Bearing Witness to Sacrifice
On Parshas Vayera and how the Akeidah never truly ended
The accompanying shiur is available on the Orthodox Union's parsha learning app: All Parsha.
Almost twenty years ago, I heard a lecture from my rebbe, friend, and mentor, Rav Yehoshua Hartman, while he was visiting the Baltimore Jewish community. I was in Ner Israel yeshiva nearby and figured it would be a wonderful opportunity to hear someone who had such an influence on my thought. I had first learned of Rav Hartman’s Torah thought from his incredible footnoted edition of the works of the Maharal. At the time he lived in Israel, down the block from my sister Elana, who at the time also lived in Har Nof. We shared some messy Purims together, long car rides (that should not have been long—but I got lost bringing him to yeshiva), and several Shabbos meals.
Rav Hartman, whose classes are also available on the All Parsha app, posed a fascinating question he heard from his Rebbe, Rav Yitzchak Hutner:
“When was the Akeidah over?”
Akeidas Yitzchak is the harrowing and haunting story of God telling Avraham to sacrifice his son Yitzchak. As anyone familiar with the story knows, as Avraham is about to sacrifice his son, an angel calls out beckoning him to stop.
This is usually where people end the story.
But the Torah in fact continues. Avraham finds another ram, caught in the bushes, and sacrifices the ram instead. Usually, at least when I first read the story, this seemed to be a convenient post-script to an otherwise concluded story. They found something else to sacrifice—hooray! But the sacrifice, as far as the story was concerned, ended the moment the angel called out to Avraham to stop.
When was the Akeidah over? We are still left with this question. Is Avraham sacrificing the ram an integral part of Akeidas Yitzchak or just a post-script?
The entire story of the Akeidah, which has become the source of strength for generations of sacrifice within the Jewish people, is not actually very long. Yitzchak only speaks twice. He famously asks his father, Avraham, after seeing the fire and wood, “Where is the lamb?” But there is another exchange immediately preceding that question that I have found both puzzling and powerful. Yitzchak and Avraham share words that, although they are so brief, I found so moving.
וַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל-אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו, וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִי, וַיֹּאמֶר, הִנֶּנִּי בְנִי
And Yitzchak said to his father Avraham, “Father,” and Avraham responded, “I am here, my son.”
What was the meaning of this exchange? What were they sharing with one another?
And finally, given the traumatic details of Yitzchak’s life, his very name seems dissonant with his life experiences. Yitzchak is given his name because it provoked his mother’s laughter just imagining the idea of having a child at her age. But Yitzchak’s life seems to be filled with sorrow—nearly sacrificed by his father, fights among his children Yaakov and Esav, and losing his very ability to see. What is it about Yitzchak’s life, if anything, that makes his namesake, laughter, fitting?
To understand this story and these questions, let’s explore the life and legacy of Elie Wiesel and all of his work bearing testimony to the horrors of the Holocaust.
Do I have the right to represent the multitudes who have perished? Do I have the right to accept this great honor on their behalf? … I do not. That would be presumptuous. No one may speak for the dead, no one may interpret their mutilated dreams and visions.
—Elie Wiesel, Acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize
Elie Wiesel (1928-2016) was just 15 years old when the Nazis deported him and his family to Auschwitz. Most of his hometown, Sighet, was murdered in the Holocaust, along with his own parents and family.
After the war, Wiesel became a journalist. Most people did not think anyone had the capacity to hear about the details of the Holocaust. And most survivors were not yet ready to share. As Joseph Berger recounts in his biography on Wiesel, Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, one literary agent, George Borchardt, bluntly explained, “Nobody wanted to hear about concentration camps.” Borchardt struggled to find a publisher for Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir Night, which eventually became an international bestseller.
In those early years as a journalist, Wiesel told other stories. He wrote for the Yiddish newspaper, Forvets, and also served as the foreign correspondent to the United Nations for the Hebrew Newspaper, Yediot Aharonot. My dearest friend Menachem Butler, uncovered a fascinating 1957 article from Wiesel’s time at the Forvets that details Wiesel’s trip to Disneyland.
All the while, Wiesel was working on the manuscript that eventually became his bestselling book entitled, Night. First published in 1958 in French under the title La Nuit, the book, translated into English in 1960, details Wiesel’s life before the Holocaust and all he lost with it.
Many were not yet ready to listen to the atrocities of the Holocaust. In a haunting photo captured by Joseph Eaton, a photographer in the U.S. Army, German Prisoners of War can be seen reacting to footage of the Holocaust. Wiesel dedicated the remainder of his life to sharing the horror and the memory of those lost. As Alan L. Berger describes in his review of Wiesel’s memoir, “Wiesel is Judaism's de facto sheliach tzibbur.” He was the public representative of Jewish memory.
Memory permits us, as Wiesel writes in his memoir All Rivers Run to the Sea, “to live in more than one world, to prevent the past from fading and to call upon the future to illuminate it.” He wanted to disturb society. “For me, literature must have an ethical dimension,” Wiesel writes, “The aim of the literature I call testimony is to disturb.” Wiesel didn’t write so his audience would like his book. About Night, he wrote, “In the end, I decided that if people liked what I had written they had not understood. Testimony like mine should have aroused anger.”
Wiesel’s writing turned us all into witnesses. As Christin Zühlke argues in Elie Wiesel and a Legacy of (Post-) Witnessing:
…a person can become a witness of traumatic events retrospectively and also in real-time. Regarding the Shoah, this person becomes part of a chain of testimony as a secondary witness. First-hand accounts of victims who did not or did survive are transmitted to the world audience—readers, those who listen to oral testimonies, scholars etc. Like the survivor who speaks for those who cannot speak for themselves anymore, the person who recalls the testimonies of those who perished becomes a surrogate witness.
Perhaps the power of storytelling is what drew Wiesel into Hassidic thought. Among Wiesel’s most enchanted writing is his work on Hassidic stories.
He begins his work, The Gates of the Forest, with the following Hassidic story:
When the great Rabbi Israel Baal Shem-Tov saw misfortune threatening the Jews it was his custom to go into a certain part of the forest to meditate. There he would light a fire say a special prayer, and the miracle would be accomplished and the misfortune averted.
Later, when his disciple, the celebrated Magid of Mezritch, had occasion, for the same reason, to intercede with heaven, he would go to the same place in the forest and say: “Master of the Universe, listen! I do not know how to light the fire, but I am still able to say the prayer.” And again the miracle would be accomplished.
Still later, Rabbi Moshe-Leib Sasov, in order to save his people once more, would go into the forest and say: “I do not know how to light the fire, I do not know the prayer, but I know the place and this must be sufficient.” It was sufficient and the miracle was accomplished.
Then it fell to Rabbi Israel of Rizhyn to overcome misfortune. Sitting in his armchair, his head in his hands, he spoke to God: “I am unable to light the fire and I do not know the prayer; I cannot even find the place in the forest. All I can do is to tell the story, and this must be sufficient.” And it was sufficient. God made man because he loves stories.
The horrors that Elie Wiesel witnessed profoundly affected his faith—but he never stopped believing in God. In a meeting with the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Rebbe urged him not just to keep his faith intact but to emerge even stronger. And he did.
Despite everything he witnessed, Wiesel affirmed:
I have never renounced my faith in G-d. I have risen against His justice, protested His silence and sometimes His absence, but my anger rises up within faith and not outside it. I admit that this is hardly an original position. It is part of Jewish tradition. Abraham and Moses, Jeremiah and Rebbe Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev teach us that it is permissible for man to accuse G-d, provided it be done in the name of faith in G-d. If that hurts, so be it. Sometimes we must accept the pain of faith so as not to lose it.
In 1997, Wiesel wrote an op-ed for the New York Times addressing God directly. “Master of the Universe,” it begins, “Let us make up. It is time. How long can we go on being angry?”
Memory, however painful, however difficult, must endure. And not just for memories’ sake, but to inspire and guide the next generation.
In a 2013 interview, Wiesel was asked:
What do you tell a young Jewish generation about their indebtedness to history? Six million Jews died al kiddush haShem, to sanctify G-d’s name. Therefore what?
His response was three words, “Therefore, be Jewish.”
In Ani Maamin: A Song Lost and Found Again, his 1973 poem, best sums up the shards of faith he refused to surrender:
I believe in you,
Even against your will.
Even if you punish me
For believing in you.
Blessed are the fools
Who shout their faith.
Blessed are the fools
Who go on laughing.
Who mock the man who mocks the Jew,
Who help their brothers
Singing, over and over and over:
I believe.
I believe in the coming of the Messiah,
And though he tarries,
I wait daily for his coming.
I believe.
The Akeidah is never really over.
The story ends with Avraham sacrificing the ram caught in the shrubbery. This is much more than a post-script. It is the symbol of the actual and real sacrifices that Jews have made over the generations for their faith. Sadly, those committed to destroying the Jewish people did not heed the words of the angel, “do not touch the child or do any harm to him.”
Instead the symbolic sacrifice of Yitzchak, gives meaning and purpose to all future persecution.
Rav Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, the famed Rebbe of Piaseczna who was murdered in the Holocaust, writes that the Sacrifice of Yitzchak complements the sacrifices of all future generations. Yitzchak was ready to actually be killed but was spared, while future generations who may not have been ready to sacrifice embody the readiness that Yitzchak exhibited. Yitzchak’s sacrifice was in his thought without the action; many future sacrifices were fully completed but not accompanied by the resolve of purpose that Yitzchak demonstrated.
The story of the Akeidah, sadly, continues until today.
And this brings us back to the mysterious dialogue between Avraham and Yitzchak.
And Yitzchak said to his father Avraham, “Father,” and Avraham responded, “I am here my son.”
What was the meaning of this exchange? What were they sharing with one another?
I think this conversation between Yitzchak and Avraham captures the intergenerational relationship that the Akeidah represents. One generation drawing support from the other, each carrying one another.
Yitzchak, beginning to realize the momentous sacrifice that was about to occur, turned to his model of strength, Avraham—“Father” "אבי"—you give me strength. Your dedication gives me strength. Your love כרחם אב על בנים (like a father has mercy on his child) gives me strength.
And Avraham looked back at Yitzchak and said הנני בני – “Here I am—my son”—Avraham looked at his child and all of the sacrifice Yitzchak was about to endure and said—do you know where I find strength? Do you know who my model for dedication is? הנני בני—I am here because of you. You, my son, give me strength.
In 1976, Elie Wiesel published Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends. Given his life experiences, it should come as no surprise that an entire essay, entitled “The Sacrifice of Isaac: A Survivor’s Story,” revisits the story of the Akeidah through the lens of the horrors witnessed by Wiesel. “As a child,” Wiesel writes, “I read and reread this tale, my heart beating wildly; I felt dark apprehension come over me and carry me away.”
At the heart of the essay is a simple yet profound idea: Yitzchak is the first survivor.
He concludes the essay as follows:
Let us return to the question we asked at the beginning: Why was the most tragic of our ancestors named Isaac, a name which evokes and signifies laughter? Here is why. As the first survivor, he had to teach us, the future survivors of Jewish history, that it is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.
Isaac, of course, never freed himself from the traumatizing scenes that violated his youth the holocaust had marked him and continued to haunt him forever. Yet he remained capable of laughter. And in spite of everything, he did laugh.
And it is our responsibility to continue to serve as witnesses as well as post-witnesses to the sacrifices of Jewish history. And in spite of everything, we continue to bear witness.
Shabbos Reads — Books/Articles Mentioned
Acceptance speech for the 1986 Nobel Peace Prize, Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel: Confronting the Silence, Joseph Berger
Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends, Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel Visits Disneyland, Menachem Butler
Elie Wiesel’s Memoirs: A Review Essay, Alan L. Berger
All Rivers Run to the Sea, Elie Wiesel
Elie Wiesel and a Legacy of (Post-) Witnessing, Christin Zühlke
The Gates of the Forest, Elie Wiesel
“I Shall Teach You to Sing”: The Night Elie Wiesel Met the Rebbe, Michael Chighel
In Conversation with Nobel Prize Winner Elie Wiesel, Baila Olidort
A Prayer for the Days of Awe, Elie Wiesel
The Sacrifice of Isaac: A Survivor’s Story, Elie Wiesel
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Reading Jewish History in the Parsha has been generously sponsored by my dearest friends Janet and Lior Hod and family with immense gratitude to Hashem.
See Rashbam Breishis 22:1 on the connection of the akeida and the territorial conflict between Israel and the Philistines.