Rabbi Daniel Siegel

Boundless Love

In his Devar Torah, on last week’s parashah, Year 10 student Beau Glass, shared his bafflement in Abraham’s pleading with God for the lives of the inhabitants of Sedom, relative strangers, yet, without a word of protest, acquiescing to sacrifice his son to this same God.

One might argue, considering the historical backdrop of these two stories, that while the wholesale destruction of Sedom (the righteous with the wicked), might represent an indiscriminate/non-caring act of God, against which Avraham inveighs, the “binding of Yitschak” signifies the apotheosis of purposeful selection, calling for and reflective of boundless love. Indeed, for many Christian theologians, the death of Jesus, “For God so loved the world that He gave his one and only son”, is foreshadowed in Yitschak’s being bound upon the altar by Avraham.

Yet, the opening words of this week’s parashah, “Sarah died” is used by the Rabbis to give us great pause, had we not already shared the bewilderment of Beau and that of his fellow students. In hearing the news of Avraham’s intended sacrifice of their son, our tradition asserts: “Sarah’s soul took flight and she died”. The Bible itself intimates that we are to carefully consider our actions of boundless love. Avraham hears the Divine call to sacrifice “your son, your favoured one, the one whom you love”. Yet, in stopping him from bringing down the knife upon his son, Avraham hears the divine messenger say: “You have not withheld your son, your favoured one”.

The binding of boundless love has consequences. While they journey up the mountain “together’, we read that Avraham descends alone. We never again hear of any contact between father and son.

The Jewish mystical tradition speaks of God’s creation of the world emanating from “chesed”, boundless love. At the same time, it teaches that the Divine light is too great for the human world to bear and that only through an act of tsimtsum, Divine self-withdrawal and self-containment, can a human world, experiencing and reflective of God’s love, endure.

Significantly, the Kabbalah, in presenting the ten attributes through which God manifests Himself and sustains our world, identifies the manifestation of chesed, boundless love, with Avraham and that of Gevurah, the restraining powers of containment, with Yitschak. They both must work in partnership without one eclipsing or subsuming the other.

As Avraham broke from the path of his father, to pursue his own journey, so must he allow his son to do the same. Parent and child, student and teacher are united in an ever-giving yet self-restricting love. In loving and caring for another, we must always be conscious not to bind another upon the altar of our own beliefs and convictions.