Dvar Torah for Parshat VaYeira

Based on Likutey MoHaran II, Lesson #12

God said to Avraham Avinu, "Bring Yitzchak (Isaac) as an olah (wholly-burnt offering)." Avraham Avinu get up early in the morning to prepare what was necessary...On the third day of the journey, as they were climbing the mountain, Yitzchak Avinu said to Avraham Avinu, "Here is the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the olah?" Avraham Avinu replied, "God will choose for Himself a lamb for the olah - my son" (Genesis 22:2-8).

"Where is the place of [God's] glory?" (Shabbat Musaf Liturgy)

What if Avraham Avinu (our patriarch Abraham) had rolled over and stayed in bed that morning? What if it had been just another busy day serving guests at the tent? No one knew what God had commanded him to do. No one would have known that he was disobeying God and failing a test. Avraham Avinu surely could have considered a number of logical questions about bringing Yitzchak Avinu as an olah:

Where is the God who promised me descendants?

Where is the God who promised me that my descendants would own this land?

Where is the God that promised me that my teaching the world about Him would continue?

Where indeed?

At the time of Akeidat Yitzchak (the Binding of Isaac) Avraham Avinu was 137 years old. For over 100 years he had been teaching about the one true God, a god of kindness. He imitated God's quality of kindness and opened his home to travelers. If he slaughtered Yitzchak Avinu, it would undermine all that he taught.

In fact, we don't know whether Avraham Avinu considered any of these questions or not. Avraham Avinu received the command directly from God. For him, God was manifestly present in this, his final, most torturous test. Avraham Avinu practiced the simple rule for success in Jewishness that Rebbe Nachman put into words many years later: Make sure that God is in everything you do. Don't even consider whether it will bring you prestige or not. If it brings prestige to God, do it. And if not, don't do it!

Yitzchak Avinu, on the other hand, did have questions. Yitzchak Avinu posed a question that turned out to be not only an answer, but a revelation. His father had told him that God had commanded an olah be brought. Yitzchak Avinu bore the firewood on his back. His father carried the fire and the knife. The only thing missing was a lamb, unless...unless he was the lamb. How could the God of kindness about Whom his father had taught him for 37 years be present, how could He be responsible for such a command?

Marching to his death, bearing the wood for his own execution (like one bearing his cross; Bereishis Rabbah 56:3), Yitzchak Avinu suddenly went from being scion and future progenitor of a chosen people to condemned man. He turned to his father, the man who made God famous throughout the world (Rashi on Genesis 24:7), and said, "Where is the place of God's glory?" It doesn't seem to include our situation. God is not manifest here. "But 'WHERE' is the lamb for the olah." I believe, no matter what, that He is here. Even in a time and place when one does not see God, when, for all intents and purposes one sees that God is not there and one wants to scream: GOD! WHERE ARE YOU?! one has to realize Yitzchak Avinu's answer: God is here. I have just revealed His presence.

agutn Shabbos!
Shabbat Shalom!

(A number of years ago I used this lesson in relating to questions about the Holocaust. I subsequently discovered that the definition of the word holocaust [coming from the Greek hol+kaustos] is "a sacrifice consumed by fire.")