They Walked On Together
Looking at the Akedah text, the story of the Binding of Isaac which we read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, I ask myself – where is God in this story? Where do I feel God’s presence most strongly? And surprisingly, though God speaks multiple times in the text, I am not drawn to those speeches. I am drawn to the moment when Avraham and Yitzhak are walking together on their way to the place of sacrifice. Vayelkhu shneyhem yachdav, the Torah says. The two of them walked on together (Genesis 22:6). And then, as they walk, Yitzhak turns to his father and says –Avi? My father? And Avraham replies – Hineni, beni. Yes, I’m right here, my son. Yitzhak then shares his worry, his father listens and responds, and then again the text says, vayelkhu shneyhem yachdav. The two of them walked on together.
Can you see the two of them ambling along the path together, a big person and a little person, Yitzhak’s smaller hand in his father’s bigger stronger one, secure, connected, present? Can you feel the poignancy and the tenderness of this moment? Abba? Yes, son, I’m right here. It almost breaks your heart.
That’s Where God Is
That heartbreak is a sign of our deep longing for just such moments, of our intuitive sense that in the end of the day, this alone, this most of all, this walking together, is what matters. We have a bodily knowing that, if there is a God, it is surely here where God resides, in the tender love between these two, in the listening attentiveness, in the comfort of being in it together, yachdav. Can you feel how all of that is woven out of divine thread, how God enters the world through just such places, where, despite our preoccupations and worries and to do lists, we suddenly drop into presence, divine presence, the quality of God’s essence, to simply be with another, to say hineni, here I am, and, even in the most difficult of circumstances, to somehow walk on together?
Gam ki elekh begei tzalmavet, we say, lo, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, lo ira ra ki atah imadi, I fear no evil for you, God, are with me (Psalm 23:4). To walk with another through the valley of the shadow of death, as Avraham walked with Yitzhak on the way to the akedah, is to be God’s accompanying presence on earth.
We Are Both The Child And the Parent
We have inside of us, all of us, both the child Yitzhak, longing for such security and accompaniment, and also the parent Avraham who can channel divine presence and be with that child. I invite you to feel into each one. Starting with the child, sensing your fear about the uncertainty of what will happen next in your life, your worry and anxiety, the feeling of shakiness and insecurity, things are changing and i don’t know if it will be ok, I have nothing to hold on to, the trembling of the child, the deep longing for someone big and strong to hold your hand and go with you, take care of you.
Letting that child’s need for you to be strong and present serve as a call to draw you out, like Yitzhak’s searching call of avi, “my father,” brought out Avraham’s Hineni response. Hearing and feeling that call, like the shofar, a broken cry – I need you – a cry that shakes you up and awakens in you new possibilities of who you are, inviting you to become the parent the child in you has always needed.
See if you can touch into your own divinely granted capacity to be like Avraham in that moment. If you imagine that cry inside you as truly a young frightened child, which is exactly what it is, can you feel some compassion and some new unbidden and unknown strength surging through you? Your heart is big enough to hold this child. Maybe sensing a yearning to care for her rising up in you. Let your heart open to her, offer her your hand, say Hneni, I’m right here, my child. I’m right here. I don’t know what will happen either, but we can walk together in trust. Come, my child. I’ll be with you.
The Two of You Walking Together
Sensing yourself on this walk with her, really sensing her right there next to you on the path, her sweaty little hand in your big one. Maybe she is shaky at first, stumbling, and then, as she relaxes and feels secure with you, she laughs and skips along next to you or runs up ahead and comes back, happy as a clam with you. Feel how much she wants this, more than anything, to walk with you and feel you with her, to hold her hand through life, her terrible ache for steadiness, for accompaniment, for someone to say to her, when she is sad or lonely or afraid, I’m right here. And feel how much you want this too, this connection, how she has been missing for you, how she makes you feel complete, how her sweet innocence and playfulness make you smile and feel glad she is here.
God’s Shining Face Upon You Both
Maybe sensing, too, how God is with you when you do this. Drawing on God’s presence when you need it, drawing it into yourself, letting it kindle the divine capacity already planted in you for love and presence, for this walking together with a frightened child. Maybe this is what it means when we say on Rosh Hashanah ashrei ha’am yodel teruah, fortunate are those who know how to listen to the teruah – how to listen to the cries inside – Hashem, be’or panekha yehalekhun, O Lord, they walk in the light of Your face (Psalm 89:16). Somehow, in listening and walking with our child (or with others), God’s light walks with us, God’s face shines upon us. Feel that light bathing you and the child as you walk, an aura surrounding you both, soak it up, rest in it, feel God’s nahat, God’s contentment with you in this moment
We And Avraham Abandon Our Child
But the thing is that much of the time we don’t walk with our inner child. We are habituated to turn away, to do a version of what Avraham does next: Immediately after the Torah says for a second time that the two of them walked on together, we are told that they arrive at the designated place and Avraham rushes into action, building the altar, setting up the wood, binding his son, placing him on the altar and preparing to slaughter him. What is striking is not only the content of the actions, but also that Avraham does them alone, in contrast to the togetherness of the moment before. Yitzhak’s personhood and voice are entirely absent now, as if erased, disappeared from the text as well as from Avraham’s heart.
Bound Up And Silenced
And so Yitxhak – the child whose name means laughter, the child who was frightened and asking for comfort a moment before, the child who was perhaps also skipping happily a moment before, his father’s hand in his – Yithak is now silenced. Abandoned. Exiled. Bound up so that he can no longer be heard or seen or felt. That binding up – from which we get the term Akedah, an unusual word – that binding up is such a powerful image. Can you see and feel how your own inner child has been bound up with ropes – by family, culture, conditioning, and then also by you (or parts of you) – constrained and inhibited from fully expressing herself and her needs and feelings: her fear, her gnawing need for connection, her loneliness, her laughter, her sweet aliveness and exuberance, her pain. It’s too much. We can’t bear to feel all of that. And so we bind her up. We don’t listen. We get busy. When she pokes up her head and we feel her distress, we run, we hide, we fix, we do, we meditate, anything to get it to go away, to get her stuffed back in her cubby hole.
The Beating of Drums Not To Hear The Cry
In the ancient practice of child sacrifice called Molekh, they used to beat a loud drum in order to drown out the cries of the suffering child. Surely Yitzhak was crying as his father bound him up. How did Avraham not hear? How do we not hear? We beat our own drums – distraction, overwork, denial, minimization – it’s nothing, lalala, I can’t hear you crying. Can you sense how you have shut away your little one, don’t want to know or hear about her pain – maybe it comes out in bodily ailments – how she is still there, but bound up, abandoned, how she longs for you to see her and hear her?
Is That What God Wants?
We, like Avraham, sometimes imagine that we are doing God’s will in this binding, in this exiling of our inner child. We are taught that it is righteous to abandon yourself, to forsake your own feelings and needs for the sake of someone else. Avraham is willing to argue for Sodom and Amorah but not for his own child. Put others first. Sacrifice your own child. That’s what God asks of you.
But is it? Is that what God asks of us? I can hear the cries of the inner children, my own and those inside other people – I hear them wailing behind the walls we have constructed– and I feel in my body that God surely hears them, too, and loves them, and wants us to love and care for them. Asher ahavta, God says to Avraham in that initial command, the child “that you love” (Genesis 22: 2). That you love, as if calling Avraham into love of his own child.
In the end, the Akedah story reads to me as if it is asking this question – how do we treat our inner child? We are offered two images as options– one a walking together and the other a binding up, a shutting away, a rejection. Which do we choose? Which does God desire?
Shofar Calls Us To Hear Silenced Cries
I believe this is part of the work that the shofar calls us to: to hear the silenced cries of Yitzhak bound up on the altar, to hear the silenced cries of our own little ones who have been shut into a dark cellar with no key. That moment at the Akedah with his father’s knife hanging over him was surely a trauma for Yitzhak. These are the cries that are locked away, the traumatic moments of dissociation, of pain so intense that it could not be borne by our fragile little nervous systems. Is it possible that most of us, perhaps all of us, have had some tiny version of this experience, the angry face of a parent like a knife hanging over us, the feeling of disintegration, of shame, of collapse and abandonment? We deny it and minimize it and run away from it. But the shofar breaks open all the normal walls of resistance and defense so we can hear the little one in all the intensity of her distress – tekiah, shevarim, teruah – her cries demanding to be heard, finally heard. Lishmo’a kol shofar is the mitzvah, to hear, to listen, to finally unbind her so she can speak again and tell her story.
And perhaps, as we listen to her and let in her pain and fear, her shame, her loneliness and also her laughter and joy, perhaps we can offer her our hand, turning towards her with a Hineni, here I am. I’m sorry I bound you up and left you. Let’s undo the knots and walk on together. Vayelkhu shneyhem yachdav. Walking on together with your young one, God’s light shining upon you as you go.
Photo by arzella-bektas at Pexels
