It is a well-publicized fact through the hebrew school system in America that our forefather Avraham was tested with 10 tests. I know for myself that in my nursery school years we made more than one arts-and-crafts project attempting to bring these tests to life with colored cellophane, cotton balls, and even "googley eyes". Despite this, it is difficult for most of us to connect these tests to our lives in any real way.
Look: jumping into a fire -- not happening; circumcision -- I didn't have much of a say in the matter; being asked to sacrifice my firstborn -- even if it were to come up, I saw the end of the parsha last week -- it won't be much of a test!
The tests Avraham went through lie on the fringe of human experience, well beyond the tests the average person faces in his life. Moreover, it is in the nature of these tests to be one-off shots, and therefore, even though any single one was an event of major intellectual, emotional and even physical strain on Avraham, they were all events. But what about us -- in the day-to-day grind of our lives -- we have our trying events too -- but what about all the moments in between -- what are we tested in? And of what cosmic significance are they if they are dwarfed in the light of Avraham's epic achievements?
The 10th Test
It is the mishna which first alerts us that G!d officially tested Avraham 10 times (Pirkei Avot 5:3). The rishonim (medieval sages), each through his own analysis, comes out with different lists for which exactly were the 10 tests. The most natural choice for the last test, if we assume there is an aspect of increasing challenge is of course the Akeida (the binding of Isaac), and indeed, this is the opinion of the Rambam and Rashi. However, Rabbeinu Yonah, from left field, brings the Akeida as #9! And even though he notes that this is "the biggest [of all the tests]," there is a critical 10th test which the other rishonim failed to give proper importance to: the burial of Sarah his wife.
Rabbeinu Yonah is not referring here to the death of Sarah -- he specifically writes that "[her] burial" was the 10th test. What about burying a loved one is so unique to Avraham? Death is a sad fact of life, one that all of us must face -- Avraham was not the first nor the last to have to tend to the burial of his wife. So, how was the Almighty challenging Avraham in the burial of Sarah to merit its place as the 10th and final test?
R' Yonah goes on to explain the test: the Creator of Heaven and Earth tells you that the entire land of Israel will be yours (Bereishit 13:17), yet when you get to Kiryat Arba to bury your loved one, you have to go through a whole song and dance with the locals, wait to state your request to the figurehead, and purchase it for some exorbitant amount of money...all the while wondering: "didn't they get the memo?"
If we zoom into the text of the Chumash, we can see this emphasis with more clarity. Avraham's opening line is:
"גר ותושב אנכי עמכם"
"I am a foreigner and resident with you" (23:3).The pshat simple understanding is that "I was a foreigner, and now I have come to reside with you" (Rashi's 1st explanation). But Rashi isn't fully satisfied with this fluffy/fudged reading of the text, and neither should we.
If we're truly rigorous with the words as they appear, the deeper reading, what we call "the drash" emerges ("drash" comes from the root לדרוש meaning "to seek out" or "demand [from the text]"). Why is Avraham opening with such a parve statement? He seems to be expressing that somehow he is simultaneously a foreigner and a resident! Based on these questions, Rashi articulates the drash -- the undercurrent, unspoken, psychological message buried in the seemingly innocuous exchange of words:
"If you want to be civil, I can relate to you as a foreigner; if not, I will relate to you as the resident that I am, and I will confiscate this land according to the law that is on my side since the Almighty promised it to me."Between the pshat and the drash (the simple and deeper readings) lies the tension in the scene -- a tension so thick you could pinch it. A tension that is kept at bay between Avraham's heart and his lips.
Despite the Divine mandate behind him, the recent death of his wife, and having just returned from the spiritual tour de force and jolting experience of almost slaughtering his son, Avraham was being courteous and maintaining his composure.
All this while the Benei Cheit (the local people) fawn over Avraham, calling him "the prince of G!d," and initially talking big about giving him the plot of land for free, and then without skipping a beat, set up a mock-bureaucratic leader who snyly puts his offer on the table, " My master, listen to me... land worth 400 silver shekels -- between me and you -- what is it?," only to immediately accept that very sum swiftly and silently (23:6, 23:10 w/Rashi, 23:15-16). If we look at it with the right sensitivity, the scene looks straight out of a Monty Python skit in its absurdity, and Avraham, who at this point, is thinking anything but comedy, stands his ground.
The anti-event
Coming down from the spiritual heights on Mount Moriah of the Akeida down to the very technical, nitty gritty exchanges for a gravesite juxtaposes the ultimate event with the anti-event. Whereas the Akeida was a one-time event which can never be paralleled, going through the technicalities of burying one's wife is the lowest common denominator expected from any decent human being, an act which no one will get a "yasher koach" for.
My father-in-law's neighbor told me once that the hardest part of serving as a soldier in the Yom Kippur war was coming back to his parents' house expecting a heroic welcome, and being asked to take out the trash before he sat down. The climax of the drama of the war came crashing down with the mundanity of household chores and the ingratitude of others.
We can now appreciate that Rabbeinu Yonah called the Akeida "the biggest" of all the tests. It certainly was. It doesn't get more epic than to be asked by G!d to go against everything you've ever stood for, and offer your son as a sacrifice, and succeed. This may be true -- but it was not the truly climactic test -- it may not even have been the most difficult of the tests. All that tremendous energy, all the drama of the Akeida, Avraham had to swallow as he found his wife dead. What followed was not G!d's command; simple common sense and human sensitivity demanded that Avraham bury his wife. The final test was not big -- it was small. Lots of small and subtle mini-tests. The smallness of this test is itself its challenge! When something is an event, we can rise to it, but when it's just a moment in our day, what exactly are we rising to?
The 10th test of Avraham is the essential human test because for any person, even Avraham, he has more non-events than events in his life. We see that the sum total of every interaction -- every moment in which Avraham kept smiling, kept his cool, and did his duty as a husband is considered to be the pinnacle of human achievement from G!d's perspective, even higher than the one-time event of the Akeida. More precisely, we can say that the greatness of any moment of achievement in our life is revealed through its residual expression in the small nooks and crannies as the event washes away.
The anti-event generation
We live in an era of ultra-specialization juxtaposed to global thinking.
As scientific knowledge expands, scientific discoveries are increasingly local. The academic subject that used to be called by the Greeks as "natural philosophy," is now subdivided in our universities into: particle physics, astrophysics, theoretical physics, physical chemistry, chemistry, biochemistry, epistemology, ontology, linguistics, etc.
The flipside is that barraged by news from around the planet, the average student graduating college has dreams of changing the world.
The extreme tension between these two tendancies can be suggested as the impetus for millions of people around the world to unplug from their daily life and plug into a virtual world called "Second Life," a world in which they are assured that every move they make is significant and digitally accounted for.
The Torah world is no exception. After the Tannaim, Amoraim, Rishonim, and Achronim have spoken, a person can think: "what do I have to add?"
In response to talk about ירידת הדורות, the decline of generations, a Jew may think to himself, "what am I going to do that's so different?"
The 10th test of Avraham is the quintessential test for posterity. More and more it becomes imperative for us to appreciate the grandeur of its anti-grandeur. I am afraid that even as we read these words, the intrinsic anti-climax of this concept will drain the lesson of its power -- but try we must. Surely, when we appreciate the small moment of redemption in front of us -- genuinely listening to the person speaking to us, understanding this idea on the page, articulating this bracha with sincerity, then and only then will we be capable of appreciating the redemption we are asking for.
This dvar Torah is based primarily on the ideas developed by Rav Eliyahi Dessler in Michtav MiEliyahu IV:245 and Rav Emmanuel Bernstein in his Dvar Mikra.
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