One thing bothers me about the story of the Akedah — its end.
In the story, Avraham endures an unimaginable trial of faith, successfully demonstrating his willingness to sacrifice even his beloved, long-awaited son to God.
But how does the story conclude? Avraham is rewarded for his faith. His son is not sacrificed and he is told that “since you did this” you will receive great blessings and your children will be numerous and greatly successful.
The problem with this ending is that it implies to us, the readers, that when a person has faith and trusts in God, the end is always good; we are saved from death or sickness or whatever predicament we were worried about in the first place. Just trust and all will turn out well. We all know this is not the case. Trouble and difficulty come even to persons of great faith. In the world we live in, faith does not guarantee results.
Indeed, the High Holiday liturgy itself underscores this truth. On Yom Kippur we read of the 10 martyrs of the Roman period, rabbis of great piety and learning who were tortured and killed in horrifying ways precisely because of their great faith. Here there is no pretense of reward for faith.
As a counterpoint to the Akedah story, consider another tale, told thousands of years later, a Hasidic story about Rabbi Yisrael of Rizhin:
Our Rebbe, may his merit protect us, once gave a talk about idle talk before prayer, and told about an incident concerning a certain Hasid who earned an abundant livelihood this way: once a year he set out to the market fair to buy merchandise. His merchandise included clothing for warmth, to protect against cold and chills. One year he travelled as usual to the fair and brought back a large amount of merchandise, but when winter came people were not gripped by cold and he was left with all the merchandise in store. He didn’t have a penny in his pocket, his family cried out for bread, but there was no bread. One morning before prayer the landlord of the area came to buy all the merchandise. The Hasid answered that he does not do business before prayer. With this the Rebbe, may his merit protect us, concluded.
Everyone asked what was the end of the story. I say this is the end of the story, that is, the power of faith of a simple Hasid – how far it goes.
–Ner Yisrael 3:175-6, translation by R. Meir Sendor of Tal Orot.
This story avoids the problem of the Akedah by simply dropping the expected conclusion — that the Hasid who, like Avraham, sacrificed everything for the sake of God, would, in the end, be rewarded richly for that faith. We expect that end but we don’t receive it, as if to highlight for us that this good end is neither guaranteed nor the point.
Indeed, the narrator of this tale suggests what the purpose of such non-happy endings is — to demonstrate “the power of faith of a simple Hasid — how far it goes.” The story explodes our conception of what a human being is capable of — even a “simple” one, not the rebbe, just an ordinary Hasid — to give up on desperately needed material goods for the sake of something more lofty, for the sake of an attachment to God that is so strong it overrides everything else. Such strength! Such conviction! Such power in a simple human.
Looking back now at the Akedah, it seems clear that this type of inspiration by example is the point of that story as well; the rewards come after, almost as an aside, but the main point here is Avraham himself, a paragon of faith against all odds, a human being who is able to know — even while in this world — that what really matters is God alone, and that all else can and must be sacrificed and surrendered, even when it feels like to do so works against everything we thought we wanted most.
Perhaps we need to reinterpret what the reward is in this story. Perhaps the reward is the faith itself. To live a life of conviction and meaning, to know that each step we take up the mountain is what God wants from us, no matter how hard, to live with calm and trust in the face of all types of harrowing moments — his son may die; he is in a war with kings; people fight with him over wells; a king wants his wife — to live in the face of all that life throws at us with a sense of purpose and trust — that is the reward itself, a life of peace and harmony, aligned with the divine will.
I am reminded of the line from Psalms — “As for me, I trust in Your loving-kindness; My heart rejoices in Your salvation (13:6).” Hold on — salvation? How is he rejoicing in God’s salvation in the second phrase if in the first phrase, he is just trusting? Has he been saved already or not? Ahh. This verse is indeed all about trust. The salvation is the trust itself. To trust in God’s goodness is already to be saved, no matter what the situation.
Indeed, God promises Avraham, at the end of the Akedah, that “because he did this” he will be blessed. Yes! He already is blessed through this act, through the faith itself.
God also promises Avraham here again that his children will be numerous and blessed. Throughout Avraham’s life, God and Avraham have been involved in a joint project — the project of creating a future progeny that will continue Avraham’s legacy of faith. Here, God promises Avraham that this project will succeed precisely because Avraham was able to be so strong in his faith. This makes sense. If the purpose of the progeny is to carry on Avraham’s legacy of faith, the best way to ensure that this legacy is strong is to strengthen that value in Avraham himself, so that it can be passed on in its strongest form.
Take a minute to consider the power of this legacy, to feel its truth, and to feel how having faith is already to be saved, already to be blessed, already the reward itself.
Life continually throws difficulties our way and we get absorbed in the content of them, thinking that if we could just solve each one — if we just knew that our children would be safe or this project would work out — then we would finally have peace. But if you watch your own anxiety, you will observe that, once one problem is resolved, the anxiety simply attaches itself to the next problem, so that there is never any peace.
Attitude and situation can be separated. As Avraham and the simple Hasid and the 10 martyrs show, a person could, on the other hand, remain calm in the face of any situation, be the mountain of faith no matter whether the sun is out or there is a raging storm. The ability to be that mountain is the ultimate blessing that Avraham has passed on to us.
In our High Holiday prayers, we say: uteshuva utefillah utzedaka ma’avirin et ro’a ha-gezeirah. Repentance, prayer and charity avert the evil of the decree. The phrase ro’a ha-gezeirah literally means “the evilness of the decree,” and not simply “the evil decree” as we normally think. I once heard the following interpretation of that distinction: What is going on here is not that by praying and repenting and doing good deeds, we actually change our fate, the content of the decree itself. No, what we are doing through these acts is changing our own mindset and ability to understand and withstand the decree as it is; we are averting the evilness of the decree — whatever it is — by changing how we perceive it and react to it and interact with it so that it no longer feels evil to us; we are becoming more like Avraham, who, through his faith, banished any sense of evilness from a decree that on the face of it would certainly have seemed evil to us. We are learning that to walk with faith is to carry peace inside us, whatever the decree.
I do not want to pretend any of this is easy. The stories that we tell — of Avraham, the simple Hasid and the 10 martyrs — are aspirational; they remind us of what is possible for a human being so that we have something to hold on to and work towards and believe in. Without such stories, without such faith, when we confront tragedy and really take it in, there is only despair and meaninglessness. These are the days of the year that we assert with clarity to ourselves that there is something beyond this world that is worth dying and also living for.
