Who's Afraid of Child Sacrifice?
Vayera and the Binding of Isaac
I have a couple of Upcoming public events that I’d love to invite you to!
Nov 18 – Conversation with Prof. Jonathan Haidt and Dr. Jonathan Silver at KJ.
Nov 19 – Conversation with Dr. Raphy Zarum about Torah & modernity (Lower NYC).
Nov 20 – Zoom conversation on R’ Sacks' NY years for his 4th yahrzeit (with LSJS).
Who’s Afraid of Child Sacrifice?
We live in a culture that’s developed a persistent distrust of sacrificing for others. Unless it’s to help the “oppressed,” we’re encouraged, almost relentlessly, to put ourselves first.
Yet, many of us suspect this focus on self has become a bit too consuming. Some might look to this week’s Torah portion, Vayera, to find balance. After all, here, Abraham famously proves his faith by being willing to sacrifice his son.
But I ask you to imagine Abraham standing there, knife in hand, Isaac bound before him. And then ask yourself: What could a story of near child sacrifice possibly have to teach us today?
I grew up absorbing the Akedah story (Binding of Isaac) uncritically. It went like this:
The one perfect and loving God chose to test Abraham’s faith, asking him for the ultimate sacrifice: his only son with Sarah. At a time when child sacrifice was common, Abraham obeyed. He brought Isaac to Mount Moriah, knife in hand, ready to act. God, saw Abraham’s faith, spared Isaac and marked this moment as a testament to Abraham’s righteousness and merit for future generations.
The questions are obvious: Why would God demand such a monstrous offering? Why would Abraham comply? How can so many retellings of this story overlook Isaac’s role? Why is this story upheld as the pinnacle of Jewish faith?
It’s no surprise that, in recent years, people have started to question how we valorize the Akedah without asking hard questions. Professor Aaron Koller’s book, Unbinding Isaac, is a recent example. Koller, a friend, challenges the conventional, unexamined reading of the Akedah. One of his key insights - based on medieval philosophical texts - attempts to resolve theological questions within the story: Koller argues that God’s final command telling Abraham to spare Isaac reflects a higher level of prophecy, one that ultimately supersedes the initial directive to sacrifice him.
I, too, have struggled with the Binding of Isaac, but the philosophical questions trouble me less. My questions are grounded in Jewish history. For generations, Jewish parents have faced a different kind of “sacrifice”—not one commanded on an altar but one endured through the dangers of Jewish life. Across centuries—through inquisitions, pogroms, and genocide—parents came to accept a painful truth: that their children might suffer or even die simply because they were Jewish. Part of their endurance lay in turning to the Binding of Isaac - not philosophically, but from a lived perspective: they drew comfort and strength by seeing themselves as faithful heirs to Abraham.
This is why I have a hard time with new interpretations of the Akedah. They might resolve philosophical tensions, but they risk disregarding the meaning that sustained countless Jews through history’s darkest chapters. Sometimes, these interpretations even feel like a betrayal of their suffering.
My love for Jews across history makes me want to hold on to the Akedah story. At the exact times, it is that very historical legacy that causes me to want to run away from it.
I wrestle with the Akedah as a Jewish mother. Had the Akedah not replayed itself through Jewish history, I might feel differently. But every time I read of historical persecution of Jews and think about what it meant to live them as a parent I become afraid of this inheritance, of accepting the burden of the Akedah, the role of a mother bound to the fate of her child’s sacrifice.
In recent years I’ve read poetry by Israeli mothers for whom this is not theoretical. These women—who send their children to battle—confront the Akedah as an immediate, tangible reality. A powerful new wave of Israeli poetry gives voice to their plea, calling for an end to this never-ending Akedah. Raya Harnik’s haunting poem stands out. Written when her son was just six, she describes waiting endlessly for the day tragedy will take her son. She concludes her poem with a challenge to God: אֲנִי לֹא אַקְרִיב בְּכוֹרִי לְעוֹלָה, “I will not offer my eldest son as an offering,” alluding - and protesting - Abraham’s binding of Isaac. Her son Gony z’l was killed during his IDF service in Lebanon in 1982.
Israeli educator Netanel Ellinson argues that mothers’ fierce rejection of child sacrifice did not originate in modern Israeli poetry but has roots in classical Jewish tradition. The Sages portray Sarah as dying from anguish when she hears news of the Akedah (Midrash Tanchuma, Vayera 23:5), embodying the protective love and resistance Abraham did not show on Isaac’s behalf.
So what does this story offer us today? Lately, I’ve been rethinking its meaning, realizing that perhaps we need to not only revisit this story but embrace it anew.
In The Eighth Day by Micah Goodman (my review forthcoming in the Tel Aviv Review of Books), I was struck by how he explores Israel’s path forward in the aftermath of October 7. Goodman contrasts the strengths and vulnerabilities of the West with those of Israel’s Middle Eastern context, suggesting that Israel should draw from the best of both. He astutely observes that one of the weaknesses of the West is how enamored we’ve becomes with individualism, which sanctifies personal freedom, that we sometimes forget what societies need to survive: a willingness to sacrifice.
I believe this idea brings new light to the Binding of Isaac. As I look at Israel from my home in America, I see a society where, in many communities, parents raise their children with an awareness that they belong to something greater than themselves. They are educating them towards a new version of faith—instilling a sacred understanding that there may come a time to serve and sacrifice for their people.
And their children are choosing to listen.
The image this evokes for me is not of Abraham with his arm raised and Isaac bound before him, but rather of Abraham lovingly teaching Isaac to cherish his people and values so deeply that he might become a “knight of faith” (as Kierkegaard famously called Abraham), willing to sacrifice for a higher cause. I’ve heard from many Israelis who look at their country’s younger generation with awe—they find hope in their courage, in their readiness to give up so much for their people. לא נופלים מדור תש"ח—is a phrase that has become ubiquitous in Israel, used to describe young people today as no less great than the generation of 1948, who heroically brought the state into existence.
I’ll be honest—I am terrified of being in that position, but I am also envious. I look around here in America and wonder if we can cultivate this, raising children who would drop everything—their careers, their lives—to run and help their people.
This vision of the Binding of Isaac is necessary for us in the West. Here in America, it’s easy to forget that some struggles require us to set aside comfort and make sacrifices beyond the self. It’s time to revisit the lesson of Isaac, with humility and resolve, as we consider what it means to be part of our people’s larger story.
ps: I’ve been wrestling with and thinking about the Akedah for a long time. Please do let me know what you think in the comments - especially if you disagree.
From Scroll to Soul—
The Binding of Isaac asks us to think about what it means to give ourselves to something bigger, something lasting. Maybe it’s worth sharing a story about a family patriarch, a personal role model, or an Israeli hero with friends and family—a way of saying, “Here’s what it looks like to live for something beyond ourselves.” When we see sacrifice not just as loss but also as an act of love and responsibility, we begin to grow roots of purpose, resilience, and belonging that can steady us—and the next generation—through whatever comes.
I was proud to have been a participant in anti Vietnam War protests when I was in college and I am equally proud to have had all three of my children become IDF soldiers, two of whom became officers and extended their years of service. On the other hand, my wife and I have struggled with the fact that we put our children in harm's way. Neither of us grew up in Israel, where the great majority of native Israelis have done so for multiple generations. Your reading of the Akedah is both comforting and troubling. We are here in Israel for reasons closely tied to our love of the Jewish people and our desire to be directly involved in extending their time on Earth. Yet the thought of losing one of them for such abstract notions is almost unbearable.
I feel as though the Jewish heart has been ripped open since 10/7/23. It revealed some hard truths about US/Israel differences. You raise provocative questions about the context for Israeli sacrifice and American individualism. How can we learn from the Akedah here in our own Jewish communities about how to integrate and elevate both our individual experiences of Faith and visions of Sacrifice in order to strengthen our ties and connection with Israel?