Dvar Torah on Parshat Bechukotai

This week's parsha completes the book of Leviticus. The bulk of the parsha consists of the promise of rewards and punishments for those who, respectively, observe or break the Mitzvot of the Torah: "If you walk in the ways of my laws, and my commandments you keep, and do them, I will give rains in their proper time, and the land will bring forth its produce, and the tree of the field will bear its fruit....But if you do not listen to me, and do not do all of these commandments...I will in turn do this to you - I will bring upon you shock, consumption, and fever, weakening the eyes and sorrowing the soul, and you will sow your seed for naught...". The Torah goes on to describe the ultimate punishment for abrogating the laws of the Torah, exile from the Land of Israel. As it does in other, similar sections, the Torah describes the experience of Exile as horribly harsh, but educational; ultimately the experience will teach the Jewish people the error of their ways and they will turn to God.

At this stage, once the people, in exile, have repented, there is a verse (Chapter 26, verse 42), which describes the beginning of their redemption, and which I would like to focus on:"And I will remember my covenant with Yaakov, and also my covenant with Yitzchak, and also my covenant with Avraham I will remember, and I will remember the land." The commentaries ask a number of questions about this verse; I would like to look at one: why is the word "remember" mentioned in connection with God's covenant with Avraham and Yaakov, and not with that of Yitzchak?

Rashi brings a remarkable Midrash to explain the discrepancy - "Why is remembering not explicitly mentioned in connection with Yitzchak? For, rather [than needing to remember him], Yitzchak's ashes are seen before me, piled up and placed on the altar." The idea seems to be that God needs to perform an act of memory when it comes to Avraham and Yaakov and his connection to them; he needs to conjure them up from the distant past. Yitzchak, on the other hand, doesn't need to be remembered, as he is constantly in God's presence, with Him, in the form of his ashes.

The ashes and the altar clearly refer to the Binding of Yitzchak, in which his father Avraham was commanded to offer him as a sacrifice to God. Avraham agreed, and was prevented from slaughtering his son only by divine intervention at the last moment. The Midrash which Rashi quotes sees the Akedah - the binding, and actual sacrificing, of Isaac - as both an event that did happen (hence the ashes on the altar) and an event that is still happening - the ashes are always on the altar, constantly being offered as a sacrifice to God. Clearly, this Midrash takes us out of the frying pan and into the proverbial fire. The fact that God mentions that He will "remember" His covenant with Avraham and "remember" his covenant with Yaakov, while Yitzchak and his covenant are sandwiched in between them without the word "remember" being used again, can easily be seen as a stylistic choice - to not bore us with too much use of the word "remember".  But this Midrash chooses, instead, to take us to a funny place indeed, where an action which never took place - the slaughtering of Yitzchak by his father and his being burnt on an altar as a sacrifice to God - has not only taken place, but is somehow still happening, so that God's relationship with Yitzchak is not in the realm of memory, not in the past, but, rather, is part of an ongoing, never-ending present, in which Yitzchak is being sacrificed, through eternity, to God.

There is so much to think about here. First of all, there is the notion that an action can be of such magnitude, such importance and moment, that merely a willingness to do it, the simple intent and readiness to act, is itself of tremendous power and meaning. The sacrifice of Yitzchak, which did not, in fact, take place, is so powerful a commitment that it is more real, more present, more in the world, than the actions of the other patriarchs, which really happened, but which now exist only in the realm of memory, from where they must be retrieved by God if He is to relate to them. This Midrash wants to tell us that there are internal 'acts' - ideas, commitments, beliefs, and loyalties, which are so powerful that they overshadow real acts.

To me, this speaks volumes about the importance of intent and will, of commitment. As the Rabbis say - "hakol holech achar hakavana" - everything depends on intent. And, since intent is an interior event, rather than an event which takes place in the physical world, it, unlike physical things, has no end. Unlike things that actually happen, and which have a shelf life, faith, belief, commitment, transcend the limitations of time and space and achieve eternality. This is the strength of the sacrifice which Yitzchak was willing to make, the strength of his commitment, which exists eternally in the presence of God.

There is also a lesson here about the power of potential. A very powerful idea, such as the notion of Avraham offering his beloved son to God, is perhaps most powerful as a wish, an ideal, an unreachable goal which, by being part of the ideal rather than the real, achieves eternality - it lives on forever because it never happened, never could happen, and, actually, never should happen. Its strength lies precisely in its unreal-ness, its unreasonableness. God, Avraham, and Yitzchak had this crazy idea, an idea which pushed the notions of faith and commitment beyond the realm of the real. It was never meant to happen - as Rashi points out in his commentary to the Akedah story, if you look carefully, God never says to kill Yitzchak, just to "raise him up to be a sacrifice" - but the willingness to believe in this ideal, this dream of how committed a person could truly be, is ultimately more powerful, more real, more present, than acts which actually happened in the world.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Shimon Felix