Was the Akeidah on Yitzchak’s Shiddukh Resume?

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Avraham was near despair. His son, his sort-of only son, whom he loved at least as much as he loved the others, was 37 years old and still “in the freezer” at Yeshivat Shemever. So far as Avraham knew his son had never talked to a girl, let alone gone on a date. Yitzchak simply wasn’t going to take care of marrying himself off. So Avraham did the only thing a parent could: he wrote a shiddukh resume and sent it off.

Yeshivat Shemever was a magical place. No one who went there ever wanted to leave. At some point the Rosh Yeshiva would tap a student on the shoulder and hand them a copy of Plato’s Republic with the Allegory of the Cave annotated. A week later the student would pack the copy with their other seforim and leave.

The Allegory of the Cave teaches that philosopher and nonphilosophers see the world entirely differently. Philosophers live in sunlight and see three-dimensionally in color, while nonphilosophers live as bound prisoners in caves squinting at shadows – they see two-dimensionally in black and white. Philosophers go down to the caves to persuade nonphilosophers out of the caves by explaining what they are missing; they are judged insane. The mystery is why the philosophers keep coming down to the caves to try to explain.

Rambam’s explanation is that genuine knowledge of truth generates an evangelical impulse. Anyone who knows Truth will feel an overpowering need to share it, as Avram and Sarai did when they “made souls” in Charan. Sharing it requires going down to the caves where the nonphilosophers live.

Modern yeshivot, and the Talmud, have a different explanation. They may share Rambam’s notion that Adam was a philosopher in Eden, and perhaps Eve as well. But what Rambam underplays is that sexual desire eventually distracts from philosophy, and if not properly managed, becomes the focus of mental life, with philosophy at best an occasional distraction. Yeshivot are Eden, and the time inevitably comes when you expel yourself. The Rosh Yeshiva’s tap on the shoulder with a shadkhan’s number is a diagnosis not a cause.

One positive aspect of this system is that, at least in a society that effectively stigmatizes nonmarital sex, dating is very tachlis-oriented. People capable of staying in yeshiva, that is, people capable of simultaneous chastity and concentration, do so. No one leaves Eden unless they have no choice.

But this was not always true for the bochurim of Yeshivat Shemever. They would sometimes be thrust into the world unprepared to seek companionship, looking only for audiences.  Worse, if a young woman nodded along cheerfully and at the end expressed complete allegiance to the particular style of Talmud Torah that the Yeshiva had most recently embraced as Truth, she would be dumped immediately, because preaching to the converted offers little relief from unbearable quasiprophetic urges.   

Worse, some of these exiles were genuine solipsists with no need for an audience. From the Yeshiva’s perspective, there were two possibilities: Either the students genuinely knew Truth, in which case they would need to leave to satisfy the evangelical urge, or else they had no such urge, which proved they didn’t genuinely know Truth, in which case the yeshiva need them to leave lest they “cool the water” for everyone else in the pool. So the yeshiva pushed them all out the door. But they met a skeptical marriage market.

So Yitzchak was a definite oddity – 37 years old and still in yeshiva. This would need to be explained for him to even get a date, leaving aside the question of whether he would show up.

The portrait of Yitzchak that I’m drawing is grounded in a peculiar story told in the context  of Ibn Caspi’s commentary on the Akeidah.

Avraham returned to his lads –

because he was the head, and there is no need to mention those who are subordinate to him,

such as Yitzchak his son.

There are hundreds and thousands of this kind of thing in the Torah.

וישב אברהם אל נעריו –

כי הוא הראש, ואין צורך לזכור הנטפלים לו,

כמו יצחק בנו,

ומזה המין בתורה למאות ולאלפים.

Ibn Caspi here denies meaningfulness to a feature of the text that 20^th century interpreters such as Nechama Leibowitz often saw as crucial, namely that while in the run-up we are told twice that “the two of them went together”, Avraham returns to his lads without Yitzchak. Modern interpreters argue that the father-son relationship is broken by the Akeidah, generally because Yitzchak feels betrayed and/or is traumatized by what he perceives as his father’s willingness to kill him, even if he intellectually agrees that obedience to G-d’s command should trump all human relationships and values.

But there is another way to explain the separation. On the third day, when he saw the place from afar, Avraham told his two lads: “Set yourselves down here, with the donkey”. Rashi famously channels the midrash that the lads are “similar to donkeys”. The word for donkey is chamor, which sounds related to chomer, which at least in post-Talmudic thought refers to materiality. If we put all that together, we discover that Avraham returned to the realm of materiality after the Akeidah – he went back down to the caves – but Yitzchak never left. With that in mind, we return to Ibn Caspi:

However, when I was in the city of Valencia some years ago,

it was among the chasdei/graces of Hashem upon me

that I was met by a chasid zaken vegadol =a pious man old and great

with a zakan gadol (=large beard) fully white

who said to me that Yitzchak never returned,

because as reward for his tolerance of being slaughtered –

Hashem sent him to Gan Eden,

Therefore his name is not mentioned in the Scriptural telling of the death of Sarah,

and he remained there until he married Rivkah the pleasant,

Therefore his name is not mentioned in Scripture

either regarding the death of Sarah or regarding the agency of Eliezer until he returned with Rivkah,

and Scripture there says

and Yitzchak came from coming (from) B’er Lachai Ro’i.

I said to him: May your mind be at ease just as you have eased my mind.

האמנם, בהיותי בעיר ולנציאה זה שנים,

היה מחסדי השם עלי כי פגע בי חסיד אחד וזָקֵן וגדול עם זָקָן גדול כולו לבן,

ואמר אלי כי לא שב יצחק,

כי בשכר מה שסבל להשחט –

שלחו השם בגן עדן ועמד שם עד שנשא הנעימה רבקה.

ולכן לא נזכר שמו בכתוב במיתת שרה ולא בשליחות אליעזר עד ששב עם רבקה,

וכתו’ שם “ויצחק בא מבא באר לחי רואי” (בראשית כד:סב).

אמרתי לו: תנוח דעתך כמו שהנחת דעתי.

Ibn Caspi’s mysterious interlocutor[1] describes Yitzchak’s extended stay in Gan Eden as a reward, but I think we moderns are more likely to see it as a consequence of trauma. The question is how he finally manages to leave. And that brings us back to where we started, with Avraham writing his son’s shiddukh resume.

We tend to tell the story of Yitzchak and Rivkah as love at first sight, as indeed it is. But it is not accidental but rather arranged love. The question is whether Rivkah agrees to marry Yitzchak knowing only about his family and his father’s wealth, or whether she asked Eliezer to tell her about Yitzchak as well.

I have only one hint to the answer at this stage; I hope to learn more from the participants in YI Sharon’s post-hashkomoh shiur. But here is the hint:

Rivkah’s family gives her an odd blessing when she decides to go with Eliezer:

אחותינו

את היי לאלפי רבבה

ויירש זרעך את שער שנאיו

Our sister

May you become thousands and myriads

and may your seed take possession of the gates of those who hate him

I often wonder about a blessing that assumes the existence of haters. But Rashbam notes that the blessing appears to echo the angel’s blessing to Avraham after he sacrifices the ram (22:16-18):

וַיֹּ֕אמֶר

בִּ֥י נִשְׁבַּ֖עְתִּי נְאֻם־יְקֹוָ֑ק

כִּ֗י יַ֚עַן אֲשֶׁ֤ר עָשִׂ֙יתָ֙ אֶת־הַדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֔ה וְלֹ֥א חָשַׂ֖כְתָּ אֶת־בִּנְךָ֥ אֶת־יְחִידֶֽךָ:

כִּֽי־בָרֵ֣ךְ אֲבָרֶכְךָ֗

וְהַרְבָּ֨ה אַרְבֶּ֤ה אֶֽת־זַרְעֲךָ֙ כְּכוֹכְבֵ֣י הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וְכַח֕וֹל אֲשֶׁ֖ר עַל־שְׂפַ֣ת הַיָּ֑ם

וְיִרַ֣שׁ זַרְעֲךָ֔ אֵ֖ת שַׁ֥עַר אֹיְבָֽיו:

וְהִתְבָּרֲכ֣וּ בְזַרְעֲךָ֔ כֹּ֖ל גּוֹיֵ֣י הָאָ֑רֶץ

עֵ֕קֶב אֲשֶׁ֥ר שָׁמַ֖עְתָּ בְּקֹלִֽי:

He said:

By Myself! says Hashem

Because you have done this thing and not withdrawn your son, your unique son,

that I will surely bless you

I will surely multiply your seed like the stars of the heavens and like the sand on the seashore

and your seed will take possession of the gates of its foes.

All the nations of the land will be blessed through you

in consequence of your heeding My voice.

I propose that Eliezer told the whole story to Rivkah and her family, and that the echo was conscious. The marriage might not have been binding if such an overwhelming source of trauma had not been disclosed. The question then becomes how Rivkah succeeds in drawing Yitzchak back into the world.

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[1] Suggestions/evidence regarding his identity are very welcome.

The Akeidah and the Army

by Rabbi Aryeh Klapper

Suspense is a powerful and dangerous artistic tool. Right now, dear reader, you are wondering where that first sentence will lead. That wonder is manipulable. I could tease you into reading on with hints that this essay will address hot-button contemporary events.

Or I could tell you here at the very beginning that while you might suspect until nearly the very end that I’m engaging in thinly veiled and bracingly acerbic commentary on current events, ultimately this essay will be nothing of the sort. Instead, it will be an old-fashioned peshat approach to a text leading to a conventional moral reading of a great but very familiar text.

Which would make you more eager to read on?

Rabbi Yosef Ibn Caspi argues (Gevia HaKesef 14) that G-d takes the second approach in the Akeidah narrative. “It was after those matters that G-d put Avraham to the test . . .” Why tell us upfront that this would be a test? Ibn Caspi argues that the purpose is to ensure that we never suspect G-d of actually wanting Avraham to bring Yitzchak as a human sacrifice or consider it possible that Avraham would actually kill Yitzchak. The goal is to prevent or at least deflect suspense. Readers are intended to wonder how, not whether, the story will end with Yitzchak still alive.

Ibn Caspi’s reading is built on Yirmiyahu 7:31 and 19:5, each of which denounces the burning of children on altars as something that G-d never commanded nor even considered. Talmud Taanit 4a reads the latter verse as a specific reference to three apparent Biblical narratives of child sacrifice:

וכתיב אשר לא צויתי ולא דברתי ולא עלתה על לבי –

אשר לא צויתי – זה בנו של מישע מלך מואב,

שנאמר ויקח את בנו הבכור אשר ימלך תחתיו ויעלהו עלה;

ולא דברתי – זה יפתח;

ולא עלתה על לבי – זה יצחק בן אברהם.

Scripture writes that I did not command nor speak, and that did not arise in My mind –

That I did not command – this refers to the son of Mesha, King of Moav,

as 2Kings 3:27 says: He took his eldest son, who would reign in his stead, and brought him up as an olah-sacrifice;

nor speak – this refers to Yiftach;

and that did not arise in My mind – this refers to Yitzchak ben Avraham.   

Ibn Caspi further argues that the Akeidah narrative overall is intended to teach the same message as Yirmiyahu, that G-d rejects and abhors child sacrifice.

והכוונה בזה לשרש ולעקר ולרפות מלבות העם ההוא החל הנאמן שהיה להם

כי המהדרין מן המהדרין יעשו עולות מבניהם לאלוהיהם.

The purpose (of the command) was to uproot, undermine, and weaken the established belief that was in the heart of the people,

that those who are punctiliously careful take of their children to make sacrifices to their gods.

(text/translation of this and subsequent sections by Rabbi Basil Herring, available on Sefaria)

However, Ibn Caspi concedes that the Akeidah can nonetheless be counter-read, and indeed that Yiftach may have based his actions on such a counter-reading.

ואע״פ שקרא אותה, ובפרט זה המעשה,

אם קרא – לא ידע זאת הסבה התכליתית,

אבל שער שמה שמנעו השם לאברהם היה לבד על צד החמלה עליו ממנו יחידו, עם היות זקן.

ולכן מי שיעשה זה יהיה יותר מופלג ואדוק.

כ״ש עם היות יפתח אז בחור, כי היה בגבורתו.

While he read this episode (of Genesis) in particular,

having read it he was not aware of this final cause,

for he considered the Lord’s prevention of Abraham to be only an act of mercy on account of (Isaac’s being) an only son in (Abraham’s) old age.

(So Jephthah thought that) whoever would carry this out would be more praiseworthy and pious,

especially (for someone like) Jephthah, a young man in his prime.

But Ibn Caspi also provides a stunning alternate version of Yiftach:

ואולי הוחיל לקריאת מלאך לו לאמר:

״אל תשלח ידך אל הנער״,

ועדיין היה מחל זה.

It is possible that Jephthah expected an angel to call out to him,  

“Lay not thy hand upon the lad,”

and continued to wait for it.

Yiftach in this version is descended from the rabbinic portrait of Avraham’s brother Haran, who assumed that G-d would save everyone who declared belief in Him from the fiery furnace of Nimrod. No! There is no virtue in testing G-d (except perhaps with regard to agricultural tithing, possibly extended to all responsible charitable giving: see Malakhi 3:10)

Avraham was also waiting for the angel. That was his intent in saying: G-d will reveal for Himself the sheep for the olah-sacrifice, my son”. The difference between Yiftach and Avraham, as I understand Ibn Caspi, is that Yiftach felt a sense of urgency, whereas Avraham was prepared to wait forever. (Ibn Caspi contends that many days elapsed between “seeing the place from afar” on the third day and hearing the angel’s voice.)

However, Ibn Caspi is not wholly at peace with Avraham. Avraham still assumed that a sacrifice of some sort was necessary, and so when the angel’s voice finally came, he was looking for a sheep and found a ram[1]. Avraham thus held, and left room for his descendants/followers to incorrectly hold, that sacrifice is a necessary form of worship, and perhaps the ultimate form.

Human sacrifice in particular is wrong because it is murder. That’s why Yirmiyahu can present G-d as astounded that anyone could think He desired it, when He had absolutely prohibited murder. But that leaves open the possibility that sacrifice per se remains the ultimate act of religious devotion. If killing-as-worship is pleasing to G-d, surely the more significant the thing killed, the greater the sacrifice, the more G-d is pleased – so long as one does not transgress His law against murder. 

Ibn Caspi considers this possibility utterly, absolutely, and totally wrong. G-d does not want any kind of life sacrificed to him, let alone human life, let alone the life of one’s child. He never commanded or encouraged Avraham to substitute anything for Yitzchak. The whole idea of animal sacrifice, indeed of sacrifice as a mode of worship, is a concession to human drives, as Maimonides argued. (I suspect that Ibn Caspi sees burning incense/ketoret as different in kind because it does not involve sacrifice but rather the religious purposing of a sensory pleasure.)

In immediate historical context, Ibn Caspi may have emphasized this point as an element of anti-Christian polemic. The crucifixion was not a completed and therefore superior Akeidah because G-d despises human sacrifice and abhors anything and everything resembling a completed Akeidah.

The eternal message is that no one should be eulogized or praised for having completed an akeidah, and certainly not as being or having been an Avraham who willingly completed an akeidah, even if they G-d-forbid considered participating in such an act directly[2].

Ibn Caspi admits that this message is extremely difficult to convey to most people, and he was presumably aware that it is in profound tension with many elements of the High Holiday liturgy, and much else. I think his argument is that nonetheless any concession on this point leads inevitably to more Yiftachs.

With that in mind, I want to introduce what may become a separate project. I’ve been comparing the ArtScroll Stone Chumash with the Koren Magerman (Rabbi Sacks) Chumash for the past several parshiyot. The ideological differences are often striking.

For example, consider the relevance of Parshat Lekh Lekha to a world in which the State of Israel exists. Rabbi Sacks speaks of watching the realization of prophecies in which joy returns to the streets of Jerusalem, and how this fulfills the promise of the Covenant Between the Pieces that light will always come in the end. ArtScroll writes that Avraham was wrong to draft Torah scholars into the army he raised to rescue Lot.

For VaYera, consider in light of Ibn Caspi the opening morals they respectively draw from the Akeidah.

Here is ArtScroll:

Avraham could have no other justification for taking Isaac’s life other than unquestioned obedience to G-d. Whether or not he could bring himself to do that was the test. 

And here is Rabbi Sacks:

The trial is not to see whether Avraham has the courage to sacrifice his son. The practice was commonplace in the ancient world, and completely abhorrent to Judaism . . .

G-d does not want Avraham to sacrifice his child. G-d wants Avraham to renounce ownership of his child.

Rabbi Sacks is compatible with Ibn Caspi, while ArtScroll is not.

The divergence here may reflect a tendency of Modern Orthodoxy to write for intellectuals while Charedism captures the masses. But it would be shallow and unfair to make that the whole explanation of the difference.  

Ibn Caspi understands that he is opposing a position with enormous human appeal that can be resisted only through constant and extraordinary intellectual and religious dedication. He acknowledges that his own view of the Akeidah will be accepted only by a tiny minority, whom he considers an elite. Modern Orthodoxy can break its arms patting itself on the back if it wants, but we are not all temperamentally philosophic.

Moreover, Ibn Caspi may simply be wrong.

The harshest test of Ibn Caspi’s theology is how it relates to the deaths of soldiers al kiddush Hashem in a war of defense. To many of us, it is clear and natural to view their heroism as an expression of the ideals of the Akeidah seen through to its end, with the soldiers as Yitzchak and the parents as Avraham. In fact, my own essay for VaYera last year included the statement that “Jews in the Diaspora with no children in the IDF owe impossibly large debts of gratitude to the incredible Yitzchaks fighting our battles against the worst of causes, and to their families.”

But Ibn Caspi objects, and I take his objection to heart. “Sacrifice” is the wrong metaphor. Our soldiers are heroes of the highest order because they choose to live in accordance with their duties and responsibilities. Their parents are heroes because they raised their children to make that choice, and in general to make their own choices, rather than treating them as possessions. G-d does not want or need sacrifices, and parents have no right to sacrifice their children. The Akeidah must never be completed.

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[1] Ibn Caspi argues IMHO unconvincingly, that the ram was not caught in the thicket when Avraham first saw it; rather, he waited until it got caught; if it had not gotten caught, Avraham would have waited for another.

[2] Ibn Caspi, following Avraham ben HaRambam’s report of his father’s position, seems to prefer seeing Yitzchak as unaware of what was happening despite his age, and therefore not as heroic.  However, the end of his commentary on the Akeidah in his Matzref HaKesef suggests an ambivalence about this that I hope to write about no later than the next Torah cycle.