Community Torah Corner, October 22, 2021

It has been decades since I sat in a classroom and took a test for a grade and yet I still sometimes wake suddenly out of a dream, panicked that I am late for an exam that is being administered across campus for a class that I didn’t know I was taking. Despite the glowing memories that we might have of our childhoods, the way that the tests and challenges that we experienced before adulthood still resonate confirms that no matter how hard we work to raise happy children, it’s tough being a kid and a student.    

This week as we read Parashat Vayera, the famously troubling story of the Akedah, the Binding of Isaac, begins with the words: “Sometime after [Abraham settled in the land of the Philistines] God put Abraham to the test.” There is no adequate response to the question of how God could demand that a parent harm his or her child.  One way that scholars have tried to make sense of this incomprehensible story is focus on the use of the word nisah, or test. 

One thread of rabbinic commentary espoused by Maimonides among others is that, since God is all-knowing, this test was not for God’s sake.  Instead, it was designed to provide Abraham with the powerful, if fraught, experience of learning the demands that come with loving another through the trial of having to balance love and faith. There are several modern thinkers, including Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Prof. Tikva Frymer-Kensky who suggest that, ultimately, Abraham chooses incorrectly by not rejecting God’s directive out of hand.  Nevertheless, at the end of the passage, God intervenes, saves Isaac and affirms the sincerity of Abraham’s faith, embracing him even in his failure. 

While it has been a pleasure to vicariously experience Golda Och Academy through the eyes of our son who comes home literally singing the praises of his GOA Kindergarten teachers and classmates, my wife and I know that learning and growing will come with its challenges. We are grateful that he will encounter his successes and his struggles in such a loving and supportive environment.