From amongst the pedagogical tools for teaching Torah I've encountered in my career as a Jewish educator, one of the most powerful is called Bibliodrama. It’s a technique adapted from psychodrama in which we inhabit Biblical characters to gain insight and empathy into their inner worlds. By hearing multiple perspectives, we read not only what the text states, but also what it implies and what it silences.
I'd like to use that technique—without the acting—to examine the story of the Akedah, the binding of Itzchak and his almost-sacrifice ordered by God, and see what this 360-degree approach reveals. What voices are missing from the narrative? What silences echo through the text?
Avraham:
We first encounter Avraham when God instructed him to leave behind everything familiar and go to an unknown land, following an unknown voice—and Avraham did just that. Then, in an emblematic story earlier in this very parashah, Avraham challenged God as no one had ever challenged the Divine. Avraham was not destroyed for his lack of decorum, as many might have expected. Avraham argued passionately for the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?".[1] Yet, in the end, all his arguments were incapable of convincing God not to destroy those cities.
This time, when God asked Avraham to offer his son as a sacrifice—not his only son and not the only one he loved, despite what the text affirms, but the one through whom the covenant Avraham had established with God would be continued—it would have been reasonable to expect Avraham to challenge the request immediately. But Avraham did not. No argument. No challenge.
We do not know whether this was out of fear, hope, or disappointment with a God who had destroyed Sodom and hadn't protected Yishmael when Sarah demanded his expulsion. A midrash portrays Satan approaching Avraham on the road: "Old man, are you out of your mind? You're going to slaughter the son God gave you at the age of one hundred?! It was I who deceived you and said to you, 'Take now your son...'" Rav Kook explains that Satan here represents Avraham's conscience, his internal struggle about whether he truly heard God's voice.[2]
Rabbi David Hartman observes: "We are not only amazed at the unintelligible demand of God, but dumbfounded when Avraham, who had so boldly stood before God and argued for justice, now submits unquestioningly".[3] Perhaps Avraham was waiting for God to change God's mind. Perhaps his silence was not obedience but paralysis—the inability to know what God truly wanted.
Itzchak:
Itzchak walked beside his father for three days, carrying the wood for his own sacrifice. His question was achingly innocent: "Father... where is the lamb for the burnt offering?".[4] Avraham's answer—"God will provide the lamb"—remains one of Torah's most ambiguous statements. Faith? Evasion? Desperate hope?
According to a midrash,[5] Itzchak understood what was about to happen and asked his father to bind him tightly "lest I tremble and cause you to make a blemish." But the text's later silences tell a darker story. After the Akedah, Itzchak disappears from the narrative. Avraham and Itzchak do not walk down the mountain together—only Avraham returns to the servants.[6] Ibn Ezra notes pointedly: "It does not mention Itzchak."
Itzchak is not present at his mother's funeral. The next time we see him, he lives separately from his father. How does a son rebuild trust with a father who bound him to an altar? The text's silence is itself an answer. Some wounds are too deep for words.
Sarah:
Perhaps the most disturbing voice in the Akedah is the one we never hear: Sarah's. God commands Avraham, Avraham obeys, Itzchak is bound—but where is Sarah? According to Midrash Tanchuma, Avraham deliberately concealed his intention from her, fearing her reaction.
Sarah was not consulted. She was not asked for consent. She was not informed. When she learned what occurred—the shock killed her. A midrash[7] tells us Satan went to Sarah and said: "Avraham took Itzchak your son and slaughtered him." Sarah cried out, making sounds corresponding to the shofar blasts, "and her soul burst forth from her and she died."
The text reveals: "Avraham came to mourn for Sarah".[8] He came—suggesting he was elsewhere when she died. The Akedah was at Mount Moriah, Avraham returned to Beersheba, but Sarah died in Chevron. The family was geographically fractured even before her death.
The American poet Eleanor Wilner imagines Sarah's voice in "Sarah's Choice”[9] after God approaches her asking for a sacrifice of Isaac (who is her only and beloved son):
"No," said Sarah to the Voice. "I will not be chosen. Nor shall my son— if I can help it... Shame," she said, "for thinking me a fool, for asking such a thing. You must have known I would choose Itzchak. What use have I for History—an arrow already bent when it is fired from the bow?"
In Wilner's midrash, Sarah refuses the test. She chooses her son over the covenant, humanity over History—asking what might have happened if Sarah had been given a voice.
The Ram:
One voice is rarely considered: the ram, caught in the thicket, immediately slaughtered in Itzchak's place. It has no story, no agency—it simply appears and dies.
Yet Jewish tradition remembers it. According to Pirkei Avot,[10] the ram was created at twilight on Creation's sixth day—always meant for this moment. Its horns become the shofarot we blow on Rosh Hashanah.
When we hear the shofar's blast, what are we hearing? Sarah's six cries? Or something else—the cry of the vulnerable, the voiceless, those sacrificed for purposes they do not understand? The ram reminds us that every one of our acts has a cost.
God:
The text begins: "God tested Avraham".[11] This should reassure us—it was only a test, God never intended Itzchak to die. But this raises more questions than it answers. What kind of test is this? What does it prove? At what cost?
One midrash in the Talmud[12] offers a troubling backstory: Satan approached God and said, "To this old man You graciously granted the fruit of the womb at the age of a hundred, yet of all that banquet which he prepared, he did not have one turtle-dove or pigeon to sacrifice before you!" God replied, "Yet were I to say to him, 'Sacrifice your son before me,' he would do so without hesitation." In this reading, the Akedah came about because of Satan's challenge—a cosmic wager not unlike the story of Job. Was Avraham's test, then, the result of divine pettiness? A need to prove something to Satan?
According to the Talmud,[13] God declares: "I never said to slaughter him. I merely said to 'raise him up.'" A midrash[14] imagines God explaining: "When I said 'take your son,' I never said to slaughter him." These midrashim suggest Avraham misunderstood God's intention.
But if so, why didn't God say so clearly? Why allow three days of anguish? Why permit the binding, the raised knife? Some say the Akedah taught the world that God does not desire human sacrifice. But surely there was a less traumatic way to convey that message.
The text is unclear whether Avraham passes or fails. He demonstrates obedience—but loses his wife, his relationship with his son, and never again hears directly from God. Perhaps the most honest reading is that we cannot know God's intentions. Was Avraham supposed to obey? Refuse? Argue, as he had done for Sodom?
A part of me wants to believe that this episode also changed the Divine, who, as a result, would not test the people anymore and would not instruct senseless acts of destruction. The rest of the Torah, though, proves that this is not the case. Maybe God was the One who failed the test….
After the Akedah: Can We Rebuild?
The Torah offers no tidy reconciliation. Avraham returns alone.[15] Sarah dies far away in Chevron, and only then does Avraham come to mourn her.[16] Itzchak is absent from both scenes. Later, however, he and Yishmael bury their father together.[17] The family is not restored, yet a thread of obligation endures. This is a truthful hope.
We cannot always mend what has been broken, but we can still choose presence, honour, and restraint. In the language of the Akedah, holiness is often the moment we lower the knife.
Perhaps this is the Akedah's most honest teaching: we can continue even when we cannot fully repair. But we can also choose—as Wilner's Sarah does—to refuse the test, to say "I will not be chosen." Sometimes the most faithful response is resistance.
The power of Bibliodrama is that it refuses single interpretations. When we inhabit Avraham, we feel his uncertainty. When we inhabit Itzchak, we feel his betrayal. When we inhabit Sarah, we feel her exclusion. When we sit with the ram, we remember all who are sacrificed for grand narratives they do not understand. When we try to understand God’s reasons, we remain baffled.
The Akedah lays bare the terrible costs of acting without considering impact upon others. It shows how decisions made in isolation—without consulting those most affected, without considering resulting trauma—can shatter families. It reveals the complexity of discerning God's will when voices compete and certainty eludes us.
As we read this parashah, let us honour all voices—spoken and silent, present and absent. Let us ask: What decisions are we making that affect others? Whose voices are we failing to hear? What trauma might result from our actions? Whose voices are we silencing in our certainty?
May we have wisdom to listen before we act, courage to question our certainty, and humility to acknowledge when we have caused harm by failing to consider the full impact of our choices.
Shabat Shalom.
[1] Genesis 18:25
[2] https://www.jewishideas.org/article/thoughts-akedah
[3] https://oztorah.com/2022/11/isaac-the-akedah/
[4] Genesis 22:7
[5] Leviticus Rabbah 20:2
[6] Genesis 22:19
[7] Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer 31
[8] Genesis 23:2
[9] Sarah's Choice, University of Chicago Press, 1989
[10] Pirkei Avot 5:6
[11] Genesis 22:1
[12] Talmud Bavli Sanhedrin 89b
[13] Talmud Bavli Ta'anit 4a
[14] Genesis Rabbah 56:8
[15] Genesis 22:19
[16] Genesis 23:2
[17] Genesis 25:9
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