Opening to the divine voice

Thumbing through his Chumash, the father turns to the weekly portion and chooses the section on the binding of Isaac. What could be better than bible stories from the weekly portion? And he reads, God commanded Abraham to "take his son, his only son, the son that he loved, and offer him as a sacrifice to God".

The father looks up from the text and into the face of the small boy. The boy's eyes are closed. The father can see the boy's chest rising and falling under the blanket and knows that his son has fallen asleep. The father reads on and sees that Abraham indeed takes his son and binds him to an altar and takes a knife to slaughter him. Abraham is stopped in the last moment by a divine angel who tells him, "Lay not your hand upon the boy."

Abraham listens to the angel and does not harm his son. The angel says, "Because you have done this thing, I see that you fear God". Abraham then sees a ram caught in the thicket, takes the ram and offers up the ram as a sacrifice, instead of his son Isaac. He calls this place the place where God, Y H V H, was revealed.

The father closes the book, takes a deep breath and looks again at his son. What a strange and critically important tale for our time. And as all the great interpreters have written for over two thousand years, what a terribly painful and difficult story it is. What are the stories we wish for our children to know intimately; the stories and history of our struggles as a Jewish people, the stories of our own lives , and our struggles to make choices rooted in faith rather than in fear.

We all know that there are a thousand ways to read this story. Virtually all of them, however, make one core assumption, that God actually commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham's basic test was to have faith in God. Even though it violated his moral sense, he was to obey the command and sacrifice his son.

The huge problem with this approach – particularly in our post-modern context, is that there are quite a few people today who claim to hear the voice of God telling them to do ethically outrageous things. To say the least, you would not want to have those people over for dinner.

Khomeini, who heard the God-voice tell him to send lines of children tied to chains walking through mined fields in order to clear out Iraqi mines by exploding them on the children- children sacrificed to the Khomeini's God-voice; Saddam Hussein, who heard the God-voice commanding him to torture and murder countless Iraqi youth suspected of threatening his rule, believed he was responding to a divine imperative which commanded him to rule Iraq.

In our country, ten years after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, it is difficult not to remember that Yigal Amir also claimed to, in some sense, hear the God-voice, commanding him to assassinate Rabin. There is little doubt that Amir believed and seems to still believe that he was filling the divine will.

Indeed religious fundamentalists world-over claim to be guided by the God-voice; Moreover, all of the examples above have been known to cite the story of the binding of Isaac to validate their seemingly cruel deeds in the name of God.

A new interpretation to the Akedah story

For all of these reasons I want to offer, as an Orthodox Rabbi, and using the exegetical method of Hassidic interpretation of Torah text, a new interpretation to the Binding of Isaac story. The essence of this interpretation is that God NEVER commanded Abraham to sacrifice his son.

This interpretation will reveal itself through a close reading of the text and using psychological, literary and mystical tools to prove my point. Most importantly, this new interpretation is an invitation into to deep faith consciousness.

What are the voices that we are listening to as we make our choices day-to-day? As we sit above the bed of our own sons, looking deeply into their innocence and humanity, how can we learn from this new interpretation in conceptual spiritual terms why this reading is as vital for us as both committed Jews and committed human beings in this new millennium.

Actually, my radically new interpretation is not so new. The Zohar itself is the source for this Understanding. The Zohar hooks its understanding on the use of the God name Elohim in the Binding of Isaac story, as in, "Elohim tested Abraham".

The Zohar teaches, picking up on a theme with roots in biblical text but which deepened Jewish mystical texts, that Elohim in this text refers not to God in the traditional sense of the term, but to Yetzer Hara, to the evil inclination. The text according the Zohar would then read, The "Evil inclination tested Abraham" by commanding him to sacrifice his son.

A highly radical, provocative and relevant reading. Moreover, later in the same passage the Zohar amplifies a similar theme from a different perspective and teaches that the command which Abraham heard from Elohim, was refracted to him through an Aspaklarya Delo Nahara, an unclear prism.

To understand the full power of this Zoharic image, we need only to compare it to the position of the great medieval scholar Maimonides, who teaches that the story of the Akeda is evidence of the absolutely clear nature of prophecy; after all, reasons Maimonides, who would respond to a command from God to kill one's son unless it was one thousand percent clear? The Zohar – taking issue with Maimonides, offers up an image of Abraham being called; being somehow driven to do something, however, he is not quite sure what he is to do, or who is doing the commanding.

It is may be worth pausing at this point to note that this is not an obscure and irrelevant passage which went unnoticed and uncited by serious Orthodox authorities. Not at all. For example, Mordechai Lainer of Izbica, author of a work called Mei Ha-Shiloach and a highly important Hassidic master, cites part of this Zohar and unfolds his reading of the Akedah story from it's matrix. In this reading of the Zohar and Lainer, the challenge of the Akedah – the great test- is not to sacrifice Isaac, but rather to disambiguate the God-voice and realize that God never wanted Abraham to kill Isaac in the first place.

A Freudian insight

In Hebrew wisdom, which at its core is based on human interpretation of divine law – fundamentalism is rejected. The obligation to take responsibility for how he hears the God-voice is solely on Abraham. Abraham must learn to distinguish between the voice of God and the voice of Yetzer Hara. And the most dangerous Yetzer Hara of all is the spiritual Yetzer Hara.

This is precisely the lesson that Yigal Amir teaches us. What might it mean that Abraham is driven or called by his Yetzer Hara to sacrifice Isaac. Yetzer Hara means an internal impulse – highly difficult to control - a deep seated drive that moves the person to act not in accordance with their divine self.

Abraham was, in the Midrashic tradition, brought by his father before Nimrod, who was the local king-deity. Nimrod commands Abraham to be thrown into a furnace of fire. In the Midrashic tradition, this is the defining story of Abraham's early life. This is, of course, critical to our discussion. In effect, Abraham was offered up by his father as a sacrifice to the local Gods represented by the king-deity Nimrod, in a terrible act of abuse.

Freud expressed a great truth when he reminded the world of the terrible dynamic of repetition- compulsion. That means, for example, that an abused child is internally compelled, driven, to do to his child what was done to him. Thus, the Zohar says, Abraham is driven by Yetzer Hara –a powerful internal drive, to do to his son what his father did to him. The terrible Yetzer Hara of repetition compulsion.

Indeed if one reads the text carefully one notices that the first God-voice which Abraham understands as a command to kill Isaac comes from Elohim. However the major God-voice which commands him not to kill Isaac is Y H V H, the name of God which incarnates divine love and compassion. The angel of Y H V H tells him "Now I know that you fear Elohim for you have done this thing."

Using the Hassidic method of interpreting divine text, we might read it as follows: Because you have done this thing- that is, you have disambiguated the God-voice and recognized that is was not God, but your own Yetzer Hara of repetition-compulsion which moved you to kill Isaac; now I know that you are Yereh Elohim. Yereh usually translated as fear, is actually rooted in the Hebrew word Ra'ah, related to ideas of sight and perception. Now I know, says the angel of Y H V H, that you were able to perceive deeply and distinguish between Yetzer Hara disguised as Elohim and the authentic God voice of Y H V H.

At the end of the verse the Y H V H voice says "For you have not-chasachta- simply translated- held back- your son from me." Simply read it would seem to indicate that there was indeed a divine command for Abraham to sacrifice his son. However in our neo-Hassidic reading we notice the word chasachta has a second meaning in Hebrew, choshech, or darkness. So the text might read "You have not darkened your son" by offering him as a sacrifice, for you were able to perceive that Elohim was really your own internal Yetzer Hara of repetition-compulsion masquerading as Elohim.

Human responsibility to interpret the divine voice saves Judaism

It is critical to note here that this radical reading is fully resonant with classic orthodox modes of interpretation! Indeed the core of this suggestion is found in the Zohar itself. I know that there are some readers who will suggest that it is absurd to suggest that a text which clearly says that God commanded something does not mean what it seems to mean, and that God is not really the one doing the commanding – because in doing so one may undermine the authority of the entire Torah.

However such thinking, however well- intentioned it might be, goes against all the rules of sacred Orthodox interpretation. I want to say this gently, but forcefully; that kind of argument is simply based on ignorance of how interpretation works.

One example will make the point clearly. In the book of Bamidbar the text reads "God spoke to Moses saying, send spies to spy out the land". The text clearly indicated that sending spies was an explicit divine command. However, a second text in the book of Devarim which recounts the story of the spies in retrospect describes what happened quite differently. "You all drew close to me" says Moses to the people, and you demanded that I send spies. Well, which version is true?

Many major Orthodox interpreters of the text teach that there was never a divine command to send spies and that the major text is the Devarim text and not the Bamidbar text. Those interpreters must then answer a major problem; what do we do with an explicit text in BaMidbar which says, "God spoke to Moses saying Send spies to spy out the land"?

The answer, according to a whole school of Orthodox interpreters, is that when it says "God spoke", it is not actually god talking but rather the people mis-hearing their own desire to send spies as the voice of God. The point is very clear. Even if the text says "God spoke to Moses saying", we are still responsible to disambiguate the God-voice and determine whether this is really God talking or is it rather some split off internal human voice that we are for whatever reason projecting onto God.

It is precisely this human responsibility to clarify and interpret the divine voice which saves Judaism from the terrible desecrations of God's name that has become one of the tragic hallmarks of religious fundamentalism world over.

We need to be open to the divine voice at all times and in all places. And we must learn how to really listen to the deep well inside of each of us that holds the waters of the God, and the life essence that helps each of us to distinguish between the voice of God and the voices of the inclination. At this particular time in history, it is critical to look deeply and embark on the journey of deep, regular and intense spiritual practice to make ourselves worthy vessels to correctly perceive- receive- and interpret the word of God.

Rabbi Mordechai Gafni - Teacher and student of Torah; Leader of Bayit Chadash Spiritual Community and Movement; Chair of Integral Kabbalah at Integral Institute of Ken Wilber

The "Bayit Chadash" website: www.bayitchadash.org