Gender and Jewish Culture

“Fear and Trembling”: The Ethical Paradox of the Ethical Subject

6     Modern philosophy adopted Abraham as a synonym of “fear and trembling.” Kierkegaard sees the Akedah as the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” God tests Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son and, thus, to transgress his own commandment: “thou shall not kill,” yet thou must kill. (It is actually Satan who appears to Abraham while he is on his way to sacrifice Isaac to remind him that “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.”) Between his ethical allegiance to his son and his teleological allegiance to God, who simultaneously asks him to kill and not to kill, Abraham, according to Kierkegaard, experiences the horror of moral aporia that can be transcended either by the complete rejection of God or by a leap of faith. Kierkegaard writes that in ascending Mount Moriah, Abraham “left one thing behind, took one thing with him: he left his earthly understanding behind him and took his faith with him — otherwise he would have wandered forth but would have thought this unreasonable” (31). Abraham leaps and never vacillates.[3]See also Davidson, R. "The Courage to Doubt". London: SCM, 1983.

7     Many Jewish scholars have argued that Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Akedah as a choice between human and divine law is a strictly Christian (or post-Greek) interpretation. They specifically object to Kierkegaard’s suggestion that by his willingness to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham was ready to “abandon every principle of morality.” Such an interpretation suggests that to obey God means to be immoral. “Rabbi Joseph Gumbiner has asserted that Kierkegaard used the Akedah story to portray the essence of Christian faith as rising above logic and reason and perhaps calling for the suspension of the ethical” (Berman 148). L. A. Berman represents one viewpoint on the argument, suggesting that the title of Kierkegaard’s book Fear and Trembling “conveys the author’s conviction that Abraham must have had a truly dreadful experience. Kierkegaard writes: ‘When I have to think of Abraham, I am as though annihilated. [. . .] I am paralyzed’” (Berman 21). Such an emotion, Berman believes, is inconceivable because being spoken to by God cannot arouse dread.[4]Some Jewish thinkers do follow Kierkegaard’s interpretation of Abraham’s emotions as “fear and trembling.” For example, “Elie Wiesel describes the episode as ‘terrifying in content.’ Similarly, David Polish describes Abraham after he has heard God’s command that he offer up his son: ‘He is a shattered man, going almost trancelike toward a deadly act that he must carry out but with less than perfect faith. God commands, Abraham submits. There is no conversation, only the sentence of doom and the silent response’” (Berman 39–40). God’s command cannot arouse “fear and trembling,” and submitting to it cannot mean sacrificing the ethical. God cannot ask one to commit the unethical because God is the ethical.[5]See also Gellman, J. I. <em>The Fear, the Trembling, and the Fire: Kierkegaard and the Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac</em>. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1994.

8     Berman further points out that in Talmud, there is an idea of “sinning for the sake of God.” “This is a concept, translated from Hebrew averah lishmah, made explicit in Talmud. There it is written: ‘A sin for the sake of Heaven is greater that a commandment done not for the sake of Heaven’” (50). God is the supreme good, and one may transgress his own commandment for his own sake. Berman elaborates:

Just as secular lore includes the contradictory proverbs “The end justifies the means” and “The end does not justify the means,” rabbinical lore includes a rule that says the opposite of “one may sin for the sake of God.” The rule, mitzvah ha-baa b-avera means “it is forbidden to commit a sin in order to perform a mitzvah.” An example given by Maimonides is that one may not steal a lulav in order to properly celebrate Succoth. That is to say, the sin cannot be greater than (or even as great as) the mitzvah it permits. (50)

Though there is also a rule that forbids one to commit one sin to avoid another, God as supreme value justifies all action performed for his sake. One cannot sin for the sake of something or someone other than God. God is the end that justifies all means. Even if God’s will remains unknown, or especially when his will remains unknown, to submit to him means to “express the highest ethical values.” As Berman puts it: “Even in matters that are not understood [. . .] the conduct of a God-fearing person will express the highest ethical values, and eventually in God’s own time, may know the reasons for each and every commandment” (115). God’s way may be mysterious and his commands may be paradoxical, but one who trusts him cannot feel the horror of moral aporia. God himself precludes such an emotion. Berman continues:

The Bible presents a point of view that God cannot be understood, that God is unknowable, a mystery [. . . ]. The Akedah stands on the monumental paradox that God ordered Abraham to commit the gravest of sins, the sacrificial slaughter of a human being. The narrative opens with the words “God tested Abraham” as if to reassure the reader in advance: it was never intended that Isaac actually be slaughtered; this was only a test. Still, it is a paradox that God should ask for the sacrifice of Isaac, and that Abraham—who had argued with God over the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah—should carry it out without a word of protest. (45–49)

9     Though God’s commandments may not be immediately clear, one who trusts him does not need to leap into this trust, as Kierkegaard framed it. To trust means to be beyond leaping, not having to leap because one never did question what one was supposed to leap into. Reik elaborates on this point: “The prevailing difference between the world of the Old Testament and that of the New lies in the distinction between trust and faith. Kierkegaard regards faith as an ‘action.’ Trust is, in contrast to faith, an attitude and has no aim. Abraham, who trusts, does not need to make need to make those ‘movements upward’ nor ‘the leap’ of which Kierkegaard speaks. The patriarch walks humbly before his God” (63). Humility before God makes any “fear and trembling” incomprehensible. There is one school of interpretation of Abraham’s story according to which Abraham sacrifices Isaac out of his love for his son: if at the instant he were to choose Isaac over God, he would idolize his son, thus bringing upon him God’s wrath. This interpretation, however, presupposes Abraham’s faith in God a priori. Thus, whether out of love for God or for Isaac, Akedah is an ultimate fulfillment of Abraham’s sacred responsibility—a validation of God’s very being. Trust is the highest expression of faith that one does not need to leap into. Since Abraham trusts God, he does not choose between God and Isaac: he has chosen Isaac by choosing God.

“Dying for Another”: Reciprocity and Rhetoric of the Gift of Death

10      For Derrida (1995), Abraham’s story is also a story of origins. (The cover illustration of the English edition of The Gift of Death is Rembrandt’s rendition of Akedah). Derrida sees Abraham’s story in the light of both traditions, Christian and Jewish, as both a mystery, mysterium tremendum, and as an ethical paradox. What connects the two interpretations is the economy of the sacrificial exchange: death functions as an axis around which the mechanism of faith, responsibility, and ethics fashions Abraham as an ethical subject. Moreover, Derrida interprets the story as it came to stand in the popular Western tradition, that is, in connection with the crucifixion of Christ. Reading the two stories together, Derrida draws a parallel between the two sacrificial contracts: both God and Man sacrifice their sons for each other; man to prove his devotion to God, and God to save man from eternal damnation. In seeing the two stories as connected through the cognitive link, rather than through any temporal or causal relationship, Derrida is close to Auerbach’s interpretation. Derrida suggests that because it reciprocates the gift of death, Abraham’s story lays the foundation of Western Judeo-Christian ethics of faith and responsibility: it links the two in the image of the sacred. It is the double gift of death between God and Abraham, the nature of the double sacrificial contract that adds a divine aspect to the Platonic mystery. Without Abraham’s sacrifice, there is no sacrificial responsibility, no economy of the gift of death that binds man and God through faith and responsibility; in fact, without the sacrifice, there is no God. Akedah, the binding of Isaac, has a double meaning: literally, it represents the binding of Isaac to the altar; symbolically, it operates within the sacrificial economy of the gift of death that binds man and God. Man’s devotion is rewarded by eternal salvation: Christ dies for mankind.