The Test of Isaac (part 2)--Rabbi Yitzhak Miller--Yom Kippur 5770/2009

(...The Test of Isaac (part 2) click here for part 1)

It is all-too-easy to perceive blind faith and blind rejection as the only 2 religious possibilities—either I pledge myself to God without questioning the implications, or I reject God without considering the repercussions.  Sadly, Fowler notes, most of humanity is trapped in one or the other of these overly-simplistic possibilities.

Let’s cut Abraham some slack.  The whole monotheism thing was pretty new in his day.  So let’s set Abraham’s role in today’s story aside.  I would suggest that it’s Isaac’s role in today’s Torah portion that is much more relevant to us as intelligent, enlightened Jews.  The story of the Binding of Isaac shows us that there are possibilities beyond blind faith or blind rejection—possibilities that Fowler calls “mature faith.”

You know, for a story called “The Binding of Isaac”, our protagonist gets a pretty short shrift from the casting agent.  In fact, Isaac only speaks once in the entire story.  As Isaac and his father begin to ascend Mount Moriah Isaac asks Abraham about the ram for the burnt offering.  Abraham’s answer is a statement of blind faith: “God will provide the ram”.  The next sentence simply says: “And the two of them walked on together.

Why does our story tell us that Isaac and Abraham “walk on together”?  We know why Abraham walks on—he is on a mission of religious zealotry.  But why does Isaac walk on with him?  Is Isaac so naïve that he does not know what his father has in mind?  That is hard for me to believe.  I would suggest instead that Isaac does one of the hardest things for an intelligent human being to do—to trust in the inherent goodness of the universe.

In my 12 years as a congregational Rabbi, I had many opportunities to host groups from neighboring churches to the synagogue.  Invariably, the question would come up “What do Jews believe?”  Early in my career I used to answer this question by trying to explain that Judaism is not a dogmatic tradition, that Jews were a clan-based people for 1000 years before receiving any religious doctrine, and that our own text claims that there were 600,000 Jews all present to receive that doctrine.  Sometimes, if I was feeling a little more sarcastic, I’d say that “Jews believe in 1 God or less”. 

But the more I reflected on this question the more I came to realize that Judaism does mandate at least one belief.  Sometimes in spite of seeming evidence to the contrary, Judaism expects us to live our lives with the faith that the world is improving. 

Some strands of Judaism would put this claim in very transcendent terms—“We believe with perfect faith in the coming of the messiah”.  Other strands would put this claim in much more humanistic terms—“Our task as human beings is to utilize the ethical imperative within us.”

Listen carefully to these affirmations.  They are not statements of blind faith.  Quite the contrary…Judaism mandates that humanity be partners in the ongoing process of Divine creation.  That is what Isaac is asked to do—in the face of a climb up a mountain with all the accoutrements of an animal sacrifice except the animal itself, Isaac is asked to trust.  Isaac is asked to trust that the ultimate Divine force in the universe would never ask a father to slaughter his son.  And they walked on together.

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