Unlike other religions that glorify death and martyrdom, Judaism’s highest value is life. The Torah is a “tree of life for those who grasp it” (Proverbs 3:18). Abraham may have passed the test and showed his unwavering devotion, but as the Midrash states, he seems to have misunderstood the whole assignment. It is Jacob that ultimately merits to become Israel, embodying our mission to “wrestle with Elohim, and with people, and prevail.”

For a deeper understanding of sacrifices and further discussion of the Akedah, see the following class:

Anatomy of the Soul

What are the different parts of the soul, and how do they relate to, and interact with, the body? What is the real reason for sleeping and dreaming? How might we be able to explain spiritual phenomena like prophecy and telepathy? And how does one rectify their soul to the highest degree to become a master of life? Find out in this class as we embark on an eye-opening exploration of the human soul.

Iran, Mossad, and Mashiach

This week’s parasha, Shlach, begins with the infamous episode of the Spies. Moses sends a dozen spies to scout the Holy Land in preparation for the Israelite conquest. Of the twelve, ten return frightened and pessimistic, convincing their fellow Israelites to abandon any hopes of settling in God’s Promised Land. The result is a delay in the Redemption, and forty years in the Wilderness. After this failure in espionage, one would think we wouldn’t hear of spies in the Torah anymore. Yet, there are at least five more cases of Israelite espionage in Tanakh including, amazingly, one just a few chapters later:

Amidst a series of Israelite conquests on the east side of the Jordan River, we read how Moses himself sends another set of spies in preparation for the capture of Ya’azer (Numbers 21:32). Here, the spies not only do their job properly, but engage in battle behind enemy lines, conquering the city all on their own! Rashi comments here that they did this deliberately to not falter like the previous spies. The Maskil LeDavid (Rabbi David Pardo of Venice, 1719-1792) adds that the spies here did a genuine tikkun, a spiritual rectification, for the sin of the previous spies.

I believe that tradition has continued into the present day, with the incredible work of Israel’s secret service, the Mossad. The operations they have been able to accomplish in recent years in particular have been mind-blowing, whether the Hezbollah pagers last year or the current set of events in the war with Iran. Over the past three years, Mossad agents covertly smuggled into Iran a variety of drones and precision weapons, secretly stationing them near key Iranian military sites and air defense systems. Last week, they were finally activated, knocking out Iran’s ability to defend itself from the air, and laying the stage for Israel’s complete air superiority over the country. Like the spies in Ya’azer, one might similarly see the work of Mossad today as something of a rectification for the old Sin of the Spies. While the first spies in parashat Shlach failed to do what it took to inspire, settle, and protect the people of Israel in their own land, today’s Mossad spies are doing just that. It is therefore quite fitting that the founder of Mossad and its first spy chief was Reuven Shiloach (שילוח‎) whose name shares a root with this week’s parasha (שלח) of spies!

Reuben Shiloach

Reuven Shiloach (1909-1959) was born Reuven Zaslansky in Jerusalem, the son of a Haredi rabbi from Lithuania. In his teenage years, he was drawn to secular Zionism, learned Arabic, and went to teacher’s college. He joined the Haganah and soon started to work for its nascent intelligence service. He was given the code name “Shiloach” and was sent on his first mission in 1932 to Iraq, where he enrolled as a student at the University of Baghdad. After several Iraq missions, he was stationed in Lebanon and Syria, and later assisted British Intelligence and the CIA’s precursor, the OSS, during World War II.

Soon after the State of Israel was established, David Ben-Gurion sought to create an official intelligence agency, and tasked Shiloach with the job. Shiloach put together a plan for a “Coordination Bureau” to work together with Shin Bet and Aman (the IDF’s intelligence unit). It soon evolved into its own distinct institution, one that reports only to the Prime Minister of Israel. The Mossad’s original motto was drawn from King Solomon’s wise words in Proverbs 24:6, “For by stratagems you wage war.” It was later changed to Proverbs 11:14, “Without stratagems, an army falls; but victory comes with much planning.” Indeed, the Mossad’s work has been absolutely instrumental in Israel’s many victories.

Mossad’s logo, with motto from Proverbs.

Remembering Amalek

It’s not only the beginning of this week’s parasha that informs present-day events, but the last passage, too. Here we read of the mitzvah of tzitzit, and the necessity of including a blue thread of tekhelet. The Torah says “and you shall see it, and remember all of God’s commandments” (Numbers 15:39). The Zohar (III, 175b) points out that the same language is used in another place, when the Torah tell us to “remember what Amalek did to you” (Deuteronomy 25:17). What’s the connection?

The Zohar teaches that it is when we do not observe God’s commandments, and break His “fences”, that retribution comes by way of Amalek. Indeed, we read in this week’s parasha that in the immediate aftermath of the Sin of the Spies, “Amalekites and Canaanites, who were dwelling on the mountain, came down and smote them and crushed them, pursuing them until Chormah.” (Numbers 14:45) Failing to heed Hashem led directly to being attacked by Amalek!

Amalek appears several more times in Tanakh, the last and most famous of which is the Purim account. Here, the villain is Haman the Agagite, a direct descendant of Amalek, who takes control of the Persian Empire and seeks to destroy the Jews. We find ourselves in the same situation today, where it is a corrupt, totalitarian Persian government once again seeking the destruction of Israel. Haman, Khameini—even the names haven’t changed much. In the Purim story, everything turned on its head quite suddenly, v’nahafokh hu. And we are on the cusp of the same now. In the Megillah (8:9), we read that it was on the 23rd of Sivan that Mordechai wrote new directives to all the Persian provinces, calling for everyone to rise up against the wicked followers of Haman. In our case, the 23rd of Sivan begins tonight, with reports of Khameini having already fled and in hiding.

Persia in Prophecy

It is worth remembering a couple of ancient prophecies about the Final Redemption: One is Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai’s statement that “when you see Persian horses tied to graves in Israel, expect the footsteps of Mashiach.” (Shir haShirim Rabbah 8:9) In other words, when Persian weaponry is causing deaths in Israel, God forbid, one should know the Geulah is near. And another, more specific and detailed Midrash (explored in a number of shiurim in the past, such as this one), which says that “in the year that the King Mashiach will come” there will be conflict between Persia and Arabia, and then Persia will unleash its forces in an attempt to destroy Israel (Yalkut Shimoni II, 499). The Midrash describes that things will unfortunately get quite terrible, and Israel will cry out to God: “where do we go from here?” But then God will comfort us and remind us that all that happens is part of His master plan, and He did it all for us. The Geulah is indeed right around the corner.

In light of these prophecies being realized right before our eyes, what is there left for us to do, besides strengthening our faith and resolve? First, let us not fail like they did with the Spies in this week’s parasha; let us remain united as a people and take care of each other, with a clear and singular vision. Let us reinforce settlement of our Promised Land, and fully support our brave soldiers, spies, and air force pilots who guarantee it. There is nothing to fear, and things will shift very quickly for the better, as they did with Persia over two millennia ago.

We can draw a few more pieces of advice from this week’s parasha: First is the significance of Shabbat, as we read about the grave consequences of violating God’s holy day.  Second is the mitzvah of challah, introduced in this week’s parasha. While in ancient times, challah was specifically a gift to the kohanim who served in the Temple, today we associate “challah” bread with Shabbat, too. Our Sages famously tell us (Shabbat 118b) that if the entire Jewish people kept just one Shabbat collectively, all of Israel’s oppressors would be gone; and if we kept two consecutive Shabbats together, the Final Redemption would come immediately. In fact, the Talmud here echoes the Zohar in pointing out that as soon as Shabbat was first breached in Exodus 16:27, the very next thing is “And Amalek came and fought with Israel…” in Exodus 17:8. We mustn’t forget that our covenant with God is tied directly to Shabbat, so now is the best time to reinforce our commitment to observing Hashem’s holy day. Just one proper Shabbat and Amalek will be defeated for good.

Finally, for those who have not yet taken on wearing tzitzit with tekhelet, now is the opportune time to do so, and to remember daily not only God’s mitzvot but also, as the Zohar says, the tekhelet of God’s sapphire throne, and of King David’s throne, and the throne of Mashiach whom we will hopefully greet very soon.