Woodstock, N.Y.
Rav. Jonathan Kligler – HOLDING WHAT WE LOVE WITH OPEN ARMS
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Let us now approach the story of Abraham and his near-sacrifice of his son Isaac. This story makes most of us shudder, to say the least. Why does our tradition present this story of the Father of our People trying to kill his son? It is so disturbing. And why did our sages require us to read it not only when it arrives in the weekly cycle, but also single it out to be read again on Rosh Hashanah?
In our discomfort we distance ourselves from the text, try to explain it away, neutralize it, justify it, ignore it…but what if the story of Abraham and his son was meant to make us feel uncomfortable? What if the teaching encoded in this story is difficult and uncomfortable? What if the Torah meant to make us squirm? What if some spiritual truths are difficult to confront?
Life is truly challenging, and spiritual teachings of all traditions force us to confront life. We want to be comfortable, to be told that everything is all right, and the child in us wants to be reassured — but what if life is inherently a struggle, and everything is not all right, and our measure as human beings is taken by how we respond to life’s challenges? Perhaps this is the deep wisdom we seek: How are we to respond to life’s fundamental and terrible uncertainty? Let us embrace our discomfort, and plumb our Torah for guidance.
To read the Torah on this level, we’ve got to stop being so literal. We must read the story as myth or as dream, full of symbolism and allusions, images pregnant with meaning. We must know that the story is about us: this is what makes it timeless and present. And so we read: And God tested Abraham. God said to him, “Abraham,” and Abraham answered, “Here I am.” And God said, “Take your son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac, and offer him up to me on a mountain that I will show you.” (Genesis 22:1-2)
In a conventional reading of the Torah, God is a character in the story, a willful, sometimes benevolent, sometimes harsh parent or potentate who is guiding his creation. But what if we read the passage like this: And Life tested Abraham (or you, or me.) Life said to him, “Abraham,” and Abraham answered, “Here I am.” And Life said, “Take that which is absolutely most precious to you, and be willing to let it go.”
To symbolize this test, the Torah chooses the most emotionally loaded figure we can imagine: one’s child. And the Torah increases the stakes: Abraham didn’t have this child that had been promised him until he was 100 years old, and all the promises of the future are contained in Isaac’s being. Take your son, that in which you have invested your deepest attachment, your hopes for the future, your unfinished business, your promise of immortality . . . and be willing to let it go.
Life indeed tests us, every day, in the most mundane ways. I make a plan for my day. It’s a good plan. I’m attached to my plan. The day proceeds, life happens, and my plan is soon in complete tatters. I then have two basic options: I can spend the rest of the day frustrated and angry, or I can say: Life, here I am. I offer up to you my hopes and expectations for this day, so that I might be present to the life that has been given to me this moment.
Some days I rise to the test. Other days, I act like a jerk, petulant and resentful about my good plan being ruined. I’m no fun to be with, and I miss another opportunity to serve Life Unfolding with joy.
Then there are the more difficult tests, not the everyday variety, but the tragedies in our lives: the deaths of loved ones; the losses of illness and disability; house fires, bankruptcies, broken dreams; the deep despair of watching human folly and destruction and having such limited abilities to help ease human suffering and make the world a better place. And Life tested Abraham: are you willing to say “Here I am” to these tests and still serve Life with reverence and joy?
As my mom of blessed memory’s health declined, we frequently spoke about getting older. The trajectory was clear: She was facing, inexorably, one loss after another, the loss of physical abilities, the loss of friends, the loss of mental acuity, until the ultimate loss, the loss of life.
I don’t mean to sound depressing — it’s just true! Yet how we have lived each day prepares us for the great tests we face as we age. My mom certainly fought the good fight, saying, “Growing old is not for sissies.” Life is a harsh taskmaster, and there is no guarantee that we will pass these tests. We all know people who have been trodden under, or embittered, or broken, or who seem to have given up. As I said, true spiritual teachings do not dance around reality and make nice. The purpose of a religious life is to prepare us to meet our lives, and say, Here I am, what have you got next for me?
This is Abraham’s greatness, and the reason we (along with billions of other humans on the planet) consider him our spiritual father: because he was able to respond to Life as it tested him and say הִנֵּנִי Hineni, “Here I am.”
He was not quiescent in his acceptance of Life. Remember, Abraham is renowned for arguing with God over the fate of innocents in Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham fights faithfully for justice and goodness. Yet Abraham also was willing to accept Life. As with all spiritual teachings, herein lies a crucial paradox: We must love life and all that is in it passionately, and at the same time be willing to let it go. In 1950, as Rabbi Milton Steinberg of blessed memory approached an untimely death due to heart disease, he titled his final sermon “To Hold with Open Arms.” He instructed his congregation “to hold life at once infinitely precious and yet as a thing to be lightly surrendered…to clasp the world, but with relaxed hands; to embrace it, but with open arms.”
And so Abraham walks hand-in-hand with his son, and when his son says, “Father,” Abraham responds: “Here I am, my son.” Can we hold what we love with open arms, knowing that we might at any time have to release our grip? Perhaps real love is precisely this paradoxical ability to hold with open arms.
In our story, thank God, Abraham does not have to relinquish his son, his hopes, his dreams. The knife is lowered. The cancer goes into remission. The airbags deploy and no one is killed. But the message is unavoidable: as long as we are alive, loss is unavoidable. May we have the courage to accept this truth, and still open our arms to life and to love.
