This week’s Torah reading, parshat vayera, starts of with great news. Sarah, after growing old enough to give up hope of becoming a mother, is going to have a baby, the baby who will carry on her and Abraham’s legacy, fulfilling the promise that they will grow to be a great nation. The beginning of the parsha is so rich, you might almost fail to notice what happens just before the parsha comes to a close. The beginning anticipates and celebrates Isaac’s birth. Toward the end of the parsha, we are faced with Isaac’s near-death experience. This parsha is an emotional rollercoaster of parenting highs and lows, joys and sorrows, awe and fear.
Before I became a parent, I had imagined what it would be like, when I might have kids, how many they might be, what they would be like, how I would relate to them, what kinds of rules and discipline I would impose, what I would allow and forbid. But since having actual, real children, I have found that I needed to make adjustments in my expectations in just about every realm of what I imagined, some bigger and some smaller, to fit the reality of my children, my family, my life, my community, my world.
Abraham and Sarah’s parenting journey is far from their expectations. Though they’ve been anticipating their children growing to be a great nation, they wait and wait, without children. They decide that maybe they won’t have children themselves and bring in Hagar who gives birth to Ishmael, which, putting it mildly, puts a strain on their relationship, and turns out not to be the way that God intends for them to become a great nation. Finally blessed with Isaac, the child who is destined to become the great nation, they laugh, celebrate his growth, and take on the responsibility of protecting him from everything they can, even from the influence of his brother Ishmael.
I wonder: Could Abraham and Sarah ever have imagined themselves sending a child away from their home, off into the wilderness, as they end up doing to Ishmael in this parsha? Did they imagine needing to protect one child from the influence of the other? And what kind of relationship did they have in mind, when they thought of passing on their legacy to their children and their children’s children? The responsibilities that they feel in real life parenting, in a situation that is in large part out of their hands lead them down paths they probably never imagined as they wished for a child.
After all Abraham and Sarah have been through, the end of the parsha feels almost cruel. God tells Abraham to take their long-awaited, beloved, only son, their legacy in the world, and offer him as a sacrifice. Generations have struggled with what Abraham was thinking in this moment, how he could have brought himself to obey God’s command, why he chooses this moment to follow, seemingly blindly, when in other moments he argues for justice and stands up for people in danger. At the surface level, Abraham’s example is disappointing, even infuriating. How can our model of faith in God be one who acquiesces without a fight to child sacrifice? Some see this as what makes Abraham special, that faced with an impossible choice, one we could not see ourselves making, he is able to put his faith in God over his love for his child.
Thankfully these aren’t the only voices. Many commentaries and midrashim hinge on one verse. In answer to Isaac’s question, “where is the sheep for the sacrifice”, Chapter 22 verse 8 reads, “Abraham said ‘God will see to the sheep for the sacrifice my son.’ And the two of them walked together.” Rather than reading this as a half-truth or an outright lie, this line is read by many Jewish sources as either an acknowledgment of the situation, or a prayer. Abraham says, “God will see to the sheep for the sacrifice,” hoping and praying that it will be true. He adds, “my son,” knowing that if God does not provide another sacrifice Isaac’s life is on the line. And the two of them walk on together. Isaac is understood by the rabbis not as a child, but as a thirty-seven year old man, more than old enough to understand and object or concent. In this reading, both Abraham and Isaac know what they are doing, and though they may not understand why, they are moving forward together.
For me, it is too difficult to see father of our people as a person who shows his faith by willingly bringing his child to sacrifice. That is not my kind of exemplar of faith. It is the prayerful Abraham, the one who walks in step with God and in step with his child who can show me a way forward. This Abraham, I believe, is demonstrating his faith, not in God’s promise to make him a great nation, but in God’s goodness, in the understanding that whatever God is asking him to do, it is not really to sacrifice his son. This Abraham prays, along with Isaac, that God will provide a substitute sacrifice, and has utter faith that his prayer will be answered.
“And the two of them walked together.” Even coming to terms with Abrahams ability to march toward what appears to be his child’s demise, how are we to understand God’s “test”? What does this horrifying episode demonstrate about our first patriarch. Perhaps the test is not of Abraham’s faith in God, or willingness to sacrifice what means the most to him. Maybe the test is of Abraham and Sarah’s ability to pass on their values, and their faith in the goodness of the world, to the child who will inherit and pass down their legacy.
Abraham and Sarah are not flawless roll models. They are human beings, struggling with disappointment, unfathomable challenges, and a deep chasm between their expectations and their reality. We watch them agonize as they sort out what in their lives, and their child’s, they need to be responsible for, and what is beyond their control. Somehow, in the midst of it all, by the time Isaac is grown, they have raised a child who trusts in them and in God, and who chooses to walk beside and in the footsteps of his parents.
May we all be so blessed.
Shabbat Shalom,