A Knife Raised, a Page Left Blank
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Reflections on the Akedah and a Woodcut in The 91快播 Library
The Akedah
Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, Ripps Schnitzer Librarian for Special Collections; Assistant Professor, Talmud and Rabbinics
The most terrifying moment in the Binding of Isaac comes just before it ends. Abraham has built the altar. He has bound his son. He has lifted the knife. And then鈥攕uddenly鈥攁 voice from heaven calls, 鈥淒o not stretch your hand against the boy. Do nothing to him.鈥�
The Akedah stands at the heart of Rosh Hashanah, not only as story but as liturgy. In the Zikhronot section of the Musaf service, we remind God not of Abraham鈥檚 belief, but of his submission鈥攈is impossible willingness to sublimate paternal love and fulfill a terrible command. We ask God to do the same: to sublimate divine anger, to restrain the strict demands of justice, to turn away from what is deserved and toward what is merciful. Abraham turned from love to duty. We ask God to turn from judgment to compassion.
At The 91快播 Library, a rare woodcut of the Akedah is tucked into a 17th-century volume of Seder Kodashim. It appears not in a prayer book or Bible, but between two Talmudic tractates on Temple offerings鈥�Zevahim and Menahot. It fills what would otherwise be a blank page, a silence in the structure of the book. On the left side of the image, a ram is caught in the thicket. On the right, Abraham stands over Isaac, knife raised. Smoke rises toward heaven. And in the upper corner, an angel leans out of a cloud.
The artist meant to draw logs beneath the altar鈥攆uel for a burnt offering. But they resemble the pages of a book. Perhaps that鈥檚 coincidence. Perhaps not. Books, after all, are made from wood. And sometimes they are burned. In rabbinic memory, Rabbi 岣nina ben Teradyon was wrapped in a Torah scroll and set alight. As the flames rose, his students asked him what he saw. He said, 鈥淭he parchment burns, but the letters fly upward.鈥�
Isaac was spared; Rabbi 岣nina was not. The olah (burnt offering) is not always interrupted. The Greek word holocaustos鈥攃onsistently chosen by Septuagint to translate olah鈥攎eans 鈥渨holly consumed.鈥� Rosh Hashanah asks us to remember a sacrifice that did not happen and to draw merit from the willingness nonetheless. Abraham offered more than faith. Isaac offered more than submission. They offered the human will鈥攔estrained, terrible, and transcendent.
When we open the book to that old woodcut, we see wood shaped like pages, fire shaped like prayer, and memory shaped like mercy. The knife is raised. The angel speaks. The sacrifice is paused鈥攂ut not forgotten.
