Shabbat Shalom-
The name of my torah portion is Vayera, and I'm going to be honest. It is not a happy or lighthearted portion. I mean it is about Abraham almost sacrificing his son because God told him to, and I don't know about you but that kind of sounds gruesome.
This story starts when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac. Abraham then takes Isaac to mount Moriah where he builds the altar and makes the offering to god. When Abraham is at the top of the mountain about to lay his hand on Issac, an angel comes down and tells Abraham not to kill Issac. Abraham listens to the angel, and finds a ram stuck in a bush that he decides to sacrifice instead.
Now when I read this story, I had many questions, but one stood out to me. What is loyalty to God, and how far does one have to go to be loyal to god? Many people have tried to interpret what the reasoning of this story is and how it fits with the rest of the torah.
One interpretation of the story comes from Maimonides, who was one of the smartest Rabbis to ever exist. He was born in Cordoba Spain in 1138 and lived until 1204. Maimonides explains that God was giving Abraham a test. The test was to see if Abraham would be loyal to God even if God asked him to do something terrible. Obviously, this was a hard decision for Abraham because he could either let his son live and disobey god or sacrifice his son and make himself and his wife sad and angry. And because Isaac was a miracle child this would make the challenge much harder. So Abraham took the two sides and considered them and finally let one side win out over the other even if that meant making his wife mad. He chose loyalty to God over his own happiness and his wife’s happiness. It took the angel sent by God to make him realize that there were other ways to show loyalty to God.
An example of a decision in my life that was going to make one side happy but one side angry or disappointed is when my family got our cat. My dad didn’t want a cat, but the rest of my family did. So we had to decide if we were going to make my dad happy and not adopt our cat, or if we were going to adopt a kitten who needed a home and make the rest of us happy. Even though it didn’t make my dad that happy we ended up adopting the cat. Just like the angel showed Abraham that there were other ways to be loyal to God, we learned that there were ways to show my dad that we cared about him even though we made a decision he didn’t like. We had to be responsible for our decision, which meant caring for the cat and making sure that it was fed and had a nice safe house. While getting a cat is not nearly as serious as sacrificing a child, it was an important decision that required us to consider different perspectives.
Rabbi Harold Kushner, born in 1935 in Brooklyn New York, described another way in which people have interpreted the story. Rabbi Kushner said that God was trying to give Abraham a different perspective on child sacrifice. In many other religions at the time people would sacrifice children as a gift to their god or gods. But God wanted to teach Abraham there were ways to worship god and give god gifts that did not require sacrificing a human being. So at the end, God gave Abraham a ram to sacrifice instead.
Over the summer I read a book that changed my perspective on an important issue. This book was called Just Mercy. It was the true story of a lawyer who worked to prevent people who were wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death row from being executed, especially people of color in southern states. Reading the story gave me a whole new perspective on prisons and the death penalty. Before I read the book I had no idea how terribly inmates were treated in jail. I also didn’t understand how many black people were wrongfully convicted of crimes. This made me realize that the death penalty is wrong. As I saw a different perspective on the death penalty and treatment in prisons, Abraham came to have a new understanding of how to worship God.
Another way that this story has been interpreted is by Me’am Loez, Rabbi YaakovI’m . God trusted Abraham to make the right decision. Not only that, but God also trusted Abraham to do what Abraham believed in under serious circumstances. In Just Mercy, Brian Stephenson chose to continue with his case defending a person of color who had been wrongfully convicted in the 1960s, even though he was receiving death threats and hate messages commanding him to stop. Like Abraham, Brian Stephenson made the choice he believed in despite the many consequences. He could have decided to give up the case in order to live safely, but he chose to continue and risk his own life.
There have been many things that I have learned about myself preparing for a bar mitzvah in the middle of a pandemic. One thing is that I am good at adapting to change. Because we obviously can't meet in big groups it has certainly been hard to do video learning especially with a language I am not so familiar with. I have also learned that I can think very deeply about a question and come up with multiple answers. For this Torah portion there is not one explanation, so I had to really think and look at all the different opinions and find what made the most sense to me.
The way I think about this Torah portion is that it answers the question, “What is loyalty to God?” To me, loyalty to God is attending services, wearing a kippah in the sanctuary, and reading from the Torah when you’re old enough. Loyalty to God should not involve giving up your basic beliefs. A current example of this is being homophobic or racist or sexist as part of your religion. In the torah portion, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his son in order to show loyalty to God. In Rambam’s interpretation, this was a test. And in my opinion I think Abraham failed the test because he gave up his basic values to be loyal to God.
There are many people in my own life who have helped to make sure I dont fail. Many people who have helped me reach where I am today and who have impacted me in more ways than just tutoring me and helping me write this speech. I would like to thank my parents and my sister for helping me and supporting me through this big step in my jewish life, as well as helping me learn through a very difficult time because i know it has not been easy for anyone. I would also like to thank Rabbi Barbra for helping me think harder about My portion and making sure I have considered all of the details, as well as teaching me about the different ways people look at stories from the Torah. I would also like to give a big thank you to my cousin Jack for making everything more fun in life and also relieving some of the stressful moments in the process of becoming a bar mitzvah. Also my grandparents Nana, Pa and GG for taking interest in everything I like to do even if it isn’t your favorite. As well as teaching me about my family history. Nana and Pa, you have always been cheering me on from the sideline whether it is soccer or school. And GG I know it was important to Grammy and is important to you to keep the Jewish tradition alive in my life. Special Thanks to Hillary for making sure that my Jewish education has been fun, friendly and safe. I would like to give a big thanks to Morrah Missie for helping me understand my haftorah and torah, and not only that but also teaching me trope and the tune of the hebrew. But aside from the hebrew she also taught me why words were there and what they meant. Some very important people are my friends and I would like to thank them for always being there for me when I needed help or making me laugh when I wasn't in a good mood. To my Chaverim School class--thank you for being there with me since I was very young and I enjoyed learning with you all in class.
Shabbat Shalom!