INTERNET RADIO
"My Midlife Crisis" with Neil Litt

My free-form radio programs mix original stories with a wide range of music. This page contains the complete d'var Torah that I wrote as I prepared the Rosh Hashonah program that is also linked to this page. Each program is on a different theme, but it is always about my "midife crisis." Scroll down for the d'var Torah and more information on the Rosh Hashanah program or click on the URL link below to go to my home page, where you'll find all the programs in this series. The picture on the left, showing the adult "me" contemplating the child "me" amid the ruins of my family's old summer home, illustrates a recurring theme of these programs: where have I come from and how did I get here?

primary url: http://mywebpages.comcast.net/amidlifecrisis/

mirror site: http://users.pupress.princeton.edu/~neil/

Download .wma files of the most recent programs here or click on program link below to hear the streaming file (in RealPlayer^®).

The Rosh Hashanah edition of "My Midlife Crisis" was posted to the web on September 6, 2002. It's the soundtrack for the preparation of the d'var Torah that I offered at the Library Minyan of the Princeton Jewish Center on the second day of Rosh Hashanah-- free-form music for a post-modern Jewish New Year--shofar blowing and kaddish on Highway 61. Click on this link for pseudostreaming via 56kb modem or better with RealPlayer. For best sound, download the .wma version from here. 1 hr 43m.

The D'var Torah

The story of Abraham and Isaac is our text today. This story has lent itself to hundreds of interpretations. It is a definition of faith for the three religions that call themselves the children of Abraham and it is one of the earliest Bible stories that we are taught as children. But what exactly are we meant to learn from this story? Is the lesson that God may test us in terrible ways and if we rise to the occasion we will be blessed for a multitude of generations? Is the lesson to provide a model for father's to sacrifice their sons for a greater good? Is the lesson to provide a warning that sons should be wary of letting their fathers bind them?

The story, as I said, has lent itself to hundreds of interpretations. And even the most ancient interpretations often contradict the details as related in the Torah, and this contradiction suggests to me that the problems that we have with this text are not uniquely modern. On the contrary, since Torah scholars in Talmudic times were rewriting the story, the problems with the tradition are themselves part of the tradition. Wrestling with the text is not a peculiarly modern act of rebellion; resistance is a traditional response to the text.

I am going to briefly point to two modern midrashim that relate this text to the sacrifice of our young to fight a war, whether holy or secular, and then I'm going to leave you with one simple question: who is the hero of the story, that is, who comes to embody the lesson of this story--is it Abraham or Isaac?

First, I want to simply suggest the range of images that the tradition has connected to this story from the simplest to the most convoluted. On the one hand we have the familiar and easily understood drash that, because Isaac is redeemed by the offering of a ram, we on this day take the shofar-- the ram's horn-- and blow it to remind God that it is again time to redeem us from a year of sin and confusion. At the other extreme of interpretation we have R. Berekiah's teaching in the name of R. Helbo that in the place where Abraham took Isaac, there God Himself made a Tabernacle for Himself and there, God prayed that He might some day see his Temple on that plot of land.

This is very weird territory. An old man hearing voices and nearly killing his son; making his son into a burnt offering; Rabbis reacting to the story by imagining a God who prays--prayers directed at who? Should we be comforted or terrified to hear that the Master of the Universe prays? If God set the forces of nature in motion and then stepped back and is content to be an interested witness to how they evolve, is it so hard to understand how His prayers might be a reflection of his interest in the outcome? But then, does He intervene and craft a test for one man and make that man stand in for all men?

I want you to notice that I am not taking care to refer to a gender-neutral God in discussing this passage. The God of Abraham is male. This is a story of fathers and sons. It is a story thoroughly grounded in a patriarchal system and to deny that is to deny the essence of the story. This is a masculine test of a man. A big male God asking his pledge to prove himself by picking up a knife and drawing blood.

In the Everett Fox translation the text of Genesis 22 is rendered as

"God tested Avraham"

And it appears that Avraham passes. God says,

Pray take your son,
Your only-one,
Whom you love,
Yitxhak,
And go-you forth to the land of Moriyya/Seeing
And offer him up there as an offering up
Upon one of the mountains
That I will tell you of.

Then the text goes on to say that Avraham "started early in the morning." No comment from Abraham. No question. No protest. Abraham simply starts early to do God's will.

Personally I prefer Bob Dylan's version, where "God says to Abraham 'Kill me a son' and Abe says 'Man, you must be putting me on.'" I prefer this version because I have always read this story as if I were Isaac and as if Abraham was MY father--and I want my father to put up a fight and not submit with unquestioning obedience. I want my father to stand up and defend me!

And the Rabbis are also unsatisfied with the absence of a reaction from Abraham. In Midrash Rabbah, when God says, "Take thy son . . ." they suggest that Abraham asked, Which son?" To which God responded, "Thine only son." To which Abraham responds, "But each is the only one of his mother." And so on. Abraham is clearly stalling for time; looking for an out. There is a struggle in the Dylan version and in the old midrash that is missing from Genesis.

Alternatively the Rabbis suggest that the ram in the thicket was named Isaac and the outcome was always meant to be that the ram and not the boy would go under the knife. Alternatively, they suggest that Isaac is slaughtered and resurrected, just as Abraham knew he would be. That's the lamest version of all, because what kind of trial would it be for Abraham if God and Abraham colluded toward a benign outcome? It drains the story of all its vitality and dreadfulness. But in any event none of these versions are supported by the text in front of us. Even so, I suppose that each was a satisfying interpretation for a specific time and place, just like Bob Dylan's worked so well for a generation of Isaacs in the 1960s.

"God said you can do what you want Abe but the next time you see me coming you better run. So, Abe said where you want this killing done? God said out on Highway 61." And when Dylan wrote those words, the USA was leading God's war against atheistic Communism and whether it was God or Lyndon Johnson doing the talking, we were all dreading the call to Highway 61. So, as we gear up to fight another war against evil, this Torah comes to remind you that you will be asked to sacrifice thou son whom thou lovest.

Dylan is my modern advocate for Abraham.

Leonard Cohen is my modern advocate for Isaac. Leonard Cohen wrote these words in the voice of Isaac, bound to the altar--

You who build these altars now
To sacrifice the children
You must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
And you never have been tempted
By a demon or a god.

You who stand above them now
Your hatchets blunt and bloody
You were not there before
When I lay upon the mountain
And my father's hand was trembling
With the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now
Forgive me if I inquire
Just according to whose plan?
When it all comes down to dust,
I will kill you if I must;
I'll help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust,
I will help you if I must,
I'll kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
Man of peace, man of war--
The peacock spreads his fan.

It is all too easy to imagine those words recited by a terrorist or a freedom fighter and God grant us the wisdom to tell the difference. My enemies are terrorists; my allies are freedom fighters, and they're ALL children of Abraham-- and one will kill me if he must and help me if he can, and one will help me if he must and kill me if he can. The question that every reader of this story must confront is who is our Abraham and who is our Isaac? Who is being tested and who is being sacrificed?