What We See, is What We Get

Parshas Vayeirah: The world we build for ourselves

As powerful dramas go, the Akeidah (Binding of Yitzchak) story has secured its place in history. It has inspired artwork from the great painters Caravaggio, and Paolo Veronese, hit songs such as Leonard Cohen's 'Hineni' and verse by War Poet Wilfred Owens. But have they all missed the point? At first encounter, there is something in the narrative of Avraham's final test that seems a bit, dare I say it… Anti-climatic!

Let's compare the trial of the Akeidah to the challenge Avraham faced in 'Ur Kashdim', where Nimrod threw him into a furnace. Avraham had not yet experienced a prophetic encounter with God, yet he was willing to give up his life for monotheism out of raw conviction alone. Conversely, by the Akeidah, Avraham was ordered into action directly by God himself. The task of slaughtering his son would have been unimaginably painful, but was the Avraham that we know ever likely to refuse an explicit instruction from God?

Rabbi Gershon Leiner {author of the Mei Hashiloach and the first Rebbe of Ishbitz} answers that God had been intentionally vague with what he wanted. Avraham had already prophecised that he would father a great nation through Yitzchak, which would be impossible if he were to slaughter his son at the altar. Furthermore, the Zohar informs us that the clarity of God's order was qualitatively inferior to Avraham's previous prophetic encounters. Finally, murder being such an instinctive prohibition, exponentially compounded Avraham's dilemma.

From the overarching ambiguity of this saga, Rabbi Leiner senses a motif of uncertainty. He sees this expressed within the verse's depiction of Avraham, identifying the sacrificial location 'from far away'. God designed this trial as a litmus test to reveal whether Avraham possessed the requisite spiritual sensitivity to disregard all personal biases and recognise his creator's desire through the mist of possible interpretations. 

But what was it that gave Avraham such searing clarity? It is impossible to miss the repetition of seeing and vision dotted throughout the narrative. For example, the verse describes Avraham as having 'lifted his eyes', only Avraham and Yitzchak saw a cloud hovering over the mountain, and the verse names the Akeidah's location as "Hashem yirah", ‘on this mountain God is seen'. 

It is fascinating that the Torah portrays the notion of vision as playing such a central role in Avraham's challenge of discerning what is real. The connection between seeing and our perception of reality is an obvious one. What we see is to us what feels true. For example, we may intellectually grasp the abstract occurrence of quantum entanglement, but it has none of the visceral actuality of gravity. After all, gravity's results play out in front of our eyes. No surprise, then, that the colloquialism 'seeing is believing' retains its place in popular parlance. 

While we may think of what we see as non-negotiable facts, that assumption is far from certain. Philosophically Kant showed that we build all exterior knowledge off an a priori (previously held) set of beliefs. Psychologically Freud introduced the idea of projection. Jung would say that we perceive our shadow (the rejected part of ourselves) in our surroundings, colouring how we regard outside interactions. In truth, the Hassidic and 'Mussar' masters preceded the modern psychologist in understanding this aspect of the psyche. Famously, the Baal Shem Tov {The founder of Hassidus} taught that "your fellow is your mirror", but we can also apply this principle to how we perceive truth in general. In other words:

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Our world is the mirror we hold up to ourselves. 

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The Degel Machne Ephraim {Ephraim of Sudilkov, the grandson of the Bal Shem Tov} further explains that the core of our world-building capability stems from man's formation 'in the image of God'. God is referred to as 'Hamakom' , the place, because He is the place in which the world exists. Just as God created a world within Himself, so do we have the capability of forging our inner world. 

This assertion that our biases form the world we experience may sound strikingly post-modern, but there's a catch. God has endowed us with the ability to 'create' a personal universe in this temporary state of existence. But when our soul returns to our maker, we face the repercussions of falsehood. The nature of ‘the world to come’ is one of unadulterated truth, and to the extent that our soul has buried itself in a false reality, the more it will struggle to root its presence. As a result, the soul experiences a paradoxical state of simultaneous existence and non-existence. Its essence remains a reality, but the false space inhabited during its life has vanished, causing us pain. Rav Moshe Shapiro explains that this state of flux is what the sages call the 'suffering' of Gehenom

Our discussion reveals that Avraham was far more than just a religious seeker. He was a person who tuned his vision of the world in line with God's master plan. The story of the Akeidah displays this in grandeur, structuring his spiritual triumph parallel to his ability to see and form his world the way God desired. 

If only we could replicate this! But with most of us possessing inferior spiritual makeup to Avraham, our created worlds are far less reflective of God's pristine truth. What, then, are the means for navigating this confusing state?

In approaching this quandary, the metaphor of sight continues to be fruitful. The fact that we have two eyes, receiving light waves from slightly variant angles, is a factor that allows us to perceive spatial depth. In its physical form, Torah represents the confluence of two opposing vantage points. Torah's knowledge is the wisdom of God, yet simultaneously our sages tell us that it's written in the 'language of man'. Our general surroundings seem devoid of holiness and are, at best, mundane. Still, the Torah's dual lens can transform even ordinary occurrences into a cornucopia of meaning. We may not be Avraham, but through Torah, we too can be creators of worlds.

Good Shabbos, and Keep Pondering!