The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice

177 Pages·1993·1.37 MB·English

by  Shalom Spiegel

FRONTISPIECE: The Sacrifice of Isaac (Isma’il), a single miniature from a
manuscript of the Majma’al-tāwarikh by Hafiz-i Abrū, prepared ca. A. D. 1425
for the library of Bāysunghur, son of Shahrukh. School of Herat, Persia. See
further below, pp. 40f., and cf. Introduction, p. xi, n.*.

CONTENTS

Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
The Last Trial
The Akedah
Index of Biblical References
Index of Midrashic-Talmudic Sages

About the Author & Translator
Copyright
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Preface

Shalom Spiegel’s Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah, written as an introduction to a
twelfth-century poem by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn which Spiegel had decided to
edit, comment on, and publish for the first time, appeared originally in 1950 as a
contribution to the Jubilee Volume in honor of Alexander Marx. (Two
supplements appeared in 1953 and 1964, also in Festschriften.) Spiegel
generously sent me an offprint and it arrived a few days before the eve of Rosh
Hashana. No holiday before or since so overpowered my limping religiosity,
moods and fractured pieties as did that monograph. So in the ten days of that
season I reread the work at least two more times. By Yom Kippur even the tiny
shambling Iowa City synagogue no longer felt dilapidated, but like the right
stage-setting for loud outcry. I think that an ornate upper-middle-class prayer
house—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, whatever—characteristic of theatre
auditoriums American prosperity has led to would not have roused the emotional
response produced by my first readings of Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah in that
nebbich midwest shul. But that may be sentimentality, if not worse.
Of course, there was Spiegel’s tiffany prose. Who in the world wrote such
Hebrew? No wonder he was the envy (poorly disguised) of sundry colleagues.
To be sure, in belletristic composition there was Agnon. But Spiegel’s ambition
was not fiction of remembrance of east-European past. It was scholarship, text
analysis with detailed documentation and footnotes and variant transcriptions:
the impedimenta of reading for pleasure. Since elegance of style was typical
Spiegel in all his writings and habitual speech, it was no surprise, but still a
delight, to encounter it again. But this time, the theme! The command to
Abraham to offer up his precious son as sacrifice: altar, fire, knife. Why, it was
the very Torah-reading of the second day of Rosh Hashana. Inevitably Spiegel’s
scholarly treatment of the beginnings of the theme through half the middle ages
would lodge in the mind on that day. But it’s not dislodged even when that
Genesis chapter is read in the routine annual cycle.
For the Akedah story, Genesis XXII, is indeed one of the most terrifying
narratives in all of Scripture. Will nothing less than an order that the father with
his own hand slay his favorite son satisfy the deity of a biblical patriarch? Is that
a test or a reign of terror? So profound was the effect of this account on Jewish
memory and speculation, every generation of Jews invoked it as leitmotif for its
own trials and tragedies. It also penetrated deep into Christianity for its own
purposes.
And the poem by Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn incorporated a statement so wild, it
suspends credulity: that Abraham slaughtered twice! How take it seriously? Did
the poet lose control of his rhetoric? So Spiegel undertook to prove that nothing
wild, nothing exaggerated led the poet to say what he did. There were indeed
two slaughterings, not one, and bystanders bore witness to it. Don’t be
astonished, therefore, that for the poet, angels on high cried out in extremis.
During the last two decades or so, it has been interesting to note how
frequently the Akedah story has become the theme of a number of teachers and
public lecturers. Except for sermons, I do not recall such frequent publicity
announcements on campuses and in popular magazines before approximately the
1970s.
Naturally this is not to say that no one else (especially in the nineteenth
century) discussed Akedah problems critically before Spiegel. He himself
reviewed the works of a number of them. But it is definitely to say that I am
familiar with no discussion of the theme as thoroughgoing, as erudite, as critical,
as perceptive, as discovering as Spiegel’s. And, I want to add, as unhomiletical.
And his identification of the original context of the eye-for-eye prescription is
breathtaking.
The translation into English was undertaken when a New Haven colleague
who could not read Hebrew protested bitterly, “Here is obviously a very
important study, and you people keep it to yourselves.” So the American Council
of Learned Societies sponsored its publication. Not long after the translation
appeared, a copy was found lying on top of the desk of a leading art historian in
Princeton. Forty-three years after its initial publication (and what years!) the
book still addresses us directly, even if temporarily we postpone reflection on
what the ram teaches. And since 1950, every time one recalls the Akedah, the
mind translates: Shalom Spiegel on the Akedah.
J.G.
Swarthmore, PA
February 1993
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

B. Babylonian Talmud.
Davidson, Israel Davidson, Thesaurus of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, New

Thesaurus York, 1924-33. 4 vols.
Ginzberg, Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews, Philadelphia, 1909 ff. 7

Legends vols.
Habermann A. M. Habermann, Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz we-Sarefat,

Jerusalem, 1945.
Hebrew Union College Annual.
HUCA
J. Jerushalmi, the Palestinian Talmud.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature.
Jewish Quarterly Review.
JQR
M. Mishnah.
Mann Jacob Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old

Synagogue, Cincinnati, 1940.
Monatschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums.
MGWJ
MhG Midrash ha-Gadol, ed. M. Margulies, Jerusalem, 1947.
Migne, J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca and Patrologia Latina

P.G. and P.L. (Patrologiae Cursus Completus), Paris, 1844-66.
A. Neubauer and M. Stern, Hebräische Berichte über die
NS Judenverfolgungen während der Kreuzzüge, Berlin, 1892.
Pirke R. Eliezer.
PRE
R. Rabbi. After the title of a biblical book: Rabba. After Pesikta:

Rabbati.
Revue des études juives.
REJ
Salfeld Siegmund Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nürnberger

Memorbuches, Berlin, 1898.
T. Tosefta.
Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft.
ZAW
Zunz, L. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie,
Literatur Berlin, 1865.

geschichte