Avraham, Avraham!

One of my favorite parts of Jewish History right now is actually reading the stories from the תנייך. Of course I have already heard the majority of the stories but I almost never actually read into the meaning of the words. During my Jewish History exam the other day, I was writing an essay and somehow connected it to the story of Va-Yera, when Abraham was about to sacrifice Issac. While my eyes glossed over the page I notice in English that it said, "Abraham, Abraham" and I thought for a second how strangely familiar it sounded. Of course it rang a bell in my head, because that was the Torah portion that I read at this years High Holy Day service on יום קיפור. I remember two or three years ago when my brother had that same portion and I always thought, "why is it repeating Abraham twice?" I had my own guess that it was the end of one sentence and the beginning of another, but clearly I was wrong. I never took the time out of my day to connect that what I was reading was G-D saying to Abraham, "no no, stop Abraham., don’t sacrifice your son." After I finished my test I went back to my room and chanted the portion in Hebrew and read the English. I was amazed to find out the real meaning of the words that I sang so many times. In the parsha it says that Abraham has bound Isaac to the alter and has picked up his knife. I think my favorite part of the story is when G-D tells Abraham to stop and not sacrifice his son.

While we were at Tel Gezer, we talked about how the Cannonites preformed human sacrifices. One of the things that differentiated Judaism from these other religions of the time were that along with being monotheistic, they also did not preform human sacrifices. Wether we know or not if these stories are true, we can take away morals from this story about respecting other people above all. One of the major themes throughout the Tanakh is respecting others and in a way, that has to do with not sacrificing your children.