Congregation Netivot Shalom

Rosh HaShannah

Sep 30, 2011 / 2 Tichrei 5772

Dan Schifrin

Our Mistakes

I’ve made a terrible mistake. I shouldn’t be here. I should have said no when I was asked to do this. But it wasn’t really an ask, was it? It was a demand. Or, in the end, did I have a choice?

This is Abraham, our patriarch, talking to himself on the way to the slaughter on top of Mount Moriah. These are my words, of course, reflecting the argot of today’s self-aware culture, and not the text of Parshah Vayeirah, which we read today. But for the next few minutes let us assume that the story of the akedah reflects a profound error of judgment implicating God, and our first two patriarchs.

Our classic texts have viewed the Akedah, however problematic its frame, as a story of success. God tests Abraham with the ultimate act of faith; Abraham passes this test, demonstrating his ability to be the father of our people; and Isaac, as a dutiful son, obeys his father, asserting the primacy of faith over individual desire. The story is preserved to bolster the idea of spiritual steadfastness, and perhaps to differentiate this new religion from the child-killing paganism that came before.

Today most of us accept the success of the story, but the error of the message: Who among us – parents especially – can truly understand the minds of the three players in this drama, or countenance their death-seeking behavior? Perhaps, however, if we go further into the errors we can reclaim the story – and the characters involved – as relevant for our lives today.

Let us turn first to Abraham. What is happening to him just before this story begins? First he argues strenuously with God about God’s intent to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, winning what must have been a very high-stakes spiritual poker game. This ends in failure for Abraham, however, as the cities are destroyed. Then, God and Sarah essentially team up on him to send Hagar and Ishmael – Abraham’s first-born child – into the desert. Abraham attempts to preserve life at all costs, but he is overruled.

When God tells him to sacrifice his other son, Abraham does not argue. His error is that faced with a God this demanding, he has given up hope.

What about Isaac? We learn little from him during the three days he and his father travel to the mountain, other than that Isaac shoulders the wood on the ascent, asking only this question: “Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” How does Isaac err? He acts like he is bar mitzvah age, young enough to be naive about his father’s plans but old enough to carry wood up a mountain, when some Talmudic sources suggest he is almost 40 – the age of wisdom, the moment when one might study the kabbalah. In other words, Isaac sees himself as a victim, a child in a man’s body.

And what can we learn from God’s error? I hate to say it, but God – at least the character God in this story – is insecure. He is competing against the panoply of mercurial, child-killing gods of the near east for the heart and mind of Abraham. Did God lose his self-respect when Abraham had the audacity to bargain him down from 100 righteous men to 10 in Sodom and Gomorrah? God’s error here is that he didn’t have enough faith in himself.

After the chutzpah of assigning error to God, Abraham and Isaac, I’d like to note that, from the point of view of our tradition, it is not a sin to err. The holidays remind us, in prayer after prayer, that we have erred this year, and we will certainly err next year. Mistakes are as certain as death and taxes. For me, assigning error and critiquing the players in the drama is not a way of distancing them from me, but a way of gathering myself to them and their struggles. I learn about myself from their mistakes.

In her recent book “Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error,” Kathryn Schulz explains that “however disorienting, difficult or humbling our mistakes might be, it is ultimately wrongness, not rightness, that can teach us who we are.” Or, quoting St. Augustine: “I err, therefore I am.”

So what are our lessons, as a Jewish people, connected to the Akedah?

Number one: Like Abraham losing faith in the continuity of his family, we are prone to losing hope in our tradition and ourselves, sometimes just at the moment we need it the most. As a community facing difficult times ahead, we need to believe in what the Jewish people has been and what it means, whether we call that meaning god, community, tzedakah, the force that makes for transformation.

Number two: Like Isaac, we see ourselves as victims, unwilling to argue against whatever traditions – religious, communal, intra-psychic – pin us to the rock. In fact, we are obligated to critique and question, whether the object of that questioning is God, the president, or the authority figures in our immediate work or family life.

Number three: Like God, we are insecure about our power and our self-respect – within our family, within our community, and as a Jewish community facing the larger world.

The liturgy of these days asks us to see ourselves erring and returning, teshuva-ing, as both individuals and as a community. I suggested, just previously, ways in which as a people we can learn from the errors of God and our forefathers.

But I would be a shirker if I didn’t acknowledge how the errors I point out in the Akedah are projections of my own, personal failings – how I give up hope in the projects I have set for myself, whether they are related to the continuity of the Jewish people or finding the right cheese at Berkeley Bowl; how I see myself as a victim, at the mercy of people I assume have the right to do with me as they see fit; how I ask for impossible sacrifices not just from others but from myself.

As I lurch toward greater service to others this year, I’d like to do so not by dwelling on my mistakes, but by dwelling in a sanctuary of hope, agency, and self-respect. But mistakes will surely come, and I hope that I, and our community, indeed the whole world, learn to err with greater subtley and self-awareness. I pray that we – individually and collectively – will be worthy of our best mistakes.