The Inner Shofar

Is the Binding of Isaac just a story about a guy willing to kill (his son) to please his boss? Every year at this time I puzzle over three things to do with the Akedah:

1. why was the divine trial necessary, i.e. why did God have to ask for this sacrifice if Abraham was never meant to go through with it?
2. Why is Isaac’s mother the matriarch Sarah not mentioned?
3. What exactly does the Shofar have to do with the Akedah? Is it just about the use of a very special ram’s horn as instrument?

A few years ago, I was rummaging in old Midrashim, and I came up with some interesting texts that I’d like to offer you here for some thoughts.

1. Isaac’s willingness to be sacrificed and his wager to Ishmael

In the Targum Yonatan the command to sacrifice Isaac is God’s response to Isaac’s wager to Ishmael. “Ishmael: ‘I am more righteous than you, because I was circumcised at thirteen years; if I had wanted to prevent my circumcision, I could have. But you were circumcised when eight days old. If you had realized what was happening, perhaps you wouldn’t have let them circumcise you.’ Isaac: ‘Behold now today I am 36 years old. And if the Holy one Blessed be He were to require all parts of my body, I would not hesitate to give them to Him.’ At once God tested Abraham ...” (Targum Jonathan (transl. M. Maher, Targum Pseudo-Jonathan: Genesis [Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1992]), 78; translation adapted).

2. Sarah is indeed not mentioned in the narrative of the Akedah itself. But there are two observations that have helped me to look for her. Firstly, I turned to the Haftarah (Isaiah) for some clues and found the following:

“… it is the sound of Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be consoled. Etc.” Why should the Haftarah on Rosh Hashana be chosen in such a way as to include this sad prophetic passage of doom? As I will argue the sound of a sad and bereft mother is the sound that we hear when the Shofar is blown. Secondly there is the fact that in the Torah, the death of Sarah is reported immediately after the end of the Akedah. Already the Sages have thought that this must mean something.

There are a number of Midrashim about Sarah’s death, in a number of versions.

The version in Midrash Tanhuma, a medieval and very popular midrash, makes Satan a trickster: “[At the time Isaac was bound], Satan went to Sarah, appearing to her in the form of Isaac. When Sarah saw him, she asked, ‘My son, what did your father do to you?’ He replied, ‘My father took me, led me up hills and down into valleys, until finally he brought me up to the summit of a high and towering mountain, where he built an altar, set out the firewood, bound me upon the altar, and grasped a knife to cut my throat. Had not the Holy One said to him, “Lay not thy hand upon the lad,” I would have been slaughtered.’ Even before Satan finished his tale, Sarah’s soul left her.” Translation in H. N. Bialik and Y. H. Ravnitzky, The Book of Legends: The First Complete Translation of Sefer ha-aggadah, trans. W. G. Braude (New York: Schocken, 1992), 42.

The Midrash about Sarah’s death may be a vehicle for drawing Sarah into the Binding narrative, in which the Bible does not give her any role. It therefore represents a progressive move. But some of the midrashim about Sarah’s death give her an even more central role in terms of the shofar symbolism of Rosh Hashana.

One of the most popular midrashic sermon collections throughout the ages, Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, transl. G. Friedlander (New York: Sepher-Hermon Press, 1916, repr. 1981), 233-34, chap. 32, records it as follows: “When Abraham returned from Mount Moriah in peace, the anger of Samael was kindled, for he saw that the desire of his heart to frustrate the offering of our father Abraham had not been realized. What did he do? He went and said to Sarah: ‘Hast thou not heard what has happened in the world?’ She said to him: ‘No.’ He said to her: ‘Thy husband Abraham (editio princeps: your old man) has taken thy son Isaac and slain him and offered him up as a burnt-offering upon the altar. (ed. princeps: And the lad wept, and cried aloud because he could not be saved.)’ She began to weep and cry aloud three times [lit: three weepings], corresponding to the three sustained notes [of the Shofar], and three howlings corresponding to the three disconnected short notes [of the Shofar], and her soul fled, and she died.” [M. Kasher, Encyclopedia of Biblical Interpretation (New York: American Biblical Encyclopedia Society, 1957), 3:169-70, gives a slightly different translation.] Note the emphasis on Sarah’s violent lament, in all its details. Sarah’s lament becomes the tune blown on Rosh haShanah! So yes, the musical instrument is the horn of the ram that was slaugthered instead of Isaac, but it is his mother who sets the tune.

Of course Isaac was not killed in the Genesis narrative of the Binding, but Midrashic and later sources claim that he was indeed killed by Abraham and afterwards revived by God (some suggest he died twice) – this event was taken as proof of the belief in resurrection. See S. Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1967). And there are indeed some Midrashim that claim that Sarah did not die of grief, but of excessive joy at seeing her son brought back to life. So perhaps the tune of the Shofar is one of such deep emotion that it is impossible to distinguish grief from joy.

3. Be that as it may, the old midrashim have helped me to see the Akedah as more than just a story of paternal violence. But it is equally important not to hijack the shofar’s tune for women only. I would prefer to think that the tune of the shofar is about the emotional side of each of us, whether man or woman – and that as long as we allow ourselves to listen to the sound of the shofar, we are able to feel compassion (fellow-feeling for another’s suffering) for others.

Shanah Tovah!