Gender and Jewish Culture

26     Representing the most common interpretation of the story, Berman stresses that the point of Akedah is reenactment of the direct relationship between Abraham and God. Sacrificing Isaac, Abraham is asked to give up his last human connection and to sustain himself, psychologically, emotionally, and so forth only through his unencumbered relationship to God. Berman writes:

In the Akedah, God tests Abraham’s willingness to separate himself—painfully and irreversibly from his son Isaac, as he had commanded Abraham to separate himself from his country, his kindred, and his father’s house. Later he separated himself from Lot. At Sarah’s insistence and with God’s support, Abraham had separated himself from his son Ishmael. Separation is a recurring theme of the Abraham cycle, and the Akedah narrative is only one of many instances in which Abraham confronts the questions: “Can I give up every human connection—social and blood ties—and survive? Is my connection with God really strong enough to sustain me?” (44)

27     Following the same line of argument, Davidson points out that what God asks from Abraham is to separate himself even from God: “Abraham is being tested to the point of seeing whether he is prepared to live with God-given hope and faith destroyed, self-destroyed at God’s command” (52). Trible notices that the nature of faith is to put one’s entire trust in the hands of the divine, the inner voice that guides him, above any family or love relations: “To attach is to practice idolatry. In adoring Isaac, Abraham turns from God. The test, then, is an opportunity for understanding and healing. To relinquish attachment is to discover freedom. To give up human anxiety is to receive divine assurance. To disavow idolatry is to find God [. . .]. Abraham, man of faith, has learned the lesson of nonattachment” (179–181). One might argue that by attaching himself to his inner voice as the only source of self-sustenance, Abraham is, in fact, attaching himself to himself; thus what Akedah also reenacts is a masculine solipsism: Abraham’s inner voice is the only voice to which he is willing to listen. Faith means foremost faith in one’s own infallibility; having faith means that one has chosen oneself only as a valid and authoritative source for divine authority. Yet, “How do you presume to know the mind of God?” To choose God means foremost to choose oneself as the one who chooses God. Abraham, who presumes to know the mind of God, “was before, and therefore above the law” (Delaney 68). By presuming himself to know the mind of God, Abraham made himself into the law. The Law of the Father, thus, is self-evident.

The Law of the Mother? Maternal Instinct and Divine Command

28     Abraham’s leap of faith is the tipping point of female subjection; it is an anamorphic shift that excludes the feminine from the contract with the sacred and from the discourse of the law and ethical agency that the sacred structures. Woman’s responsibility as an ethical subject is erased by her non-participation in the sacrificial exchange between man and divine, which cements man’s subject position toward God as a law giver. Ostriker argues that the Akedah describes the change of the regime from matriarchy to patriarchy, from the primordial Mother-Goddess figure to that of the Father-God, who promotes and advances the cause of patriarchy and who is protected by it. Ostriker also suggests that the purpose of the biblical story was to make it explicit that Abraham could dispose of Isaac in whatever way he wished without Sarah knowing or having any power to influence his decision. The Akedah is a “men’s affair” between the two fathers. The conversation between God and Abraham alone emphasizes the fact that Isaac’s life belongs only to Abraham; Isaac, who is Sarah’s son also, is exclusively a property of the patriarch (41). Thus, the hidden motive of Akedah is to perform the “silencing of a woman,” who has no say about the future and life of her offspring but functions merely as a incubator for the patriarchal lineage. Ostriker summarizes the point:

The biblical story of monotheism and covenant is, to use the language of politics, a cover up [. . .] [to neutralize] female power. Biblical patriarchy [. . .] [commits] repeated acts of literal murder and oppression [. . .]. [F]or its triumph. [. . .] [T]he canonization process throughout history has rested, not accidentally but essentially, on the silencing of women. (30–31)

29     Many feminist scholars point out that the ethical contract between God and Abraham, while based on Abraham’s willingness to detach himself from human emotions, assumes that a) Sarah is incapable of such detachment, and b) her ability to detach herself should not be tested. For Trible (1991), the Akedah represents glorification of the male as a free, detached individual, an ethical subject par excellence. However, Trible points out, the narrative structure of the Bible prior to Genesis 22 suggests that it is Sarah, not Abraham, who should be asked to detach herself from her son. Just as Hagar had to face the possibility of losing Ishmael in Genesis 21, in Genesis 22 it should be Sarah facing the possibility of losing Isaac. Narratively speaking, the stories pair them: Sarah/Hagar and Isaac/Ishmael. Abraham himself never makes his attachment to Isaac explicit prior to Genesis 22, so it is difficult to believe that Isaac’s sacrifice would be a genuine loss for him and not merely a selfish and vain fear of not having a descendant who would pass on his name. Trible continues:

[N]owhere prior to Genesis 22 does Abraham emerge as a man of attachment. That is not his problem. How ill-fitted he is, then, for a narrative of testing and sacrifice [. . .]. In view of the unique status of Sarah and her exclusive relationship to Isaac, she, not Abraham, ought to be tested. The dynamic of the entire saga, from its genealogical preface on, requires that Sarah be featured in the climactic scene, that she learn the meaning of obedience to God, that she find liberation from possessiveness, that she free Isaac from maternal ties, and that she emerge a solitary individual, nonattached, the model of faithfulness. In making Abraham the object of the divine test, the story violates its own rhythm and movement. (189)

30     Other feminist scholars (Fuchs, "Deceptive Women," "Literary Characterization") have also pointed out that not asking the mother to sacrifice her son presupposes that she would not be able to do so: her commitment to patriarchy and to her male child is taken for granted and requires no testing. Maternal instinct is presumed to be above and beyond divine demands; though covertly, the assumption serves the same function: never to question the possibility that a mother might not be committed to propagating the patriarchal lineage. If she is presented as being able to dispose of her male child (such as Hannah), her motives are then interpreted as vicious and selfish (Hannah sacrifices her sons out of vanity, in order to match Abraham’s sacrifice in God’s eyes). Esther Fuchs summarizes the point:

To acknowledge woman’s disinterest in children would undermine one of the major premises of patriarchal thought: that woman always desires to be a mother [. . .] . Only father figures are presented as capable of sacrificing the lives of their children. There is no female counterpart to Abraham and Jepthah, except the mother who sacrifices her son to save her life (2Kgs 6:29), [and thus for her own benefit]. (“Literary Characterization” 133–134)