We likely are familiar with the narrative. God instructs Abraham to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah, where he is to offer the boy up as a sacrifice. Abraham dutifully follows God’s command – and it is only at the very last moment that an angel of God intervenes, and instructs Abraham not to lay his hand upon the child.
For the past 2500 years or more during which this story has been told and retold, it has captured the imagination of countless philosophers, poets, artists, and scholars. For the ancient Rabbis, it became a story about the courage of Isaac – who, like themselves under the shadow of the Roman Empire, was willing to give his life as a martyr for the sake of his faith. For the early Church Fathers, it became a story that foretold the life of Jesus – where, according to their belief system, once again a father would be willing to part with his beloved son. For the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai, it became a story about the terror that Israeli parents face as they send their children off to the army – aware that they may sending them to their deaths. For the contemporary Bible scholar Phyllis Trible, the story is a warning about the dangers of biblical patriarchy – where the victim is not only Isaac, but also his mother, Sarah, who watches from the margins as the horrifying scene unfolds, silenced and powerless.
But among all these and many other stirring interpretations, a particularly striking take on the Binding of Isaac comes to us from Franz Kafka – who was, of course, himself Jewish.
Kafka’s version of the narrative comes to us in the form of a short story called “The Judgment.” According to his diary, Kafka wrote the story in a single night – in one fitful sitting at his desk. The date of composition: September 23, 1912 – which, that year, was the night of Kol Nidre. We can almost imagine Kafka hearing the Binding of Isaac chanted aloud in synagogue on Rosh Hashanah morning the previous week, the terrible themes brewing inside of him over the course of the next ten days – until, on the night of Kol Nidre, his version of the story came boiling forth, unable any longer to be contained.
Like many things Kafka, the story is highly surreal. But also like many things Kafka, the story probes something deep about the human condition.
Kafka’s version of the story is told from the perspective of Isaac – who, in Kafka’s retelling, is cast as a young man named Georg. All his life, we are told, Georg had been a shy and meek person, lacking in all confidence. It is only recently, now that he has reached young adulthood, that Georg has started to come into his own – at last finding success in the family business, and becoming engaged to a young woman in town. One morning, feeling pleased about his new-found good fortune, Georg goes to visit his father. But immediately upon entering the old man’s darkened room, Georg’s confidence disappears. His father berates him – accusing him in a thundering voice of stealing money from the family business, of having not properly mourned his late mother, of slowly poisoning the father to death. And in the story’s climactic ending, Georg’s father proclaims that the punishment for these crimes shall be death by drowning. In Kafka’s surreal style, a violent wind stirs the room – which sweeps Georg out the door, across the street, to the town bridge, and over the railing, where he plummets to a watery death.
Through Kafka’s pen, the Binding of Isaac becomes a story about the existential conflict that arises between one generation and the next. At first, a child is dependent on its parents – as Georg had been for most of his life. Eventually, the child’s confidence grows – until, at last, like Georg, the child finds success both in business and in love. But at the very same moment that the child is becoming independent, the parent, by contrast, is aging and growing frail. The child, it seems, no longer needs the parent. The next generation replaces the previous one. And in Kafka’s retelling, the parent’s twisted defense is to kill off the child – as Abraham nearly does to Isaac.
In Kafka’s fever dream, we recognize the mortal angst of living and dying. We know that time only moves in one direction. We fear that those who come after us will soon forget us after we are gone – that the entirety of our existence will be silenced by oblivion.
This fear, our Torah reading reminds us, is a very real part of the human condition. But it is not the only part. Because although in Kafka’s story, the father does kill his child, our Torah story ends differently. “Do not lay your hand upon the child,” an angel of God cries out to Abraham.
As we read the Binding of Isaac, we acknowledge the angst of being mortal – but we also affirm the goodness of lives yet to come. Isaac has not come to replace his father. Rather, he has come, in part, so that through him, Abraham and Sarah might continue to live.
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