On Akeida - 10/4/2024

Gut Yuntef everyone and shanah tova, I am so pleased to see that you all have joined us for this second day of Rosh Hashanah. For me at least, this year has been one of the most difficult spiritually. It has been incredibly hard to be connected to my Judaism when I see so man Jews using the religion as a rational for genocide, apartheid and horrors that cannot be described in words. I left a synagogue, got called all kinds of slurs by other Jews who have likened me to a Nazi sympathizer and accomplice, and have felt somewhat adrift while also trying to cling on to a religion that I care so deeply about and one that in the past has held me. Maybe these are things that you have gone through and experienced too. I dreaded what might have been a really isolating new year and am so thankful to be here with you all. I think that yesterday was the first ever rosh hashanah service where I cried and felt safe to do so. 

For many years, I was someone who took Judaism at face value. I liked trying to fit into the mainstream, even if it was never for me as someone who is queer and trans. But in the past years of questioning Zionism and I have also questioned what it means to be part of a people who are using the same texts that I look to for liberation for genocide. In yesterday’s service, we read about how Abraham cast out Hagar and Ishmael - a truly fraught part of the Torah with so much resonance today as the Israeli government continues its assault on Palestine. And the text-based complication continues.

Just minutes ago, I read another deeply troubling part of the Torah, Genesis Chapter 22, that feels important to dissect, understand and question. This parsha tells the story of the akeida - or the binding of Isaac. God gives Abraham a test. They (I will be using they/them pronouns to refer to God and you can feel free to ask me about this later) ask Abraham to take Isaac, Abraham’s most beloved son, and sacrifice him to God. Without a question, without an ounce of pleading, Abraham responds with the word “hineni” or here I am. The story goes that right as Abraham is about to murder his son, God replaces Isaac with a ram. God’s messenger tells Abraham that he has passed this test and demonstrated true fear of God. 

In every synagogue I have ever been to - Abraham’s utterance of hineini is said to show us that a blind devotion and fear of God is a positive attribute. Congregants are then asked how they can be more present in their worship of God and in Jewish community. I wouldn’t be surprised if others here have heard the same sermon at other synagogues. This was a message that I internalized for years and as a kid, I would wrack my brain and body for ways that I could commit more of myself to the Jewish community, but now, I have more questions and problems with this text than ever.

My first question and gripe: What does presence look like and why is Abraham’s response to God considered presence? Judaism is not a religion of obedience - it is one of asking questions and arguing. The word for obedience in Hebrew - le-tseyat - does not actually have a direct translation in english. It means something more akin to listen, hear, understand, internalize and then respond. Embedded in the grammar itself is the idea that Jews do not obey without first going through an internal process. According to the great commentator Rashi, implicit in the idea that humans are made in God’s image is that we ask questions, and we push back. Argumentation is a godly trait. 

This is why, even in the daily prayers though the weekday Amidah, we pray that God gives us “knowledge, understanding and discernment.” So, why is Abraham heralded as the master of presence. It feels ethically wrong to me, and deeply not-Jewish for him to approach God with the message of hineini. In that moment, Abraham is not acting godly, he is an empty vessel, designed  to observe commandments and kill his son. 

My second question and gripe: In what world can we come up with any justification at all to murder a child. I cannot square the fact that in this moment of Torah, the writers (whether you think that was God, a person directed by God or a person on their own), would want us to think that there is any world in which we should consider the murder of a child. This is something that is particularly troubling me today when we see the Zionist entity using god and religion as an excuse to literally kill thousands and thousands of children in Palestine and now too in Lebanon. I know that my Orthodox, Zionist cousins who are in the IOF see their charge as holy. Never in my life have I, nor will I, be able to understand how taking a life, especially the life of a child, can be a devotional practice to God. No, Abraham did not kill Isaac, but he fully intended to and regardless of what midrash says, acquiescence to killing a child is wrong.  

My third quesion, is what does it mean to fear God, why is this holy and who determines if we are fearing God correctly? Oftentimes, fear of God gets operationalized into observance of God’s commandments and refraining from sin. Something that Rashi describes this way: sin is known to the heart of the person who commits it, but other people cannot detect it. And so fear of God, and the sins that come from not being afraid of God, don’t necessarily come with social sanctions.

So to follow the logic of the Torah, we are supposed to act justly because of a fear of God, a fear that there will be divine ramifications of us by not following God’s commandments. I did not come here today, nor will I observe Yom Kippur because I fear God. I did it because I believe that there is a magic to the High Holidays that enables me to take stock of the person that I am, and who I want to be in the future. During Yom Kippur, we attone for sins in the plural. We said ashamnu, bagadnu so that we can repent for our collective sins, and therefore, I come here because of a communal responsibility.  I actually think it is holier to want to act right and act in godly ways because of accountability to my community, to my loved ones, to strangers and to myself. In the case of Abraham, he demonstrates his fear of God in the willingness to sacrifice his child. I would say that this is not proper reverence of God.

My fourth question, and one I didn’t think to ask until talking about the Akeida with a friend: How does Isaac live on knowing that his father was willing to kill him for religious fanaticism and how can he bare to carry on the religious tradition of a man who was willing to kill him in the name of God?

After considering all of these questions and gripes, I have to ask a final series of questions: why do we read this Torah portion, and why in particular do we read it every Rosh Hashana - a time meant for deep introspection and atonement and self-betterment. What does this text mean to me, someone who does not come to religion out of a fear of God. 

My thought is that maybe the writers of Torah are testing us, which they have been known to do. Very meta, very Jewish: a test within a test. Let me share an example:

In Deuteronomy we read: If a householder has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community. They shall say to the elders of his town, “This son of ours is disloyal and defiant; he does not heed us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.”Thereupon his town’s council shall stone him to death. Thus you will sweep out evil from your midst: all people of Israel will hear and be afraid.

In the Talmud, so centuries later, the rabbis of the Sanhedrein had this to say: It [taking your no-goodnik son out to be stoned to death] never was [OK] and it never will be [OK]. And then why is it written in the Torah? So that you might expound, and be rewarded. 

We are to take from this that there are points in Torah that exist solely for our critique and for our reflection. Reflection, and in some cases rejection of tradition and narrative, is desired and maybe even holy, and something that anti zionist Jews have had to do. Reinterpretation and internally and externally arguing with mainstream Judaism has been a big part of my adulthood and particularly has been present in the last year. In realizing that Zionism is a false and murderous ideology and one that is embedded in the fibers of most of the Jewish institutions I was raised in, I have felt a need to strip every Jewish teaching down to its bones and pick apart the messages that belie it. 

This Rosh Hashanah, I am choosing to believe that this is what the Rabbis and the torah want from us - not to take text at face value, not to see Abraham as the perfect patriarch, but to have deep questions and problems with his actions. This Rosh Hashana, and in this season of return and awe, I challenge us all to grapple with the lessons of the Torah and ask if we follow the commandments out of a fear of sin or because we think that the lessons will make us better and bring us closer to the ideals that we want to carry. I hope that you find meaning in the liturgy and in Torah, especially if it comes from a place of curiosity, questioning and response, and not from automatic acceptance.