Can’t get over the prominence of the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac in my childhood. Can’t get over the prominence of the moral of God above family and friends in my childhood. That always tore me apart.
I remember asking a staff member at my camp “how do you have faith like Abraham, I want to believe I could trust God that much, but I don’t think I could”. I felt so guilty for not fully trusting God.
Yeah, it was pretty wild to go from, “you only need faith as small as a mustard seed,” to “you need to have so much faith that you would kill a family member for god’s shit and giggles.”
Look y’all I know that’s how that story is taught but literally that is not the moral of the story, Abraham failed that damn test, and I will stand behind this interpretation until I die.
That’s not how the story was taught at all at my shul.
Not only does G-d never speak to Abraham again, Torah tells us he came down from the mountain ALONE.
The price of him not questioning was the loss of his son in a totally different way. The bond was broken. He completely and utterly failed on all counts.
Damn I wish I could show this interpretation to my mom. I know she wouldn’t get it, but like, maybe if she could, she’d understand how deeply she hurt me when this conversation played out about her not being willing to accept my transition.
“What would I tell my pastor, huh? That I’m fine with letting you turn away from God’s will?”
“Who is more important to you, your child or your pastor? Because I don’t understand why you’d lose either of us, but if it did come down to that, who are you here for, me or him? Are your children not the most important people in your life?”
And she responded in a way that left probably a permanent scar even if she does ever come around. “Im here for God. He made you a woman and I respect His path for your life over the ungrateful one you’re trying to set for yourself.
And I think in her heart she believes it is the moral choice to place honoring what she thinks is God’s wishes over her childrens’ wellbeing.
But this interpretation says No. Don’t persecute your children in the name of God!
I’m not even religious, but damn if this interpretation didn’t put some salve on that scar of mine.
@dino-nugget7 also worth noting is that Isaac made the same mistake with his children, pitting Jacob and Esau against each other, and for his pains he was stricken blind at the end of his life and couldn’t see either of them. Torah has A LOT to say on this subject. So does the Christian Bible: Colossians says “fathers, vex not your children, lest they become disenheartened.”
Your mother, full stop, was wrong, and so is any “church” that taught her this was the way to go.
You know what? I’m not done.
Torah shows us an act of gender transformation. When Eve is created, she comes from a man. There’s nothing shameful or unnatural indicated in how she comes to be. And in Tanakh, in the psalms, we have “you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, how well I know it.” If G-d made and knew you before you were born, then he knows what’s up and what your soul is like. “Man looks at the outward appearance, but G-d looks at the heart.”
Tanakh makes it clear. If your heart says you’re a man, and G-d knew and created you to have that heart, then so you are, and that was intentional.
If anyone’s interested in some resources for more on the topics explored in this post…
Check out this post by @wild-desert-highway “It was for Hagar” for a similar take on the story of Abraham’s failure in the sacrifice of Isaac story.
“…And then God turned to Abraham and said your turn. Take your son, your beloved son, Abraham, the promise for your future, and take the life from his lungs. You had no remorse to do the same thing to Ishmael - Ishmael, your son. …”
I highly recommend trans Jewish scholar Joy Ladin’s The Soul of the Stranger: Reading God and Torah from a Transgender Perspective. In that book, you’ll find:
various characters in the Torah (including Abraham and Sarah) as “gender failures” according to their cultures;
and more figures (including Jacob) whose stories can be read through a queer lens
stuff about Adam and Eve when it comes to gender constructs – the “origin” of gender, of gender roles, and then of patriarchy
God as the ultimate stranger
I’m also gonna promote some of my own stuff like a dork but it relates to this post’s content, plus i draw from both Christian and Jewish sources.
A section of my website blessedarethebinarybreakers.com features a “timeline of gender diversity in – and pre – Christian history.” It’s written from my own Christian lens, but I did my utmost to make the page on the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible; the “Old Testament”) reflective of Jewish views as well, with much of my citations coming from Jewish authors. On that page you’ll find:
the first human (ha-adam) as a genderfull or genderless figure who becomes both Adam and Eve (rather than being exclusively Adam to start with), and what that means for how we can interpret Genesis 1-3 in terms of gender and sex
Sarah and Abraham as intersex
Joseph read from a trans lens, with the famous colorful coat being translated as a “princess dress”
Trans look at the eunuchs of the Hebrew Bible
I have a sermon that focuses on Abraham called “No Good Patriarchs” that wrestles with another uncomfortable part of his story – his abuse of the enslaved woman Hagar
And another sermon that continues that previous sermon’s themes called “Jacob and Esau - Imagining Beyond Ourselves” that reads Jacob as an underdog as one assigned secondborn at birth who fights the oppression against him only to assimilate into the structures that once oppressed him…
*sips on this steaming tea*
