Taking Control

Rosh Hashanah 5765

by Rabbi Sim Glaser

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I’ve spent many a Rosh Hashanah staying away from the Abraham and Isaac story. I find it disturbing. I get creeped out by God asking a faithful servant to prove his faith by taking his only son to Mt. Moriah and offering him there as a sacrifice. I don’t know. It rubs me the wrong way.

This year my daughter Hannah, having attended the High School in Israel program, found herself at that very Mt. Moriah, her insane father, thank God, nowhere in sight. And she learned some things about the story. So she said to me recently: Dad, what’s your problem with it? It’s good story! It’s about the first covenant between God and the Jewish people. It’s about putting an end to child sacrifice. Do you have a problem with ending child sacrifice?

Well, I’m reconsidering.

So I thought okay, I’ll tackle it. I love the va yelchu sh’naychem yachdav part – the two of them walked together. A terrific model for us parents who need to lead our children on the path of life. And I like the hineini part, where no matter what silly question the kid asks, the dad answers the son "here I am." We have to be there for our kids. They should know where we stand. And I like when the boy says to the dad – er, where is the sheep we’re going to slaughter with that big old knife you got there? And the dad answers Adonai yir-ei et ha seh, b’ni – God will see to the ram, my son. Parents should bring calm and security to kids who are uncertain or dismayed.

The mystifying part that still troubles me is when Abraham is coming down the mountain, because the text doesn’t indicate that Isaac is with him. The final sentences of the portion indicate that Isaac was left up there while Abraham returned to his servants and moved on to Beersheva.

No more discussions, questions and answers. No more “hey, I’m here for you” no more walking together.

It makes me wonder if Abraham maybe did sacrifice Isaac up there that day. There he lies, bound to the altar with ropes, Abraham holding that knife up, and then in the nick of time the angel whispers – no, don’t do it, we were just messing with your head. And Abe smiles and says to his son – “hey, good news, we’ve been reduced to an orange alert.”

But Isaac has been traumatized, filled with despair by a situation over which he had no control, and with a father who was so confused and obsessed, who had engaged in this violent sacrificial system, with this God employing scare tactics to prove a point, that he is no longer willing to follow his father down that path.

Abraham’s left his son nothing to believe in. No sense of control. I wouldn’t have followed the old man down the hill either.

And it’s very weird the way Isaac disappears as a featured character in future chapters of the Torah. He turns into a guy who takes long lonely walks in the field, has his own marriage arranged by his father, eventually grows old and blind and is tricked into blessing the wrong son. From that point on Isaac does nothing proactive. Everything is either done to him, for him, or at his expense.

On the other hand, the woman Isaac is slated to marry really is quite the catch. The astonishing Rebecca emerges early on as a powerful force, taking control of her life during a chaotic beginning of the Jewish people. She immediately demonstrates to Eliezer, the servant sent to find the “perfect woman,” that she is a strong, kind and gracious woman who reaches out to help others and is urgently determined to see her people thrive. She runs down from the well, pitchers of water ready to quench the thirst of weary travelers. She goes back, drawing more for the equally thirsty animals that have carried the travelers.

The servant has prayed over and over for just such a woman to make herself known. He knows that the precarious future of his master’s people hinge on the presence of a capable and intentional woman. That evening, in the home of Rebecca’s family, Eliezer petitions them to have Rebecca return with him right away to marry Abraham’s son. They respond by suggesting that Rebecca wait a year and then go. She hears this and says: “No way! Let’s go now!”

Rebecca is a good model for us today. For she understood that the way to confront uncertainty and fear is to engage the world and take control of something real.

We have been inundated with messages of terror, uncertainty and helplessness, due largely to the actions of a handful of people bent on frightening the world. There was more talk about terror this year than ever before. An entire European nation brought to its knees as a result of a train bombing. Israeli tourism plummeting to all time lows. Our presidential candidates built campaigns on the backs of our deepest fears, rather than addressing central issues of growth and true healing. And we could do little more than sit and watch it all on CNN.

Well, I was eating a frozen yogurt at a Tel Aviv café across from Rabin Square this summer. I noticed that the waiter who was wiping down the tables was singing to himself a popular Israeli song I recognized: Kol ha olam kulo gesher tzar me’od – the whole world is like a narrow bridge. Then the second line: Ve ha-ikkar lo le-fached klal - the trick is not to be afraid at all.

The song is beginning to make sense to me. Life can seem narrow and fearful if you don’t get off the bridge and take on the world.

Narrow paths have always been a great challenge to the Jewish people throughout time. Where did Moses take us out of? Mitzrayim - which is in fact Hebrew for “the narrow places.” It is not a geographical narrowness, but a narrowness of the mind, from living in our small worlds.

We don’t like narrow places. The Jewish people are an optimistic, bold, determined people. We take control of a chaotic world by devoting ourselves to others, and by our determination to see our people sustained. We are the children of Rebecca.

When we began rehearsals for this service, no fewer than six kids came up to me bubbling with excitement about how they were going on High School in Israel this year and how they couldn’t wait. I was surprised, but very psyched to hear it.
The number of kids going to Israel has diminished precipitously over the last few years, but is turning around. It is so reassuring to know that our Temple kids are going to be among those who embrace the reality of the Jewish state in their own time, and who know they have to be there. It is a matter of taking control. Of not staying thousands of miles away and giving into the portrayal of Israel as a narrow bridge.

I understand what it means to look at Israel from afar and to see it through the narrow lens of fear and concern. The media daily spins Israel as an oppressive nation and a dangerous place, and that’s how most Americans see it. You all may not be aware of this, but the national movement of the Presbyterian Church, one of the strongest Christian denominations in America, has called for an economic divestment from Israel as a punishment for Palestinian occupation. Amazingly, the church seems to be surprised that American Jews aren’t reacting well to this! Never mind that the last time a major movement boycotted Jews economically was Germany in the 1930s. For a religion of some 3 million members to officially sanction Israel in such a way is an immense challenge to American Jews. You have to wonder why they have chosen this moment in time to criticize Israel’s security fence and not the other hundred walls around the world built to establish security. You wonder what it is about Israel being the sole democracy surrounded by 22 Arab nations who deny their own populations the freedoms we cherish.

We cannot let their vision of Israel be ours. It is inaccurate and narrow. They want to di-vest? Then we must in-vest. Kol ha kavod to you, our children, all power to you who have made or will be making the trip of a lifetime, and affirming your people-hood in the land that Rebecca built.

A strong surge of confidence and self-determination finds its way into kids who make Israel a part of their reality. Barb and I visited our daughter Hannah on the High School in Israel program this summer. In a typical projection of our own fears, we thought Hannah might require some moral support half way through the trip. Of course, when we met up with her in Tel Aviv, Hannah warmly welcomed us, gave us a big hug, glanced at her watch and said, "Uh, don’t you guys have somewhere you need to be?"

Yes, driving up a narrow highway in Israel to Tsfat in the North to hang with the mystics, we were put to the test by an Israel that seemed to be shrinking in size demographically and geographically. Israel, to my concerned American mind, seemed very narrow. Expanding Arab populations on both sides of the road, Minerets and Mosques in greater number than synagogues.

But you have to get off that narrow highway and go into towns and the villages and the kibbutzim. There, Barb and I saw thriving, positive populations. Olim hadashim, the continuing influx of immigrants from Europe and Ethiopia and Australia and you name it. We saw scores of teen groups from all over the world, High School in Israel programs, NFTY trips, Birthright Programs, and I kept running into Temple kids.

Israel is a take-control issue for a developing Jew. It becomes part of them, something they can act on, and something bigger than their individual selves. It is a despair defeater. At an uncertain time in Israel’s miraculous history we can lessen our own anxiety by engaging – physically and emotionally.

But we can learn to take control in our lives right here too.

In Israel there are two ancient bodies of water. Both are fed by the Jordan River. In one there are fish and roots that find sustenance in the water. In the other there is no splash of fish, no sound of birds. No plants or leaves. The difference is not in the Jordan River itself – it empties into both bodies of water. The difference is that in Lake Tiberias, the sea of Kinneret in the north, for every drop of water taken in one goes out. It gives and it lives. The other body of water gives nothing. And it is called the Dead Sea.

To give to others is to have a fullness of existence. We have to get out of ourselves and connect, remembering that it isn’t all about us. And we have to tell our kids it isn’t all about them. Looking out only for ourselves is a very narrow bridge. We need to greet opportunities to do good work in a troubled world.

Researchers have demonstrated what is called the Helper’s High – literally a euphoric feeling followed by a longer period of calm. The Dalai Llama speaks of the wondrous side effects of enhancing one’s compassion. For one thing, he says, you become more courageous. The more courageous you become, the less chance of discouragement or loss of hope.

We may think that staying safe and close in our neighborhoods or on our college campuses and workplaces, is the best way to lessen our anxiety about a threatening world, but it ultimately makes us feel helpless. We need to act on something bigger than our own personal welfare.

We think that the more material satisfaction our kids have, and the more we earn and acquire for ourselves, the more secure we will all feel, but in reality, the more we give of ourselves to others, the more control we will feel at this crazy time in human history.

Viktor Frankl, the renowned psychiatrist who survived the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, provides an amazing example of this as he describes his days in the camps. He writes: “We remember the ones who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken away from a person but one thing. The last of the human freedoms: to choose your attitude in any given set of circumstances. To choose your way.”

There certainly is no shortage of people to help. Whether you are visiting the sick and elderly, mentoring a child in Minneapolis left behind in the nation that pledged to leave no child behind, or even reaching out to a friend who clearly needs somebody. You take control. There is the AIDS Walk coming up. Joining our Men’s Club at a soup kitchen, building a house through Habitat for Humanity, or joining in the march against poverty this October. When Thanksgiving comes to Temple Israel, hundreds come to assemble and deliver meals to hungry people.

It has been proven that, in providing for others, you not only add meaning to your life, but also reduce the anxiety and stress you feel at not being in control of the way the world is headed. Will your actions make the reality of the world disappear? No, it won’t. But you will be amazed at how the feeling of connection, the sense of being part of something larger than yourself, of literally transforming someone else’s life will give you a feeling of control at a time in human history the world seems so chaotic.

Tom Friedman writes of how people around the globe like to make fun of American optimism and naivete, but that deep down the world envies us our bold vision. And for most of Jewish history the world has marveled at how the Jewish people have remained hopeful and alive and determined despite our circumstances. And you know what? I think the world envies us that as well. It’s our calling card. It’s Israel’s national anthem – Hatkvah - the hope!

The future generation doesn’t want the baggage of hopelessness. They don’t want a narrow road of fear and mistrust. They want a four-lane highway of opportunity and optimism. But we have to prepare them to feel powerful in the face of powerful forces.

When we give ourselves to someone or something outside of ourselves, when we take control, we temper the feelings of anxiety and stress brought on by a chaotic world.

Here’s how I would have liked to end the Abraham/Isaac story:

Isaac says to his father: You know what dad? I’ve had enough of your knives, your obsessive narrow vision of God’s will, and your sacrifices and your green and orange terror alerts. You can go down that road of despair by yourself if you want. I’m taking control of my life. I’m going to invest in this world and in my people. There are things I believe in. There is a Jewish nation out there to be built. And there is humanity to be served. It’s bigger than me, and it’s bigger than you. And someday, father, when the world seems to be spinning out of control, I don’t want my hands bound by these ropes.

Oh, and by the way, I met this great girl – Rebecca – and she feels the same way I do. Together we are going to take on the world. And we are going to be powerful.

Keyn y’hi ratson.