The Binding of Us All

In Genesis 15, G-d makes the first covenant with Abraham. Takes him outside, tells him look skyward, stars will equal progeny, you're gonna get this sweet land, and you're gonna be a successful whatever. Nations will form themselves of your seed, and the other nations will bless themselves in you. Great.

What makes this contract so weird is that legally, it's not a contract. In modern law, a contract has to involve a sacrifice on both sides: for example, you work for me, I lose money paying you. Ostensibly, in Gen 15, Abraham is being gifted....possibly for cutting his junk. Whatever, it's not like in Deuteronomy when G-unit is like, if you don't do what I say, I'm gonna let you starve and all your enemies violate you.

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So this is the subversive D'var/Drash/Sermon that I cannot give at my small, midwestern pulpit. It's about how Abraham is America. And his altar to his god is built on a human. His son, which it is said that he loved, though in the Hebrew he could not always distinguish bein [between] ben [son] and na'ar [lad] (Dad, Where's The Goat?). He (remember he's also America) would lie, degrade, slit the throat of his son, in order to get what he wanted.

At this point, G-d has made only promises for increasing Abraham's status. There have been no threats for non-compliance. It seems Abraham's gain is more important than blood. The call for profit rings out and Abraham says hineini.

It doesn't matter that his profit literally lies on the alter and will be built on the back of suffering and the joy of that young 'lad'.

In Rashi's commentary he cites Akiva saying that Abraham for all of his obedience DOES call G-d out at the end of his trial.

Abraham says to the Almighty:

“You gave me this son. Then you said to take him up AND NOW, now you say to halt.”

The Master of All Creation is not so easily dismayed though. G-d's response in this unfeatured episode is to say, “I said to take him up, l'olah,”

-- which can mean as an olah a burnt offering, or to to go up like make Aliyah or I went up on the bus--

G-d continues “and you, Abraham have taken him up, so take him back down. “

The midrash insinuates that Abraham erred here in assuming G-d meant to sacrifice instead of just a nice father and son hike. Meaning he was so ready to kill him anyway. Anything to appease that which he benefited from.

It does not matter that an angel/messenger stops him. The matter is never spoken of (because denying our privilege is more comfortable: it's easier to fight against elitism while ignoring that the elite is based on racism and sexism.

We'll talk instead of rebuilding nations and wells and naming cities. Welcome to Beer Sheva, ignore the systemic inequality. Isaac can confront his horrors alone in the fields and hope that a cop or a well-intentioned and armed citizen doesn't 'mistake' him for a criminal.

We will not talk of the silence of women, who die to see their children taken. Women's pain does not matter. The mother and son cast out: we did not kill them, if we don't have to see their deaths. And we wonder, why, when they do not die, they resent those in power? They are the landless, the homeless, the migrant, the displaced.

We will just continue to celebrate the elevation of the patriarchs. But for how long?