On Rosh Hashanah, we read the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac. I want to focus on one moment in that story, the moment when Avraham hears God’s second call and decides to change course and not to offer up his son as a sacrifice. It is this moment that I think models for us a kind of radical teshuva, the human ability to pivot and shift midstream, to decide to do it a different way.
The Ability To Pivot
Avraham initially hears a divine command to offer his son as a sacrifice, but in the moment of action – son bound up on the altar, hand raised with knife to slaughter – an angel calls out: “Avraham, Avraham, don’t do it, don’t hurt the child.” And here is Avraham’s greatness, perhaps even greater than his initial willingness to sacrifice — Avraham can hear the new call, stop, turn around and shift direction. This openness, this ability to pivot, to shift, to completely turn around mid-course, all cylinders firing, to stop it all and say – no, I’m changing what I am doing — this is teshuva.
Why That’s So Hard
It’s not easy to perform this type of about-face. Maybe we can first notice the tremendous momentum behind most of our habits of mind and ways of living, the sheer force of inertia that keeps us propelled in whatever direction we started in. Our neural pathways are deeply entrenched in old ways. It’s like we are a ball rolling downhill, with the momentum building as we go. Can you feel the full force of that momentum in your body, how hard it would be to come to a skidding stop, to turn around and find a different route to travel?
But Possible
And yet it is possible. Avraham shows us that it is possible. Perhaps it requires an angel calling out to us from heaven, repeating our name to get our attention. Perhaps there have been such angels knocking at your door lately, pointing you, again and again, in a new direction. The shofar is a symbol of these angels, like a bell ringing, or like a voice calling our name repeatedly to invite us to pause and make a new choice.
To Be Continually Responsive
The word teshuva can mean response, and in this sense, to be engaged in the process of teshuva means to be in a state of continual responsiveness, always open to the unfolding call of the divine. It sounded initially one way to Avraham, he went that way, but he did not get stuck there; he remained responsive, open to shifting based on new information. Maybe you can check inside yourself for this openness as well, like a fresh breeze passing through you, the ability to open and let in something new, to be flexible and responsive, to be born anew each day, not stuck in our old habits.
The Shift Towards Gentleness
In teshuva we make a shift in action and in perspective, moving from an old way of viewing things to a new way that emerges. The particular content of the shift can vary, and yet I think there is a certain direction the shift tends to go: it tends to move from harshness to gentleness, from judgment to compassion, from death to life. On Rosh Hashanah we say that even God does this shifting, moving from the throne of judgment to the throne of compassion, shifting perspectives, modeling for us precisely this direction of movement. And indeed, this is how Avraham turns. His initial conception of God and of what God wants from him is very harsh; God wants death, Avraham thinks; to serve God is to kill some part of yourself, your outer or inner child. This is Avraham’s initial conception, but then he hears another call, and this time he understands God differently; he understands that God stands for love and compassion and most especially, for life. He understands that God does not desire this act of destruction and harshness. God desires gentleness.
The Call of Love
This turn is even expressed in the call itself. Rashi says that the repetition of Avraham’s name is lashon hibah, the language of endearment, of love (Rashi on Genesis 22:11). What Avraham hears now is God calling out to him in love; this is not a harsh command, but a warm embrace. Maybe you can pause to hear this divine call of love to you, too, hearing your name repeated in a gentle loving tone now, coming to you on the breeze, wrapping you up and calming you. It’s ok now. You can let go of all that intense control and judgment and harshness towards yourself and especially your inner child. You can relax now and let go of the knife, let go of the stick you use to hit yourself, all the years of self aggression. Look how you have tied up your inner child in knots. You thought the child in you needed to be tamed and bound and perhaps even destroyed, and so you bound her up and almost slaughtered her, but hear this new divine call now, hear how she and you are loved, how God desires her to live and flourish, not to be bound up and die
How We Have Bound Ourselves Up
Because we have been doing that. We have spent our lives living from this place of harshness, thinking that God desired it, that God desired our harshness, our judgment, our self aggression, the binding up of our inner and perhaps also outer children. Maybe sensing inside you the truth of this for you, the tightness, the control, the bound-upness, the harshness, the sense of someone, perhaps your inner critic, always standing over you with a knife or a stick to keep you in line. We thought this was what God wanted.
Opening to Something Else
But can we now open to the angel’s gentler message on the breeze? Can we stop the momentum of thousands of moments of self aggression, of holding ourselves back, of binding ourselves in knots, and instead open to the call of love and compassion, open to the invitation to get up off the altar and step fully into life? Can we even imagine a God who does not want our sacrifice but instead wants our aliveness, our joy, our essential spark to burn brightly in this world?
Feeling the Knots
Maybe you can feel your own bound upness right now, like the Akedah, how tightly you hold yourself, all your muscles tensed, as if tied in knots, bound up for slaughter, everything inside you that is held back and controlled, maybe feeling it in your forehead and your clenched jaws and rigid shoulders or wherever you feel that tension, the sense of having to do it right.
The Strength to Undo the Knots
What does it take to undo the knots and to release the bonds? Sometimes it takes an act of power, like the mighty blast of the shofar that tore down the walls of Yericho. Ana bekoach gedulat yeminkha tatir tzerurah, we say. Please, God, with the koach, the might, the power, of your great hand, release the tzerurah, the bound up one. We do have such a bound up one inside us, a little child bound up by years of judgment, shame and control, sitting huddled and hidden in a corner. Can you sense her inside you, see her ropes? How do we release her, this little one who is in some way our essence, our soul? Bekoach. With great might, God’s might inside us. Hear the call of the shofar and feel the answering might arise inside you, your own natural strength of vitality and assertiveness. You have in you your own shofar blast that shouts: No more! Enough! Sometimes teshuva – the power to make change – needs to include this fierceness, this determination, this outrage even, in order to break the bonds of a lifetime.
The Softness Afterwards
And then, after the powerful sound of that first mighty shofar blast, the tekiah, there is a softness that comes over us, the quieter vulnerability of the teruah, the loving double call of your name on the breeze, not with insistence so much now, or even power, but with gentleness and tenderness and care. It’s ok, God is telling you, you don’t have to hold it all together so tightly for Me. That’s not what I want. I want you to live. The gentleness of this message dissolves all that tension, as if you were frozen like ice and now you are sitting in a warm bath of love, all the tight places in you melting and softening. You don’t have to try so hard, to hold back so much. God just wants you to live. Let the bonds unbind and the knots untangle.
Kol Nidre, Too
This is what we are doing during Kol Nidre, too, releasing the bonds, undoing all the knots we tied ourselves up in all year. We made promises, we tried so hard to make it work, but then God releases us of all that efforting and resolution and control, the narrow straits we put ourselves in. We find out we can let go of the bonds and open to a new way.
Opening Our Eyes to the Glory
Things look different once we release and open in this way. We see other options. We were in a box and could only see black and white, either/or, and neither option was workable. Now suddenly we step out of the box, open our eyes and see the world in color, see a third option or a fourth option even, a thousand possibilities before us. It turns out there is a ram right there in the thicket that we can use instead of our child for a sacrifice. It turns out, as in the Hagar story which we also read on Rosh Hashanah, it turns out there is a well with plenty of water to quench our thirst. Teshuva is a process of stopping what we were doing, breaking the bonds that were keeping us stuck and blind and limited, and opening up to new options, new ways of seeing, our eyes opened, like Hagar’s, to the plenty before us, to the overflowing blessing of God’s universe.
Returning to the Pivot
I want to close by returning to Avraham’s moment of pivoting, seeing him stand, knife in hand, above the bound up child, and watching him pause mid-course and shift. Maybe you can take this in as teshuva, as the teshuva that you, too, can and need to do, to stop the momentum of all the habits of mind inside you and to open to something new, to open to the whisper of love on the breeze that keeps repeating your name, asking you again and again to undo the bound up one inside and to choose life.
Photo by Buddh Sharan Sahu at Pexels
L’Shana Tova