Community Blog

Shana Tova! Every year, we spend all of the High Holy Day season talking about repentance and forgiveness, yet for Rosh HaShana we read stories about parents doing unforgivable things to children and not even trying to do teshuvah. In the traditional first day reading, we read that Sarah insists that Hagar and Ishmael be exiled from their home, and Abraham complies. In the past, I’ve thought about this from a xenophobia or resource scarcity perspective. Sarah couldn’t stand the idea of this Egyptian woman usurping her place as the woman of the house, and once she had Isaac she couldn’t stand the idea of Ishmael inheriting anything that she saw as more rightfully Isaac’s. But breaking down the potential politics of all that, beyond family dynamics and insider-outsider status, Sarah is a mother herself, who knows the deep love and protection a well-adjusted person should feel toward a defenseless child, and yet she still casts this child out with his mother into the unforgiving desert. And Abraham, this child’s own father, allows it! It isn’t seen as dramatic as the Akeidah, but in effect, Abraham was obviously willing to sacrifice both of his sons.

In the Akeidah, traditionally read on the second day for those who celebrate two days of Rosh HaShana, the Torah says, “God said, ‘Please take your son, your only one, the one you love, Yitzhak— and go forth to the land of Moriyah. Offer him up as a burnt-up offering there, on one of the mountains that I will make known to you.’” Rashi has a midrash that the reason God must list all these identifiers is because Abraham responds after each one:

“Take your son”

“Which one? I have two sons.”

“Your only one.”

“One is the only one of his mother, and one is the only one of his mother. Which?”

“The one you love.”

“I love them both, each in their own way.”

“Yitzhak.”

“Got it.”

But if this is Abraham loving his sons, imagine what indifference, or God forbid, loathing would look like from him.

I recently took a midrash writing class from writer and Maggid Andrew Eli Ramer called “Sand into Pearls.” Maggid Eli has a relatable way of writing Midrash, weaving traditional text and fictions of his own mind in and out, coming in and out of first person while inserting commentaries of others. It’s masterful storytelling, but not always the way we might think of a narrative. A lot of his writing also deals in the concepts of how our ancient familiar texts were constructed, what the recorders of our history were really trying to say or propagandize. He posits that maybe the Torah we have is itself a midrash of an earlier version of the stories which are now lost to history.

In the Sand into Pearls class, we were challenged to think about pieces of Torah that are challenging, and make something new and shiny out of them. I chose the Akeidah, because whenever someone says, “challenging piece of Torah” there are a handful that make the list every time, and the Binding of Isaac is certainly one. Plus, it was recent enough that I was already thinking about High Holy Day preparations even if I had not yet decided what any sermons would be about these ten days.

When it comes to this particular challenging text, it’s obviously one I have wrestled with many times before, but honestly it never gets easier or more obvious to find the pearl. I have thought before about the fact that the Torah never shows Isaac and Abraham speaking again after the Akeidah, but it only occurred to me during Maggid Eli’s class that we also never see any interaction between Abraham and his grandchildren. It is possible he was dead before they were born, but in my midrash, they were kept from him. Because of his willingness to inflict violence upon his children, he was barred from ever knowing his grandchildren. Even if quiet, traumatized Isaac might have allowed it, Rebecca would immediately step in and forbid it. When Abraham died, his children came together to pay their respects and bury him, but that doesn’t mean they had to have forgiven him their abuse at his hands, or that if they did forgive him for themselves, that they would have allowed him the opportunity to potentially hurt them or their children again.

The Talmud tells us that death atones – meaning, for severe sins teshuva, tefillah, and tzedakah can lessen the severe decree, but only death can fully wipe clean the slate. For minor sins, repentance alone can fully clear one’s conscience. Criminal neglect of one son and attempted first degree murder of the other are pretty major sins. Thus, maybe Abraham could only be truly forgiven through his death. Maybe the only way they could bury their hurt was to bury him. Maybe that is the true purpose for this allegorical story in our sacred text: to teach us to believe survivors of abuse even when the abuser is someone we have only seen as righteous. If this is so, we have failed this test as thoroughly as the midrashic Abraham failed his in agreeing to this sacrifice in the first place.

Sometimes forgiveness or restitution is not possible. Sometimes it is possible but not reasonable. Sometimes it might seem reasonable to an outsider, but ultimately, it’s no one’s business other than the harmed party. I believe it is good for one’s soul to let go of hurts where possible. To try to get closure, to mend bridges, to make and accept teshuvah. But I can also completely understand that there are some hurts that are too big for a living teshuvah. A sense of insecurity or unsafety that can only be resolved by the death of the abuser. And there must be space to process those feelings as well. Life is full of complicated feelings, and some of those are negative and ugly reactions to triggers, and only by acknowledging them and allowing ourselves or others to truly feel them can anyone hope to move past them.

Let 5785 be a year of emotional honesty, a time for acknowledging deep hurts and letting unresolved feelings be expressed openly. A year for naming abusers and believing survivors, a time for accepting uncomfortable truths. Let it be a year for arguments for the sake of heaven, a time to engage with people who don’t understand us or whom we don’t understand in an attempt to come to a better understanding of each other – without the expectation that “understanding” means we must come to agree or like each other. And maybe then, but certainly not until then, can we hope for a year of deeper atonement, forgiveness, justice, and peace.