Would he or wouldn’t he have?
Imagine that Avraham Avinu read and practiced my last week’s Parsha Insight. Do you think he would still have passed the test of the Akeida (offering his son Yitzchak, as per Hashem’s request)? Or, would he have gone deep into his inner internal wisdom and come to the conclusion that offering an only son, or any son for that matter, is just not on?! Put another way, what do we do when our own deep intuitive wisdom is not aligned with G-d’s word in the Torah?
There are only two possible reasons why our inner thoughts may not align with the Torah: Either we have not clearly understood the Torah; or our intuitive wisdom is infested with ego. Pure inner wisdom always coincides with pure truth; ego-infested intuition does not.
There are two approaches we could adopt when misalignment occurs. The first option is to suppress our intuition and obediently and mechanically do as we are told. Who are we to question? Clearly our intuition is unreliable? Our common sense has failed us. This is the approach of fundamentalist extremists of all religions and often brings them to ghastly acts of atrocity in the name of G-d. In less severe cases it simply brings them to act in ways that are unbalanced, unpleasant, undignified, and divisive.
The second approach is that even while we obey G-d’s word as we understand it, we embark on the journey of a relentless quest for alignment between our own inner wisdom and our understanding of the word of G-d. That is the true meaning of Naaseh veNishmah (“we shall hear, and we shall do”). Not that we shall carry out the mitzvot mindlessly and without understanding. Rather, that even after we are doing the mitzvot, we will be relentless in our quest to seek understanding of what it is that we are doing. This understanding comes from reflecting ever more deeply and purely into the Torah’s intention, and ever more deeply and purely into our own feelings and intuitive wisdom.
Understanding why, or understanding what?
Let’s clarify what we mean by “understanding”. Imagine a little boy walking towards a busy street with a ball to which he is inseparably attached. The ball slips out of his hands into the street. About to rush after the ball, the child hears his parent’s unequivocal instruction not to step into the street. The boy knows that abandoning his ball will mean its inevitable demise! He is unaware of the danger and does not understand why his parent has forbidden him to salvage his ball, he simply understands with absolute certainty that his trusted and loved parent has forbidden him to step off the sidewalk. With tears of sadness and frustration he watches his ball roll irretrievably into the busy street. The child’s understanding is not one born of intellectual analysis. It is the emotional and intuitive understanding born out of unconditional love and total trust. It overrides his attachment to his ball. Without in any way minimizing or trivializing his attachment to his ball, the boy has made a value judgment: His attachment to his parent is of higher value than his attachment to his ball.
Sometimes a woman expresses a wish that her husband cannot understand; it may even compete with a wish of his own. A man who is in love with his wife and trusts her judgment implicitly will respond to her wish because he understands what she needs not necessarily why she needs it. If he cannot make that jump from his wishes to her needs, he is either not in love or his ego precludes him from trusting. If he responds to her, then he has made a value judgment: satisfying my wife’s genuine needs is a higher priority than satisfying the needs of my ego.
When the understanding of what is needed in a given situation comes from a mental, analytical weighing up of an emotional “balance sheet”, there will inevitably be interminable arguments and counter-arguments that drain the initiative of its energy and is likely to preclude action. When the understanding comes from a deep, intuitive place, that knowledge comes with complete clarity. It is powerful and propels action.
Avraham: His feelings and his choice
Avraham understood deep inside his heart how passionately he loved Yitzchak and that he would give his own life to protect him. He also understood equally deeply in his heart (this understanding came from Prophecy – an exquisitely deep place of understanding) that G-d’s will was that he sacrificed his son. He understood this with the absolute clarity that can only come with prophecy. This was not a clash between emotion and intellect, nor intuition and rationale. This was a clash between two equally powerful feelings and intuitive understandings. He did not understand “why”. He only understood “that”.
He could have suppressed his feelings for Yitzchak, and with a detached cruelty, performed the will of G-d. He did not do that. He stayed with his feelings of passionate love for his son and shed tears as he performed his strange mitzvah. It was in fact his emotions that Hashem wanted him to elevate to a Divine purpose, not his son [1]. He would have failed the test had he suppressed his emotions.
In the final analysis Avraham made a value judgment. Without trivializing his enormous love for his son, he placed his love of G-d on an even higher plane. With that decision, he elevated the human capacity to love G-d beyond any other object of love.
We make fools of ourselves when our actions are aligned with outer forces (control, manipulation, ignorance) but are counter to our own inner sense of right and wrong. We make fools of ourselves when we lose trust in our common sense and inner wisdom. When we strive to align our feelings with the Torah rather than to suppress them we ennoble ourselves and elevate the meaning of our lives.
Notes:
[1] See Reb Isaac Sher Leket Sichot Musar
