Avot287

Today's shiur is dedicated by Sol Freedman
in memory of his father, Louis Freedman,
Elazar bar Shlomo Yehuda z"l,
whose Yahrzeit was yesterday.

24:
We now come to the last of the ten trials of Abraham. Both Rambam and Rabbi Ovadyah of Bertinoro agree that this was the episode of the Akedah, the near-sacrifice of Isaac. (Some of the more classical sources conflate the episode of the expulsion of Hagar with the episode of the expulsion of Hagar and Ishma'el, and they add as a last trial the death and burial of Sarah. But we shall continue to follow Rambam and Rabbi Ovadyah.)

25:
To modern minds, it seems to me, that the whole episode of the Akedah is more a test of our faith than that of Abraham! The story is told, with the succinctness typical of the biblical narrator, in Genesis 22; and it is so well known that there is no need to repeat it here. Abraham receives a divine command to sacrifice his son, and is only prevented from doing so that the very last moment.

26:
Difficult questions arise in the modern mind: what kind of a father would be prepared to kill his own son? What kind of deity would require this of a father? Why were all these ten trials necessary at all? Perhaps this last point has been made succinctly by Jacob Chinitz:

Why does God have to test? Does He not know? In fact, when He creates, he does not assume in advance that His creation will be good. He has to inspect it after it is created, and then he decides that it is good. Did He not know in advance? With humans the element of Free Will comes in either to limit God’s Omniscience as with Ralbag and Crescas, or to be reconciled with it as with Rambam and the others. But when only God Himself is involved, why does His Omniscience not guarantee His perfect creation in advance?

Transferring Jacob's more general question into the specific arena of the Akedah: why did an omniscient God have to test Abraham at all? Does He not know the status of Abraham's faith?

27:
At the very beginning of our discussion of these ten trials I suggested that a better way of understanding their nature is to see them as a means of satisfying Abraham that the God that he hears in his mind is not a figment of his fertile imagination, but a real and discrete entity outside of himself. Each trial that Abraham has endured so far has been a reaction to the basic premise that has accompanied him from Haran: that he will found a great people that will inherit the promised land. Each trial appears to vitiate that premise – that promise – and each time his faith is vindicated by a positive outcome.

28:
But now comes the hardest trial of them all. After decades of infertility Sarah at long last gives birth to a son, the one without whom all God's promises would crumble into dust. With out a son there would be no progeny; and without progeny there could be no great nation. And then Abraham hears this voice that has guided him ever since Haran and it tells him to kill his only-begotten son! This voice cannot possibly come from within Abraham himself, because Abraham wants this son more than anything else in the world. Can he believe that this voice really is the voice of God and not just his own imaginings? That is the real test.

29:
Our mishnah concludes that "this demonstrates how great was the love of Abraham." The Hebrew can be construed in two ways: it may be that these trials demonstrate how great was God's love for Abraham; but they may also demonstrate how great was Abraham's love of God. The Akedah defines the essential difference between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity is an anthropocentric religion: its ethos is God's grace working for the salvation of mankind. Judaism is a theocentric religion: its ethos is man's fulfillment of God's requirements. The famous statement of the Christian scriptures illustrates the former: "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten son…" The Akedah illustrates the exact opposite: Abraham so loved God that he was prepared to give his only-begotten son.

Today's shiur sees the start of an experiment. Many people have complained of problems in connection with the receipt of these shiurim because of over-zealous "SPAM killers". Starting with this shiur I shall send an email that consists only of a link to the shiur. All you have to do is to click on the link.