I Hate Abraham

I have a book from Israel called "Al Tishlkach yadkha el ha-na'ar" - or, Don't Send Your Hand Against the Boy, which is the line that the angel uses in this week's parshah, Vayera, to stop Abraham from sacrificing Isaac. The book is all kinds of poetry, prose and art on the theme of the Akeidah.

I translated a couple of the pieces from the book, which I've used over time whenever we read this parshah, not only in the yearly cycle but also on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, when this story is also read.

Here is a selection from a book called Days of Ziklag (Hebrew: ימי צקלג, Yemei Tziklag), a novel by S. Yizhar, first published in 1958. It is widely considered to be one of the most prominent works in Israeli literature, but it isn't available in English, perhaps because it's over 1,000 pages long. In any case, the novel follows a squad of IDF soldiers trying to hold to a post in the Negev desert during the Israeli War of Independence. The snippet is called, "I Hate our Father Abraham":

I hate our father Abraham, who went to sacrifice Isaac. What right does he have over Isaac? Let him sacrifice himself! I hate the God who sends him to sacrifice and closes off every other option – that only the path of Akeidah is open to him. I hate that Isaac is nothing but the subject of an experiment – an experiment between Abraham and his God. This demonstration of Abraham. This proof of love. This demand for a demonstration of love. God sanctifying himself through the sacrifice of Isaac. I hate that the slaughter of sons is taken as a proof of love! To take strength and to gamble and to take life in order to settle an argument. And because the world is silent, and doesn’t rise up and rush forward to stop it. Scoundrels, why do sons need to die?

I hate the need to obtain something at the price of destruction, or annihilation, or torment, or compulsion. I doubt it’s even worth as much as a clove of garlic – that which can only be acquired through such destruction. Better to give up, to put up your hands and pull away – from battle, from kidnapping. I hate this warfare more than anything else. This arming of everything.

And I sit here waiting to murder, to kill, to destroy, and I collect all my strength and my nerve and my muscle and my mind – for that final moment when it will by my lot, according to my ability – to burst forth, and to take prey, to save my life in the devouring of what I will devour, to bite what's near, to slit a throat with a touch. And there isn’t any escape. That’s the way the world is built. It’s the way life is designed. That’s how it is – decree.

And it isn’t even possible to run away. If you are not okay with killing and being killed – there won’t be any good in the world. No justice, no love, no beauty. All of this – this is their path. If you are not ready to hand over your soul, to leap at the flame, to go out and draw near and kill, with skill, with finesse, even with bloodthirst, there is no world and there is no life, and all is chaos and emptiness. That is the way the world is made. And for me, myself, there is no other, more personal way. Only to take part.