“Do not reach out your hand against the lad.” (Gen. 22:12)
We are living in an insane reality in which we wake up each morning in anxiety, fearful of hearing news media telling us they “are now authorized to make public” news of yet another casualty of war and terrorism.
The Hebrew poet Hayyim Guri, in his poem “Inheritance” (“Yerushah”) writes that Isaac bequeathed to his descendants that horrible moment of his binding and near-sacrifice: “They are born with the knife in their heart.”
The ethos of sacrificing their children has been part of the Jewish people’s story since the dawn of its existence. From Abraham, who bound his son Isaac on the altar, through the stories of a mother (Hannah) and her seven sons, to our own time, in person of Rivka Guber and Miriam Peretz, each of whom lost two sons in Israel’s wars.
Their sacrifice is indeed a prime example of the dedication and self-sacrifice that our tradition labels “kiddush ha-shem,” the sanctification of God’s name. However, if there is one thing that the story of the Akedah, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his Isaac, teaches us, it is not that we should be ready to sacrifice our own sons, but rather the opposite! God does not desire human sacrifices! God’s name is sanctified by our lives, and we must do all we can to protect them.
