Vayeira (Genesis 18-22 )
בס”ד
Bereishis, 22:1-2: “And it was after these matters, and G-d tested Avraham, and he said to him, Avraham, and he said I am here. And He said, please take your son, your only son, who you love, Yitzchak…”
Rashi, Bereishis, 22:1, Dh: Achar Hadevarim: …“And some say [it refers to] after the words of Yishmael, who was glorifying himself over Yitzchak because he was circumcised aged thirteen years of age, and he did not protest. Yitzchak said to him, ‘you are glorifying over me because of one limb? If the Holy One, Blessed Is He, would tell me, ‘slaughter yourself before Me’, I would not refrain.”
One of the less discussed aspects of the Binding of Isaac is the presence of Yishmael along with Eliezer as one of the men who accompanied Avraham on his way to Mount Moriah. Avraham needed two men to come with him and it makes sense for Eliezer and Yishmael to be those men. However, Yishmael had been banished from Avraham’s home many years earlier and we do not see any explicit mention of when he returned. Indeed, Tosefot1 says that Yishmael only returned to Avraham on the very day of the Binding itself. Clearly, this was not a coincidence, and it seems that there was a specific reason that Yishmael returned that day in order to accompany Avraham to the Binding.
Interestingly, Yishmael’s name also arises in our Sages’ explication of the beginning of the Torah’s description of the Binding of Isaac. G-d tells Avraham, “Please take your son, your only son, who you love, Yitzchak”.2 Rashi, based on the Talmud3, elaborates on this conversation: When G-d said ‘your son’, Avraham replied that he had two sons – Yishmael and Yitzchak. G-d then added, that it is your only son, but again Avraham responded that both are the only son from different wives, so G-d specified further that He was referring to ‘the one you love’, but yet again Avraham said that he loves them both, until G-d explicitly said ‘Yitzchak’.
Rashi explains that G-d did not just immediately say Yitzchak as people might say that Avraham would have been startled by such a sudden dramatic instruction and he therefore acted rashly. Accordingly, G-d gradually gave the command in order to give Avraham time to think and consider. However, Rabbi Daniel Glatstein points out that there are many ways to break news in a manner that would not be startling, so why did G-d deliberately say the command in such a way as to confuse Avraham as to which son he meant?
A further question, is how could Avraham reasonably thought that G-d meant Yishmael instead of Yitzchak as he already knew that Yishmael was wicked, while Yitzchak was righteous.4
One of the purposes of the Binding of Isaac was to establish Yitzchak as the sole spiritual heir to Avraham, and to the Land of Israel. Up to that point, even though Yishmael had been expelled from Avraham’s home many years earlier, there had been no definitive rejection of him as one of Avraham’s heirs. Therefore, G-d brought back Yishmael on that day so that he would explicitly be rejected and Yitzchak would be chosen. However, Avraham did not know this; rather he only saw that Yishmael returned on the very day of the Binding and his immediate reaction to Yishmael appearing suddenly on that day meant that he was the one to be offered up. Accordingly, G-d deliberately used all the adjectives (your son, your only son, whom you love) to convey to Avraham that He considers only Yitzchak to be the son upon whom to shower his love and upon whom the future depends.
In particular, G-d wanted to show Avraham that only Yitzchak had a deep connection to the location of the Temple on Mount Moriah where the Akeidah ultimately took place: When Avraham approached Mount Moriah, the Daat Zekeinim5 explains that he saw the Shechinah, the Divine Presence, represented by a cloud covering the mountain. He then asked Yitzchak if he also saw the same thing and he replied in the affirmative. He then asked Yishmael and Eliezer what they saw and they replied that they did not see anything. Avraham then tells them, “Stay here with the donkey”. He was conveying to them that they are on the same spiritual level as a donkey and have an equally low level of connection to the place of the Temple. This showed Avraham that since Yishmael had no appreciation of the sanctity of the Temple, he could obviously have no claim to Eretz Yisrael as he was not on the level to value it.
All this teaches that the Akeidah was not just about establishing Yitzchak as the sole spiritual heir to Avraham and to Eretz Yisrael but to also explicitly reject Yishmael as having any real connection to the area of the Temple and indeed, the whole of the land of Israel. In this vein Rabbi Glatstein make a fascinating point with regard to how the other Monotheistic religions relate to the Akeidah. Christians do not tamper with this story at all or any other part of the Torah, rather they call it the Old Testament and falsely claim that it was replaced by something else. However, Moslems do tamper with the Torah and change the narrative of the Akeidah by replacing Yitzchak with Yishmael. They do this because they know that the Torah’s account of the Akeidah proves the ascendancy of Yitzchak over Yishmael, which thereby gives the Jewish people the rightful claim to the Temple Mount. The Moslems realize this and therefore change the story to make Yishmael the chosen son and to assert their right to the land of Israel and the Temple mount, something which they fight for to this very day. Yet in truth, it is evident in their own book, the Koran, that they have no real connection to Jerusalem and the Temple mount as they are not mentioned even once. In contrast, Jerusalem is mentioned over seven hundred times in Tanach.
We have seen how relevant the message of the Akeidah is to this very day. And it is this message that causes the great hatred that many Moslems have for the Jewish people, as it shows that they will never attain the Holy Land. In this vein, Rabbi Yitzchak Hutner was once kidnapped by Arab terrorists. When he was released, he told Rav Moshe Feinsteinl that he was struck by the hatred of the Arabs towards them because of the fact that they would never inherit the land.
One lesson that can be derived from these ideas, is that in order to really merit the Land and the Temple mount, we must approach it with the due reverence, realizing that it is essential in our connection to G-d.
By Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen
Notes:
1. Baalei HaTosefot, Vayeiram Chapter 22, Verse 1, Os 9, cited in ‘The Mystery and the Majesty’ (written by Rabbi Daniel Glatstein), p.121.
2. Bereishit, 22:2.
3. Sanhedrin, 69b.
4. Many of the questions and ideas in this approach are based on the wonderful essay of Rabbi Glatstein, ibid, pp.119-137. See the full essay for many additional ideas in connection to this topic.
5. Daas Zekeinim, 22:5.
WEEKLY TORAH PORTION,
The Guiding Light
by Rabbi Yehonasan Gefen
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