Precisely because we pride ourselves on the power of reason, the Torah includes chukim, statutes, that are impenetrable to reason. Wherever we have passionate desire – eating, drinking, physical relationship – there the Torah places limits on the satisfaction of desire. Thus the Binding of Isaac was not a once-only episode but rather a paradigm for the religious life as a whole.

There are times when “God tells man to withdraw from whatever man desires the most.” We must experience defeat as well as victory.

Rav Soloveitchik explained the Binding of Isaac episode in terms of his own well-known characterisation of the religious life as a dialectic between victory and defeat, majesty and humility, man-the-creative-master and man-the-obedient-servant. What Abraham underwent during the trial was, says Kierkegaard, a “teleological suspension of the ethical,” that is, a willingness to let the I-Thou love of God overrule the universal principles that bind humans to one another. Kierkegaard wrote about it and made the point that ethics is universal. The story is about the awe and love of God. On this principle there was little argument.

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