Why
is the Torah portion relaying the test of Abraham so
important to us as Jews individually and
collectively?
Does the great success achieved by the Jewish people
today mean that G-d is pleased with us (and if He
isn’t, should we really even care)?
Test of Abraham
("Sacrifice of Isaac"): Each and every year,
someone in study groups raises the issue whether
Hashem was cruel in making Abraham raise his knife to
slay his son, Isaac.
First, the real cruelty, if
there was any, was telling Abraham to travel three
days to effectuate the request. No doubt during the
three days Abraham experienced great emotional pain.
He, no doubt, questioned why G-d would ask him to do
this when it was G-d Himself who granted Abraham a
son from Sarah in his and his wife’s old age.
All those who love Hashem know
that cruelty and injustice are as foreign to Hashem
as darkness is to light. Obviously, Abraham felt the
same way as he raised the knife to sacrifice his son
as G-d requested. When you love G-d, when you trust
G-d, when you know G-d, you don’t question Him.
The reason why G-d tested
Abraham in such harsh fashion is because Abraham knew
G-d: one of the only people to not only speak with
G-d but to witness His greatness, and be the direct
and known beneficiary of G-d’s power (Isaac). Thus
this story shows that G-d Himself wondered whether
Abraham loved G-d, or whether some part of it
was feigned out of infatuation with G-d’s power.
This is the problem world-known
celebrities and wealthy individuals face, sharing
G-d’s Own consternation with Abraham. Does
someone like them, love them, for who they are or
what they are?
When Abraham was willing to slay
his son as G-d requested, G-d knew that
Abraham’s love was unconditional, and because He
subjected Abraham to such an emotionally painful
test, G-d was quick to forge His covenant with
Abraham, buttressing His gift to Abraham and Sarah
(Isaac) with a covenant which assured the survival of
their seed (the Jewish people) throughout history.[1]
This episode also has meaning to
us beyond the plane on which it was rendered. What
this story further tells us, and why it holds
such a prominent place in our daily and holiday
liturgies, is because it tells us that we too are
being put the test. Fortunately, while not many pass
it today, it is an easy test to pass. What do I mean?
It means that G-d is not
directly known to us as He was known to Abraham. Thus
the type of test we are given is one where we need
only sacrifice opportunities for secular pleasure on
the Shabbat; to sit and pray and study at the
synagogue, to serve ourselves and the Jewish
community, in G-d’s service, rather than fish,
sail, ski, travel, play golf and the like. Thus while
Abraham had to show a willingness to sacrifice his
son, we only have to show Hashem a willingness to
sacrifice a little secular time and enjoyment each
week to honor His commandment for the Sabbath.[2]
The proof of the proposition
proffered is easily shown as follows: If Hashem
showed Himself tomorrow as He did to Abraham or to
the Jewish people at the time of the Exodus, who
would be hogging all the seats at the synagogue? Yes,
those who rarely, if ever, attend. They would be the
first to show their new and open dedication,
commitment and devotion to Hashem, now that He has
shown Himself. However, for those first feigning
sincere interest in the synagogue and the Shabbat, it
is too late. Their test would have to be the severe
one Abraham faced, and for most, the result is a
foregone conclusion.
To those who have dutifully
attended the synagogue, to those who have shown
themselves there on the Shabbat, especially when it
was unpopular for them to do so; for those willing to
put a morning of sailing, golf, tennis, shopping etc.
on hold to help with a minyon, to participate in the
Shabbat prayers, to support the synagogue; to
participate in study sessions, to listen to and
contemplate their Rabbi’s sermons, they
needn’t have to break through the throngs
suddenly wishing one day to show themselves at the
synagogue. They have already passed the test of
Abraham.
Why
should we care about passing the Test of Abraham?
One of the things not taught to me correctly as a
child was the reason for the destruction of the
Temple in Jerusalem. All I was taught was that some
bad people, one of an endless stream of bad people
wanting to slaughter the Jews all through history,
uprooted the Jews from Jerusalem and destroyed the
Temple.
The truth of it however was
learned many years later; that the First Temple was
lost because of ourselves. We denigrated our covenant
with G-d, and He effectuated the loss of Jerusalem
and expunged us from Israel through the successful
war efforts of the Assyrians and Babylonians.
What else was not emphasized is
that the Jews had reached such a point of corruption,
lewdness and injustice due to their secular success,
that we even started worshipping idols at the Temple
mount! While the loss of the Temple represented the
start of the Diaspora period for the Jewish people,
not many people know that these Jews displayed
grotesque class prejudice, disrespect for their
heritage, engaged in unbridled assimilation, and
participated in Roman levels of corruption and
injustice. Needless to add, they no longer carried
concern for those weaker or less fortunate[3], and, as a result, by G-d’s
hand faced death and for many a fate worse than
death: they and their families were put into a
callous and severe bondage from which they did not
survive (a bondage dynamically worse than the
centuries of bondage in Egypt and the atrocities of
the Inquisition and Holocaust).
The less affluent branch of the
seed of Abraham living to the south survived and
ultimately were cast from Israel into the Diaspora.
The Torah in Deuverim collectively covers this entire
episode in less than ten sentences.[4] In a more
expanded manner, the Jewish people when 70 in number,
came into Egypt. Four hundred fifty years later we
were a people of more than 600,000[5] when we were
freed by the hand of G-d. We had no Torah and no
foundation, so G-d like a new father with a newborn
was tolerant. We were given the Ten Commandments, the
Torah; we wandered for forty years to cleanse out the
corrupt generation, to forge Judaic values, and we
entered into and prospered in the land of Israel
through G-d supported battles and campaigns. Two
hundred fifty years later, Jerusalem became the
capital of the Jewish people. Thirty five years
later, the Temple was built, and not two hundred
years thereafter Amos and Hosea are prophesizing
destruction, as the Jews, who enjoyed, by G-d’s
design, success and power never before seen or held,
created, contrary to our covenant with Hashem, a
nobility, showed social injustice, corruption,
depravity, assimilation, and idol worship in the face
of Hashem.
Thirty years later, the Temple
and Jerusalem, to no surprise, was lost to the
Assyrians. The Jews thereafter faced the commencement
of the Diaspora - expungment from the Land of Israel
-- which lasted until the end of the Holocaust, some
2,500 years later, and the re-giving by Hashem of the
Land of Israel in 1948.
In accord with the Torah, the
Jewish people again see Hashem, after the Holocaust,
compliant, as promised by the Torah, with the
covenant[6]; however, Hashem now warns
that if the Jews return to the same haughtiness and
corruption, the same failure to attribute seen
success to Him rather than themselves, and again show
signs of renewed social injustice and uncaring and
forgetfulness for the weak, infirm and poor, that
He will stop His interventions for the Jewish people
who will face a calamity even worse than any other
one we faced in history. The Jewish people will
suffer their original destiny: their
destruction, but for Hashem’s intervention, as a
people.[7]
What
is the true purpose of the Torah? Is it to
give us a way to live as Jews? How to practice
Judaism and show Covout Hashem? Yes and no. What the
true purpose of the Torah seems to be is a
testimonial from G-d that but for Him the generations
of Abraham would have been killed off, destroyed, a
very long time ago. Thus when the Jews (the
generations of Abraham through Sarah Isaac and Jacob)
were but 70 they would have not survived the famine
which came to the land at the time Joseph visited
Egypt and brought the Jews (his family) to Egypt to
live. That the Jews, even if one survived the famine,
may have faced a barbaric enslavement and
resultant death had it not been G-d’s design
to place us all into slavery in Egypt and establish
Himself by freeing us (and thereafter protecting us).
Oh - how G-d must have loved Abraham for his
willingness to sacrifice his beloved only son, Isaac.[8]
History shows countless putative
incidents reflected perhaps best by the Inquisition
and Holocaust where the Jews may have all perished as
a people, but with G-d’s promised intervention
we never did.
However, the Torah is clear in
telling us that our destruction as a people is our
historical destiny unless G-d continues to intercede
and intervene as He historically has done for us. The
Torah further tells us in very clear terms that G-d
may one day stand aside and no longer intercede or
interfere in our destiny as He must for us to
survive. Hashem, according to the Torah, is consumed right
now with Jews not only failing to pass the test
of Abraham but forging a degree of corruption,
haughtiness and arrogance where they denigrate the
reality that today’s current success (not to say
survival) for Jews is due to Hashem, not due to their
individual brilliance.
“When you had plenty of everything
you would not serve G-d your Lord with happiness and
a glad heart {Devarim: Parashas Ki Savo
28:47].”
Jews have always been smart,
heralded for our cleverness during the Diaspora, but
today’s degree of success, of power, is in line
with the time of the Temple, showing that we are in
the time period of our second and seemingly last
chance to prove ourselves to Hashem – to show
that we recognize that it is He not us who is
accountable for the success seen (as provided by Him,
as promised).[9]
Regrettably, we seem far distant
from passing the test.[10] The Torah
provides that we must not only pass the test
individually, but collectively as a people.
The Torah shows us exactly where
we are in history: a second period of unequaled
happiness and success for Jews. We are expected to
show the same motivation in speaking to and seeking
Hashem during good times as we do during bad times.
If we call out, as we have, during the bad times,
during the Diaspora, for G-d’s intervention; if
we sought G-d during the Inquisition and the
Holocaust, and He answered us, and saved us, as He
did, from total destruction, and if He honored the
covenant, as the Torah specifically provides, as it
does, by giving us Israel again, which He did,
and happiness and prosperity again, as He has,
what in the world do you think the consequence is
going to be if we again denigrate our loving G-d by
forgetting Him; assimilating, worshiping false idols,
praising ourselves, not Him, offering Him less time
and attention each year, not making Him an important
part of our family and heritage, and slipping
again into the haughtiness and arrogance of our
ancestors, when they lost the Temple in Jerusalem, as
they did? [11]
“I call heaven and earth to witness
against you this day, that I have set before thee
life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore
choose life, that thou mayest live, thou and thy
seed…” [Devarim: Parashas
Nitzavim 30:19].
[1]
Something the Torah suggests may have not been the
case. See infra. Known to G-d but not known to
Abraham, was His intent to intervene to protect
Abraham’s family line, first testing Abraham
whether he was truly worthy of such special
intervention.