Shalom and thank you for your question. It’s an excellent quest for true knowledge, that a child is growing up hearing concepts from the Torah and she is thinking about them seriously. This is a great credit to you for exposing her to such things, and to her for taking interest.
So what indeed are we to understand from this difficult situation, where G-d requests Abraham – called ‘the Hebrew’ – to bind his belived son Isaac, born to him in his old age, as a sacrifice?
Firstly I will digress to the whole topic of sacrifices in the holy Temple and their meaning, since this is perhaps one of the things that is bothering your daughter, and in fact any thinking person in our day and age. It is certainly a bizarre idea to take an animal or a bird, kill it and burn parts or all of it, and consider this a spiritual act. How is it spiritual? The moment that G-d commands us to perform a certain act, that becomes a spiritual thing to do. G-d is the Creator, and we are commanded (Deuteronomy 6:5) “and you shall love the L-rd your G-d…” When we love someone, we want to carry out his/her will. Okay, but why would G-d WANT us to do this thing? As I said, we actually do it because G-d says so, but we can understand it to a certain extent. A person let’s say works hard for a living, and tries to be a good person in general, but also messes up a little here and there, sometimes acting selfishly, but always regretting it. This person actually really wants to be close to G-d – to the side of truth, justice, and mercy. He is told, take the animal PART of you, the part of you that just wants to have fun and not not fulfill your obligations to G-d, take the fat = the pleasure, and the blood = the passion (for things that are not necessarily holy) and give up some of it. Can you please do that for me? This is very simply put, a way of understanding sacrifices.
Back to Abraham. He was the first ‘Hebrew’ which is ‘ivri’ in Hebrew and comes from the root ‘ever’ or side. Abraham was on one side of society as far as belief was concerned. While the society he lived in worshipped idols, Abraham – as a child of three (!) searched for the Creator of the world and found Him. The midrash teaches us that his parents hid him in a cave as a baby because the king Nimrod was told by his astrologers that Abraham would challenge Nimrod’s way of life and beliefs, which he later did. When Abraham was three he began to search for G-d. He thought that perhaps the moon was G-d, shining upon the whole world, but then the moon disappeared and the sun came out. Eventually Abraham realized that there had to be a power that makes the sun and the moon shine and creates the whole world. He began to teach people to believe in the real one G-d and not idols. That is why one of the tests of Abraham’s faith in G-d was when king Nimrod had him thrown into a fiery furnace – unless he would say that he believed in idol worship. Abraham was willing to give up his life rather than do such a thing.
Pirkei Avot (Tractate Ethics of the Fathers) 5:3 teaches us about ten great tests of faith that Abraham passed, including firstly the above-mentioned fiery furnace. After that, G-d told Abraham to leave Charan where he lived and go to the Holy Land of Israel (called Canaan at the time). Abraham was already seventy-five years old but he did not hesitate to do what G-d asked. It didn’t take long for there to be a famine in Israel and Abraham had to get up and leave again… the famous commentator Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) explains that Abraham passed all those tests because he did not question G-d’s instructions. He understood that G-d is holy and infinite and wants the best for us. However the final test of binding Isaac was the most difficult.
The world we live in is a physical world of things that we can see, hear and touch etc. There are spiritual worlds also. It says in Pirkei Avot 2:1 “Know what is above you…” meaning that we should be aware that G-d is watching our behavior. Chassidic teaching goes into this more deeply. Know that what is above – is from you, meaning that our actions in the physical world cause things to happen in the heavens, the spiritual worlds. When Abraham passed all the first nine tests, there was a question in the Heavens, was Abraham really completely sincere? Did he perhaps not pass the tests for his own honor? Thus he had to undergo the tenth test, which went against all logic. He had to take the son he loved that was born to him in his old age, THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO CARRY ON THE TRADITION OF BELIEF IN THE ONE G-D and bring it to the world, and bind him as a sacrifice to G-d. A careful reading of the text will show that G-d never actually said to kill him, he just said to bind him as a sacrifice.
A true sacrifice is to give up something that is dear for you and difficult to give up. Abraham was willing to do that for G-d against all logic, and that is what gave the whole Jewish nation the ability to make such sacrifices throughout Jewish history. The fact that Abraham did it gave us a spiritual ‘DNA’, a spiritual ability to sacrifice our comfort and often our lives for what we believe in. Despite all the difficulties we have endured as a nation- we are still here with our belief in G-d, unlike many other nations that came and went from the face of history.
Today we are also required to sacrifice some of our comfort and our desires to carry out G-d’s commandments, (six hundred and thirteen Biblical commandments for Jews and Seven Noahide Laws for non-Jews) which set us apart from the ‘lifestyle’ of the world. Jews are required to keep Shabbat and eat kosher even though others around us may not…we are required to help others and study Torah although it takes time and energy. All of humanity are required to live a moral lifestyle as set out in the commandments for Jews and the Seven Noahide Laws for non-Jews.
