Grappling with the Akeidah

19-day-old Ronen napping after his 3.5-year-old twin siblings met him for the first time.

Today, 29 Elul, is Ronen’s 6th yahrzeit. The following is shared in his memory.

שִׁעוּר זֶה לְזֵכֶר נִשְׁמַת בְּנִי מַחְמַד לִבִּי

רוֹנֵן אֱלִיעֶזֶר בֶּן רְאוּבֵן אַהֲרֹן וְהַחַזֶּנֶת הִינְדָא צִבְיָה,

תְּהִי נִשְׁמָתוֹ צְרוּרָה בִּצְרוֹר בַּחַיִּים וּתְהִי מְנוּחָתוֹ כָּבוֹד.

⚠️ Content Warning: The following contains a description of Ronen's final moments, which I wrote shortly after he died. I have chosen not to abridge it, although I am not sure whether others will want to read it. The journal entry is in blue, and given due notice you may choose to skip that part or not read this post.

In our synagogue's minyan, when someone is observing a yahrzeit—the annual remembrance of a loved one on the anniversary of their death, usually on the Hebrew (lunar) calendar—they are invited to share a memory of their loved one. For Ronen, there are memories but they are all laced in heartache and trauma. Instead, this year, I shared some of the Torah that follows—an exposition, and frustration, about the Akeidah, the so-called Binding of Isaac.

Rembrandt's "Binding of Isaac," painted when he was 29 (1635).

Rembrandt's "Binding of Isaac," painted when he was 49 years old (after losing 4 of his 5 children).

Pause with me to consider these two images by Rembrandt (1606-1669), both of the Binding of Isaac. The first (on left) he painted when he was 29 years old in 1635, the latter (on right) when he was 49 years old in 1655. Between these two paintings, from 1635-1640, Rembrandt and his wife Saskia suffered the loss of three of their four infant children, each between two weeks and four months old. I wonder how his experience of these losses informed the difference in his understanding of the Binding of Isaac, such that these two renderings feel so different.

The Akeidah, Genesis 22:1-19 is the reading for the second day of Rosh Ha-Shanah, coming in two days' time. Because Ronen's yahrzeit is erev Rosh Ha-Shanah (the day before the onset of the New Year), we always read the Akeidah narrative in close proximity to Ronen's yahrzeit. And every year it upsets me. How can Avraham, founder of the Nation of Israel, just call it quits on his son?! When God says,

קַח־נָ֠א אֶת־בִּנְךָ֨ אֶת־יְחִֽידְךָ֤ אֲשֶׁר־אָהַ֙בְתָּ֙ אֶת־יִצְחָ֔ק וְלֶ֨ךְ־לְךָ֔ אֶל־אֶ֖רֶץ הַמֹּרִיָּ֑ה וְהַעֲלֵ֤הוּ שָׁם֙ לְעֹלָ֔ה...

Please take your son, the only one you love, Isaac, and go, offer him up as an Olah sacrifice there...

Where is the "HELL NO" from Avraham?! Where is the questioning? The why?? The WTF, God?! The indignation of Sodom and Gomorra:

חָלִ֨לָה לְּךָ֜ מֵעֲשֹׂ֣ת ׀ כַּדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה ... חָלִ֣לָה לָּ֔ךְ הֲשֹׁפֵט֙ כָּל־הָאָ֔רֶץ לֹ֥א יַעֲשֶׂ֖ה מִשְׁפָּֽט׃

Chalilah lekha! [Heaven] forbid that you do a thing like this! ... Chalilah lekha! [Heaven] forbid you! The judge of all the earth—will he not do what is just?

(Point of Order: Chalilah lekha does not really mean Heaven forbid. If it did, it would be sort of humorous, or at least ironic, to say that to God. It's just an idiomatic translation, having no other equivalent expression. A more literal translation might be, "A curse be upon you!"... which may sound even more chutzpadik than Heaven Forbid!)

I want to see Avraham's chutzpah played out for his own child! No dice. He doesn't rise to the occasion.

But as I'm reading my journals from shortly after Ronen's death, I find that I didn't rail in anger against Avraham as I do now. Instead, in that time, I identified with Avraham:

Have you ever been asked to decide whether your child lives or dies?

I have.

 

Ronen died on erev Rosh HaShanah, and the first time we were back in our shul was Yom Kippur. Although the reading of Genesis 22, commonly known as The Akédah – the so-called “Binding of Isaac" is on Rosh Ha-Shanah, it was still very present in the discussions we heard that day from the bimah.

 

In his last hours, I was asked to affirm whether to withdraw care from my child, ensuring his death would be imminent. The alternative—to wait for an ECMO machine—they couldn’t guarantee would work, or that he’d be a candidate once it arrived. And, if he died before they could get it there, he’s die hooked up to machines instead of in my arms.

Take your son… and offer his as an offering on one of the mountains that I will tell you. (Genesis 22:2)

I have newfound compassion for Abraham, asked to decide his child’s fate. How could you possibly understand this if you haven’t been there?

 

After watching the medical team “run a code” for almost an hour, a doctor sat down with us. We were asked: “Ronen has been down eighteen minutes [the irony of the eighteen minutes here is not lost on me], and he’s coded twice. We’ve been doing CPR. You need to make a decision. We can try ECMO, which is heart-lung bypass, but since we need to give him heparin, we would need to do an ultrasound of his brain first to make sure he doesn’t have a brain-bleed. Getting him on ECMO is surgery, and his body is tired from the twice he clamped down already. The ultrasound will take about twenty minutes to get here, and I can’t guarantee the results. You could also choose to withdraw support, and we can give him to you so you can hold him until he dies.”

 

There it is, the impossible choice. My third child, the baby I grew inside my body. I’ve held his hand, I’ve fed and snuggled him. I’ve sung to him, played music, read him books. Just yesterday he perked up when I started reading aloud the book I had brought and he stared deeply at my eyes and my lips as I recited the words. I blessed this child at the onset of Shabbat, and sang him the sweet sounds of my tradition and faith. Throughout my pregnancy, it was these words in my head: “This is the child I prayed for" (I Samuel 1:27, words we also read on Rosh Ha-Shanah).

 

“If we wait the twenty minutes, what is the likelihood you’ll be able to put him on ECMO?” I hear myself asking the doctor.

“Honestly,” she says, “very little. And he could die before it gets here.”

“How long do we have to make this decision?” I ask.

“We’ll keep doing CPR and keep him on the ventilator until you decide, but you don’t have a lot of time.”

 

I call Rabbi Lyle Fishman, my bimah partner. It’s 4:30 PM erev Rosh Ha-Shanah, and the onset of the holy day is in less than two hours. It’s a wonder I get him on the phone, but he picks up, I put him on speaker, and tell him what’s going on.

I don’t remember precisely what the Rabbi said at that time, only that we determined that we shouldn’t keep Ronen on life support. That, Jewishly, we needed to let him go. That it would be better for us to be holding him when his soul left his body than to let him go without the embrace of his parents.

I call my mentor, Cantor Brian Mayer, and I ask him what I should do about vidui, the traditional confession we do when someone is about to die. "Hinda, what on earth could he have to repent for??" I heave. Right, I say, inhaling deeply. I just wanted to make sure I cover all my bases.

 

The medical staff clears out. The doctors turn off the beeping machines, and the whir of the oscillating ventilator ceases, leaving the room screamingly quiet. I lean over his crib and recite the first line of Shema while I lovingly stroke his fuzzy head, remembering that this is what we want someone to say in the moments before they die. I don’t know if he can hear me, but I hope that it brings his neshamah some comfort.

Ronen is extubated, the tubes are removed from his nose for the first time since the hour after he was born. There’s no more red light attached to Ronen’s foot to check his pulse or oxygenation, no more blood pressure cuff around his leg, and no more leads with little animal stickers on his chest to monitor his heart rate and his breathing.

The doctor wraps Ronen in a blanket and hands him to me.

For the first time since Ronen’s birth, I see my son’s face without any tubing.

 

A messenger of the Lord calls to Abraham from Heaven: “Abraham, Abraham!” and he answered, “Hinéni – I’m Present.”

“Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your only, from Me.

 

I waited for a message. I wished for one. None came.

I’m reeling in a jealous rage against Abraham.

 

God tested Abraham (Genesis 22:1). Pass or fail?

… Does it matter?

 

I don’t remember the moment Ronen stopped breathing, just that he is shallowly breathing when he is handed to me. His eyes are closed; he is not alert to the world anymore. I remember putting my hand on his chest, feeling the rise and fall of his labored breathing, stroking his cheek. He is swaddled in a white blanket with pink and teal stripes—the kind they use at every hospital in our area—and it looks almost like a tallit.

As he is handed to me, a bit of blood drains from Ronen’s nose—in coding he was bleeding from every opening of his face, but they’ve cleaned him up— and lands on my right forearm. I feel a buzzing sensation, cold and almost electric, which I realize must be from the epinephrine the doctors gave him while trying to resuscitate. I will never stop feeling that place on my arm. Months and years later, I will still feel it.

Ronen’s head is in the crook of my left elbow, and I nuzzle his soft hair with my nose for the last time. Bob is holding onto my arm as he strokes Ronen’s head and weeps. I admire the tiny ears, the button nose, the soft cheeks chapped and rosy from a lifetime of tubes taped to his face.

 

The world falls away, and all at once I am broken.

The prophet Jeremiah, in his admonishment of the Jewish people in advance of the destruction of the first temple, speaks in God's accusing voice:

וּבָנ֞וּ אֶת־בָּמ֣וֹת הַבַּ֗עַל לִשְׂרֹ֧ף אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶ֛ם בָּאֵ֖שׁ עֹל֣וֹת לַבָּ֑עַל אֲשֶׁ֤ר לֹֽא־צִוִּ֙יתִי֙ וְלֹ֣א דִבַּ֔רְתִּי וְלֹ֥א עָלְתָ֖ה עַל־לִבִּֽי׃

They have built shrines to Baal, to put their children to the fire as burnt offerings to Baal—which I never commanded, never decreed, and which never came to My mind (Jeremiah 19:5)

The Gemara (Ta'anit 4a) demands an answer: How can God honestly say that God never commanded, desired, or thought about child sacrifice, when it's clear in black-and-white that God commanded Avraham to sacrifice his son??

״וְלֹא עָלְתָה עַל לִבִּי״ — זֶה יִצְחָק בֶּן אַבְרָהָם.

The Gemara interprets each phrase of this verse: [...] “Nor did it come into my heart,” this is referring to Isaac, son of Abraham. Although God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, there was no intent in God’s heart that he should actually do so; it was merely a test.

I am not comfortable thinking that God is just testing Avraham. I am not comfortable thinking that God puts any directives into the world just to mess with humanity. I don't like this interpretation any more than I agree that God tells Adam not to touch this tree, just so that Adam will get curious and touch it.

I looked for sources that would quell my anger, or at least join me in it. In classical Jewish sources, I can't find any.

Even the pre-eminent writer, Rabbi Harold Kushner, writing about When Bad Things Happen to Good People, a book he wrote after the death of his own son, falls in line with classical commentaries:

For those who have difficulty with the notion of a God who plays such sadistic games with His most faithful follower, proponents of this view explain that God knows how the story will end. He knows that we will pass the test, as Abraham did, with our faith intact (though, in Abraham's case, his child did not die). He puts us to the test to that we will discover how strong and faithful we are. [...] God sends such tests and afflictions only to people He knows are capable of handling them, so that they and others can learn the extent of their spiritual strength.

Yuck. God sends you only as much as you can handle? Bullsh*t. I'd rather think that God has a plan, or even that God is random, than God sent us a child with a fatal medical condition because "We could handle it."

In her book, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again, partially a love-letter to Jewish methods of textual analysis, Christian theologian Rachel Held Evans writes,

[I]t wasn’t until I encountered the volumes of midrash around the story of the binding of Isaac that I realized I wasn’t alone in my misgivings about that tale in which God tests Abraham by instructing him to sacrifice his only son on an altar, only to send an angel to stay his hand just before Abraham plunges the knife into his son’s chest. Readers ancient and modern have struggled with that story, positing different possibilities for why God would ask Abraham to do such a thing. Was God using Abraham to make a point against the practice of child sacrifice, common among the pagans? Or did Abraham only imagine he heard the voice of God? Was God disciplining Abraham for his treatment of Ishmael? Would Abraham himself have finally relented, before actually committing the act, and would disobedience have ultimately been the right and ethical thing for him to choose? How should parents understand the moral of this unsettling tale? (p. 23)

Yes! We are, in fact, entitled to question! Who among us wouldn't question? Or are you so complacent, so accepting of Divine Torah that it never occurred to you to rage indignantly at the Patriarch?

Another Christian (and female) theologian, Ellen Davis, writes in Getting Involved with God: Rediscovering the Old Testament,

"The Binding of Isaac shows us a God who is vulnerable, terribly and terrifyingly so, in the context of covenant relationship. We are more comfortable using the 'omni' words—omnipotent, omniscient—to describe God. Yet if we properly understand that dynamics of covenant relationship, then we are confronted with a god who is vulnerable. For [...] the covenant with God is fundamentally an unbreakable bond of love (chesed). And ordinary experience teaches that love and vulnerability are inextricably linked; we are most vulnerable to emotional pain when the well-being and the faithfulness of those we love are at stake." (p. 122)

Love and vulnerability are inextricably linked—yes they are. As Alfred Lord Tennyson famously wrote, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." And David Kessler, whose teachings on grief have touched me deeply, said, "You don’t have to experience grief, but you can only avoid it by avoiding love. Love and grief are inextricably intertwined.

In a statement that resonates deeply with me, Davis continues:

"[T]he person in pain is a theologian of unique authority. The sufferer who keeps looking for God has, in the end, privileged knowledge. The one who complains to God, pleads with God, rails at God, does not let God off the hook for a minute—she is at last admitted to a mystery. She passes through a door that only pain will open, and is thus qualified to speak of God in a way that others, whom we generally call more fortunate, cannot speak." (p. 122)* 

Davis's message here, which she shared amidst an analysis of Job and of the Akeidah, gives me the permission I think I was waiting for. Which is why here, today, I have shared for the first time (cautiously) a piece that has been sitting on my hard drive for nearly five years. And perhaps the reason I feel like I am not represented in the sources that comment on the text is that... none of those commentators has my experience. I am reading myself into a text analyzed mostly by male scholars, who lived in another time with other life experience. And I have so much more to share from this place. Instead of publishing a book with limited audience (which I've been writing for about six years and I confess, I'm afraid to release it into the world—but I do think it's time), I'll be posting more of those writings here, on this blog, where they can be accessed readily by whomever needs to read them. This is my commitment for the New Year.

Wishing all a Shanah Tovah, a Happy New Year—may these upcoming reflective days be meaningful, and may we be blessed this year with more curiosity than self-assuredness, more questions than answers. By this time next year, may we be calling this a year of peace.

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* For referring me to this beautiful quote from Dr. Ellen Davis's book, credit to Rachel Held Evans (of blessed memory) in her amazing book Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again.