The following is presented in honour of the upcoming New Year 5771.
May we all be blessed with a sweet year.
Magen Avraham
The Potzker Rebbe taught:
“Understanding comes from reading between the lines, but wisdom comes from reading within all spaces.” He meditated upon these words daily.
Every Rosh Hashanah, the Potzker was troubled by the lack of peace he found within the choice of the binding of Isaac as the Torah reading of the day. Every year he wished with all his heart and with all his soul that this time, somehow, he could find some mental stillness within the reading. Anticipating the usual commotion in his mind during the Torah reading, he rose early one Rosh Hashanah morning and took a walk through the woods near his home, while vigorously and repeatedly chanting to himself:
“Understanding comes from reading between the lines, but wisdom comes from reading within all spaces.”
That morning, as the time for the Torah reading approached, an air of melancholy swept through the Potzker’s soul. It appeared that there would again be no respite from his discomfort, despite the efforts exerted during his walk. However, as the holy passages of the Torah portion were read aloud, the Potzker noticed that the melancholy began to lift, and was replaced by a lightness, a physical illumination that became brighter and brighter with the recitation of each word. By the conclusion of the Torah reading, the Potzker had found a new interpretation of the binding of Isaac that, at least temporarily, resonated peacefully within his sense of reality. What follows is that teaching:
The human being proved to be one of God’s greatest creative challenges. Despite the initial setbacks of the Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, the Nephilim episode, the Great Flood and the Tower of Babel, God balanced his disappointment with divine optimism. God felt that, with Abraham’s moral development, he had finally succeeded in creating a human being that captured the essence of what he had envisioned at the conclusion of the sixth day of creation, when he saw that all that he had brought into motion was full of potential for good.
The angels as a group were never supportive of the creation of the human, and dutifully reminded God of the previous setbacks on a regular basis, while repeatedly and lovingly encouraging God to the abort the project.
God countered their arguments by demonstrating to them Abraham’s pureness of heart through a series of nine tests. As Abraham passed each test, his soul rose to a higher level. With each level of ascension, the angels felt increasingly threatened, because a human was approaching a level of sanctity that they believed only angels were entitled to possess.
The Satan stepped forward.
“Clearly Abraham has the purest heart of any human that has thus far to set foot on the planet. But as we all know, your spiritual shield, the magen, the invisible constant presence that keeps his hands clean, protects him from harming another human being. On behalf of all of the angels, I respectfully ask for one final test, one where you remove your shield from Abraham. Let him show us that he is capable of mastering the vulnerability involved in free choice. With that success we will thereafter praise you night and day for finally having created a human that has achieved a level of spiritual growth that separates him from his predecessors, many with blood on their hands.”
God withdrew to consider the request of his loved ones and came up with a plan to satisfy the angels. He then assembled them together and revealed it to them.
“ In this test, I shall, at the proper time, completely remove the magen that allows a man of absolute faith, such as Abraham, to function in this world. I will present Abraham with a challenge that will demonstrate to all of you that a human is capable of managing the rigidity that stabilizes the core of his spirituality, without any intervention on my part. He will rise to the challenge of the choice between employing rigidity and flexibility, for a healthy spiritual being is a master of both. You will witness for yourselves my ultimate animal creation, a person who, by independent choice, has both clean hands and a pure heart.
I shall command Abraham to sacrifice his son to me. He will sanctify me by defying me. When he passes this test by challenging the limits of intelligent design with the laws of intelligent defiance, you will know that I have finally successfully created a human of integrity who is able to stand on principle, the world’s first true mentsch. I have so much confidence in the success of this test that at its conclusion I shall reveal myself directly to a human being for the first time, face to face. I shall be seen.”
The Satan applauded, and the other angels, taking their cue from him, created a chorus of approval, winking to one another with an air of relief.
.And so, after the above, the process began.
God called out: “Abraham.”
Abraham replied: “Here I am, at your service.”
God proceeded.
“ Take your son, and go to yourself.”
Abraham recognized the latter part of the request from a previous request from God, and awaited further instructions. There were none.
Abraham broke the silence.
“Forgive me, but I do not understand.”
God attempted to clarify the situation by presenting it as a demand.
“Find your selfish side, and indulge it.”
The muscles of Abraham’s forehead wrinkled to form what looked like two gigantic questions marks.
God realized that Abraham was not aware that he even had a selfish side. He decided to clarify the principle to Abraham.
“Take your son, the one, who opened your heart to the love that emanates from creation, Isaac by name. Sacrifice him to me upon my altar, and I will reward you with a blessing, a blessing that is even beyond your imagination. Do this for your self, for the reward.”
Abraham, still not fully comprehending the mission, responded.
“I will do and through this I will understand.”
Abraham slept poorly that night, perplexed by God’ strange request.
In the morning, he awoke to the realization that perhaps that it was not God who had created this scenario, but the Satan masquerading as God. Abraham decided to test his hypothesis. He began talking to himself.
“Many living creatures, from the largest of beasts to the smallest of insects can see what humans cannot see. Surely the donkey of a prophet should have this ability. If I saddle up my donkey and take him on this journey, surely it will refuse to proceed further once it spots the Satan on the road, and this bizarre circumstance will come to its timely end.”
And so, Abraham, the donkey, Isaac, and his two companions began their pilgrimage to the holy mountain. On the third day, Abraham saw the humble elevation to which God had directed his attention, and realized that the donkey hypothesis was not valid. At that point, he decided to proceed without the donkey, and left it in the care of the companions, asking them to watch it carefully for any sign of distress, and to shout to Abraham should it act strangely.
Abraham understood the power of pilgrimage to open the eyes of the heart to the guts of the soul, but was at a loss to explain why he was still on the path that would lead to the sacrifice of Isaac.
Suddenly he was inspired.
Surely God would reject a sacrifice that had a flaw. All he had to do was discover a flaw in Isaac’s soul, and the nightmare would be over.
The questioning began. Abraham probed and probed, but could not find anything to indicate that his son’s heart was impure.
Abraham and Isaac reached the base of Mount Moriah. They bowed towards its peak and then Abraham turned around, hoping to see the companions beckoning them back because the donkey had spotted the Satan. All he saw were smiles and waving arms, blessing them on a successful journey.
The ascent began. Bearing the firewood on his back while his father carried fire in one hand and a knife in the other, Isaac became suspicious.
“Where is the lamb for the sacrifice we are about to make?” he asked.
“God will show himself the lamb to be raised up,” said Abraham cryptically.
Isaac flawlessly accepted the explanation.
The two journeyed together as one up the mountain.
Once they reached the peak, Abraham, maintaining the silence that carried them up the mountain, gave Isaac a look that sent chills up his spine. No words were spoken. No words could even be imagined that could be spoken.
Isaac’s eyes darted back and forth, from the fire to the long shiny knife that was looking more and more like a sword of battle. His eyes finally reconnected with his father’s. Something was missing. The glow of kindness and compassion that usually emanated from the face of Abraham was not there. Not a single blink disturbed Abraham’s focus.
Isaac wanted to speak out, but suddenly fell to the ground paralyzed, unable to move a limb or say a word. At that moment, God temporarily replaced Isaac’s consciousness with that of his own, and waited for events to unfold as he had planned.
Abraham bound the body of Isaac and laid it upon the altar that he had constructed.
God tried to make eye contact with Abraham through Isaac’s eyes, expecting his loyal servant to recognize that it was now God himself that was upon the altar. But something went terribly wrong. Abraham’s glazed eyes soon became filled with tears. To make matters worse, Abraham’s tears dripped directly into the eyes of the body on the altar, disrupting the connection that was essential for Abraham to recognize God in Isaac’s body.
Abraham had a crazed look in his face that so distressed the angels, they began to cry like colicky babies. A salty rain started to descend from the heavens, and God, gazing upward, struggling to make eye contact with Abraham, was hit by a torrent that made it painful to keep open the eyes of the body that he temporarily inhabited. Abraham sent his hand to overcome the force of his mind that prevented him from raising the knife for the completion of his task. Sacrifice was imminent.
The Satan could take no more.
“Abraham!!!!!” yelled the Satan.
The trance failed to be broken.
“Abraham!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” he yelled once more, this time breaking the spell that only fanatics can relate to.
“Here I am” responded Abraham.
Abraham’s eyes were now wide open. He at last saw The Presence in the light spot of Isaac’s eyes, and trembled.
The Satan continued.
“Do not through your handiwork inflict your flaw upon this innocent being. I have been authorized by God himself to read to you the following statement.”
The Satan opened up the envelope marked “B.”
“And you did not withhold thy son, thine only son, from me.”
Abraham understood. He had failed the test.
Distraught and panicky, he started searching for an animal, any animal, to sacrifice in order to complete his mission. After all, wasn’t the purpose of the mission, to go to the mountain and make a sacrifice to God? How did Isaac get on the altar and what was God doing in his body, and…...?
Abraham’s mind whirled and whirled, and to regain his balance, he whirled his body in unison with his brain. Out of the corner of his eye he spotted a ram with its horns stuck in a bush. Abraham stopped spinning and approached it in silence. He channeled all of his energy into his knife. With one quick swipe across the innocent animal’s neck, Abraham swiftly separated the head from the rest of its body. Leaving the head still entangled in the bush, he gathered up the ram’s body and offered it upon the altar as a sacrifice.
“Yeah, that is it, that is what I came here to do,” he thought to himself.
God was not impressed.
After confirming that Abraham would receive the blessing that was promised to him, from that point onward, God refused to ever speak to Abraham again.
But that did not stop Abraham from speaking to God.
“I name this place God Will See, Yeraeh. In this humble space that barely qualifies as a mountain, you will see in the future how mankind will see you, in this very place that today you hoped to be seen by a simple man. May the blessing that you bestowed upon my self today come to completion, shalem, here. Here, the place where, I, on a mission from God, was ready to kill God in the name of God. Yeraeh Shalem. Yerushalem. Jerusalem.”
Abraham descended the mountain in silence, alone, and for the first time in his life, without the heavenly shield that protected him in the past. God decreed that no human being would ever again have the privilege of experienciencing the shield that protected Abraham. Instead, on another mountaintop in the Sinai desert hundreds of years later, God instructed each of us to become that shield, to take on the duty of protecting the naïve, the innocent and the pure of heart from others and from their own extremism. Jerusalem awaits the sacrifices required to fulfill that vision.
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