The Way Down the Mountain (Rosh HaShanah 5787)

Transcript The Way Down the Mountain Rosh HaShanah 5787 Rabbi Brooklyn Michalowicz The year is 2053… BCE. You’re in the sweltering desert of Canaan - modern-day Israel. Squinting in the sunlight, you see an old man descending a mountain; Shaking, alone. When you look harder, you see that it’s Abraham, the patriarch of your nomadic camp. On Rosh Hashanah, we read where this story leads, how Abraham nearly sacrificed his beloved son, Isaac at God’s command. As Abraham lifts his arm to strike, an angel interrupts and pleads with him to spare the boy. Abraham stops. And then God blesses him. Like many of us, the ancient rabbis were left unsatisfied. How could the lesson be that God rewards us for harming the people we love? What kind of God would choose this test in the first place? This is where midrash - rabbinic fan-fiction - comes to answer our questions. To make peace with this difficult story, our sages wrote that Isaac was in on it all along, accepting, even honored, that he would be a sacrifice for God. In one version, Isaac begs Abraham not to tell his mother Sarah, fearing she'd take her own life from grief. But others are left troubled. They claim that Abraham did not, in fact, pass the test - because the true test was to defend Isaac. Rashi posits that Abraham misunderstands God’s request. He imagines God saying: "I never meant for you to offer him up — only to bring him up, so we could meet, and then bring him back down.” But if Abraham failed by not defending his son, why does he still receive God’s blessing? On their way up the mountain, Abraham and Isaac speak to each other using the affectionate terms avi, my father, and beni, my son. Variations of the words“my father,” “my son,” and yachdav, “together” are used 9 times in only 11 verses. In Torah, repetition is like an alarm that blares, “Pay attention! These words are important!” Ascending the mountain, Abraham and Isaac are close. So close that God says to Abraham, “Kach et bincha, et yechidecha, Asher ahavta, et Yitzchak.” Take your son, your only son, the one you love, Isaac.” The one you love. This is the first mention of love in the entire Torah. The two have a deep, emotionally intimate relationship, one in which Isaac can ask his father openly, “My father, here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” Yet Abraham is so troubled by the inconceivable task ahead of him, that his guilt shames him into lying, “God will see to the sheep, my son.” My son. Even in the lie, there is affection. In the blessing that follows this tragic scene at the altar, the angel says, “Because you have… not withheld your son, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars and the sands; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations shall bless themselves by your descendants.” It seems then that Abraham receives everything he's ever wanted. But in the chapters that follow, we notice something off…Isaac never speaks to Abraham again. To add insult to injury, Sarah never speaks to Abraham again before she dies. And all the more troublesome, God never speaks to Abraham again. Maybe, in great pain, Abraham never speaks to God again. Can we really believe that Abraham fully passed the test when a single act costs him every significant relationship in his life? No. Perhaps, then, we have to read the story differently, not as a binary of passed or failed. Sacrifice or Defend. But as a 2-part test, one of resoluteness and one of relationship. Our sages were not wrong that Abraham passed at least part of the test. God blesses him for not withholding Isaac and makes him into a great nation that we are all still part of today. If part (a) of the test is the offering of faith, then what Abraham fails to see is part (b) which is buried in the language of the blessing. As we’ve seen, repetition is a sign of a word’s importance, and the angel of God repeats the word descendant - “zar’acha” - three times in a 2 line blessing, it’s as if the angel whispers to Abraham, “Don’t forget your son. He’s right here. Your descendant is waiting for you to reach out with a kind word, an apology.” Imagine: Abraham hears his blessing, really hears it, and recognizes that his work is not yet done. He approaches his son, And, instead of walking down the mountain alone, he says, “I’m devastated at where this has led us. I love you, and I’m here to listen whenever you’re ready to speak. Whether that’s on our way down this mountain or in 5 years. My beloved son.” In that split second between the blessing and his descent, Abraham has an opportunity - an obligation, to acknowledge his son, and he misses it. He leaves him on the mountain without another word, thus destroying his relationships with Isaac, Sarah, and God. The message for us in this high holy day season of repentance and repair is clear: After causing harm to someone we love, our obligation is to acknowledge the other person, even if the isn’t right to mend things entirely. If you’ve ever wronged or have been wronged - whether intentionally or unintentionally…you know how difficult of an ask this is - when you snap at a family member who harasses you with offensive politics, when your partner makes you feel unseen, when you share a secret your best friend told you in confidence - how many of us have wanted to brush past an issue, trusting the relationship will catch us, or hoping that the other person will simply let it slide? Acknowledging someone we’ve wronged risks opening old wounds. We risk getting a response we don’t want, or worse, getting no response at all. But as I’m sure therapists are sick of saying, people aren’t mind readers. They need to hear our sorries, and deserve a chance to respond. Our acknowledgment can even be silent, a nod, or a look in the eyes, but there is no repair in disregard. Where ignoring stifles our empathy, acknowledgment develops it. And building empathy is the task of this season. The late Gloria Steinem wrote, “Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.” This ask is RADICAL, because empathy doesn't come on its own - we must practice it time and again, until the impulse to yell or leave is replaced more naturally by steadiness. I think about what Abraham’s life could have been like had he just taken a moment to sit with his feelings of devastation and recognize that his son, his beloved son, was in even more pain than himself. I imagine his joy, one day hiking with his son again, laughing with his wife again, hearing God’s calls again. As we begin these high holy days together, I invite us all to consider in those in-between moments, when frustration or disappointment threatens to overtake us, to honestly assess if our silence serves our relationships or hurts them, and if we are brave enough to learn and utilize radical empathy. When our differences feel insurmountable, or when our pain is great, may we recognize the person standing before us, so that we pass God’s test in our modern age.