Akedat Yitzchak

God says please

The command opens with a word you would not expect: na, please. "Please take your son." The Gemara (the rabbis' discussions built on the Mishnah) explains with a story. A king had one fighter who had won every war for him. Then came a fierce one, and the king said: please, win this one for me, so nobody says the earlier wins were nothing. That, the Gemara says, is what God told Avraham. You passed every test so far. Stand firm for Me in this one, so nobody says the earlier ones were not real.

Slowed down on purpose

God could have said "Yitzchak" right away. Instead: your son, your only one, the one you love, Yitzchak. Then the mountain turns out to be three days away. Rashi (11th-century France, the most widely read Torah commentator) explains that God named Yitzchak step by step so the shock would not make Avraham lose his head. And the three days meant nobody could say he was stunned and would have refused with time to think. The Rambam (Maimonides, 12th-century Egypt) agrees: it was done with thought, not in a panic.

"Together," three times

"The two of them walked on together" comes twice on the way up: before Yitzchak asks where the lamb is, and after. Rashi on the second: Yitzchak now understood, and still they walked "with the same heart." "Together" comes a third time at the end, but now it is Avraham and his young men. Yitzchak is not named. The Midrash (early rabbinic teachings) asks where he was. One answer: Avraham sent him to study with Shem, Noach's son. Ibn Ezra (12th-century Spain) says he was in his father's care and needed no mention.

Where was Sarah?

The Torah's account never mentions her. Midrash Tanchuma (an early collection of rabbinic teachings on the Torah) fills the gap. Avraham was afraid to tell her, and afraid of what she would do if Yitzchak simply disappeared. So he told her he was taking the boy to a place where young people are taught, and she said, "Go in peace." The next chapter opens with her death. Rashi connects the two: when she heard that her son had been made ready for slaughter and was almost killed, her soul left her.

A test for whom?

God already knows what Avraham will do. So who is the test for? The Ramban (Nachmanides, 13th-century Spain) says: for Avraham. A test turns what a person could do into something he did, so the reward is for a deed, not only a good heart. The Rambam says: for everyone else, to show how far awe of God can go. Ibn Ezra had rejected that kind of answer, since nobody was there to see it. Radak (Rabbi David Kimchi, Provence, around 1200) replies that it was meant for later generations, who would read it in the Torah.

The mountain has a future

The Akedah happens in "the land of Moriah." Tanach uses that name again when King Shlomo builds the Temple "in Jerusalem, on Mount Moriah." Avraham names the spot "Hashem will see." Rashi explains: God will choose this place for His presence to rest, and for offerings to be brought here. The Midrash adds that Avraham called the place Yireh and Shem had called it Shalem. God joined the two names into one: Yerushalayim.

Not only a morning reading

This is also the Torah reading on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. And the Gemara ties the shofar to it. Rabbi Abbahu asks why we blow a ram's horn, and quotes God's answer: so that I remember the binding of Yitzchak for you, "and I count it as if you had bound yourselves before Me." The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, written around 1900) says we read it every morning to remember the merit of our ancestors, and to learn to overcome our own impulses the way Yitzchak gave himself up.

Not lowered by a hair

Rav Kook (the first Chief Rabbi of the Land of Israel, who died in 1935) reads the angel's words as a ruling. The ban on shedding blood and a father's love for his son both stand exactly as they were. The test did not lower them by a hair. And do not think, he has the angel say, that loving your son and loving God were pulling against each other. A father's love, in a pure soul, is itself a holy fire that comes straight from God's love for everything He made.

ואל תעש לו מאומה, כי רחמי אב ואהבתו בנשמה טהורה היא היא הנה לבת אש קדש, הולכת ישרה מאהבת אלהים הטהורה ורחמיו על כל מעשיו

Why was it Avraham's test?

The Zohar (the central book of Kabbalah) asks why the Torah says God tested Avraham and not Yitzchak. Yitzchak was 37. If he had said "I don't want to," his father would not have been punished for it. The Zohar answers that until now Avraham had no strict judgment in him at all, and so he was not yet complete. It pictures the two sides as water and fire. Here, for the first time, fire was mixed into the water. The Zohar does not soften what that looked like: "Who ever saw a compassionate father turn cruel?"

דְּהָא אַבְרָהָם לָא הֲוָה בֵּיהּ דִּינָא כְּלַל מִקַּדְמַת דְּנָא... וְאַבְרָהָם לָא הֲוָה שְׁלִים עַד הַשְׁתָּא

The command was not clear

Rabbi Mordechai Yosef of Izhbitz (a Chassidic master who died in 1854) gives an unusual reading. The verse says "God tested," with the name Elohim and not the four-letter Name. He takes that to mean Avraham never got a clear, explicit word to slaughter his son. It reached him blurred, like something seen in a glass that does not shine. Yitzchak trusted his father, so for him it was less of a test. Avraham had to act on a word that was not explicit, still believing the earlier promises about Yitzchak. This is one reading, not the plain sense.

לא היה לאברהם דיבר מפורש מהש"י שישחוט את בנו, ע"כ לא נאמר וה' נסה רק והאלקים נסה

Doing it without feeling it

The angel calls Avraham "God-fearing." The Sefat Emet (Rabbi Yehudah Aryeh Leib Alter, a Chassidic leader in Ger, Poland, who died in 1905) asks why. Avraham's way was love, which is higher than fear. His answer: a person who serves out of love is pulled, heart and body, toward what God wants. But God did not in fact want Yitzchak slaughtered. So this time Avraham's heart felt no closeness and no love in what he was doing. He did not question God. That was the test, and that is why the word here is fear.

ולבו של אברהם לא הרגיש דביקות ואהבה בזו העובדא ע"י שבאמת לא הי' כן רצונו של השי"ת ולכן הי' נסיון

One act

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira (the Rebbe of Piaseczno in Poland, killed in the Holocaust in 1943) wrote this in German-occupied Warsaw for the second day of Sukkot 1940, the first anniversary of his own son's death. The Akedah, he says, was will and thought that never became a finished act, because the angel stopped it. Jews killed by their enemies since then are the reverse: the act, without the thought. He joins the two. There was the beginning, here is the end, and the Akedah and all those killed afterward are one act.

ששם היתה ההתחלה מחשבה ורצון וכאן הסיום והפעולה, היינו שהעקדה וכל הנהרגים מבנ״י אח״כ, מעשה אחד הוא

Do I have to say it?

No. The Shulchan Aruch (the main code of Jewish law) calls it "good to say," on one list with the passage about the manna and the Ten Commandments. Peninei Halakhah (a modern guide to Jewish law by Rabbi Eliezer Melamed) sets that next to the daily-offering passage a little further on, which became an obligation. Of that list, the Akedah is the one that lasted. The Aruch HaShulchan (a law code from around 1900): our custom, as the siddurim print it, is to say the Akedah, but not the manna or the Ten Commandments.

Is saying the words enough?

The Mishnah Berurah (a central commentary on daily Jewish law, from around 1900) says no: "Saying it is not enough. Think about what you are saying, and recognize the wonders of Hashem." The point comes from Rabbeinu Bachya (a Torah commentator in Spain, around 1300). He wrote it about the passages on the offerings: the Sages cannot have meant reciting the bare verses without thinking about what they mean. The Magen Avraham (a 1600s commentary on the Shulchan Aruch) brought his words to the Akedah.

Do I say it on Shabbat?

You can. The Mishnah Berurah says the Akedah may be said even on Shabbat. What changes is the two prayers around it, which ask God for mercy. The Sefard machzor for Rosh Hashanah prints all three. On the prayer before the Akedah it notes: "On Shabbat and Yom Tov this prayer is not said." On the one after: some do not say it on those days. This siddur drops the prayer after it on any day without Tachanun (the weekday prayers of pleading). The Chabad siddur drops both on such days.

I am running late. Can I skip it?

Peninei Halakhah rules that even someone in a hurry should try to say at least the daily-offering passage and the incense verses. The other passages and prayers printed in this section, which opens with the Akedah, are good to say but not an obligation. The Biur Halacha (the Mishnah Berurah author's longer notes) says of the offering passages the Shulchan Aruch lists next to the Akedah: it is good to say them before the service, but not if that makes you miss the time for Shema or praying with the congregation.

Do tallit and tefillin go on before it?

That was the order of the Arizal (Rabbi Yitzchak Luria, the Kabbalist of Tzfat, who died in 1572). His student Rabbi Chaim Vital records it: he said the morning blessings even before daylight. Once it was light he put on his tallit, then his tefillin, and began his prayer from the Akedah on. The Ben Ish Chai (a law book by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad, 1890s) gives a reason: put tefillin on before the Akedah, so that you are wearing them for the Shema that comes in this part of the morning.

Should I read it with the Torah reading tune?

The Pri Megadim (Rabbi Yosef Teomim, 1700s, who wrote a commentary on the main commentaries of the Shulchan Aruch) brings it up. He has two lines on the Akedah. First: "The main thing is to understand what you are saying." Then: one who is skilled says the passage with the cantillation, the musical notes used for reading the Torah in shul. The abbreviation he uses there can be read as "should say" or as "may say."

Do I say it again at Mincha?

The siddur has it only in the morning. Od Yosef Chai (a second law book by Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Baghdad) reports that one author argued for saying it at Mincha (the afternoon prayer) too. Others disagreed, and he finds their view more convincing: saying the Akedah is meant "to bind and subdue" the forces of judgment. That fits the morning, when kindness rules. Mincha is when judgment rules, not the time to fight it. One exception: the Sefard machzor for Yom Kippur prints a custom to say it before Mincha that day.