Eid Al Ahda, which takes place at the end of the Hajj (the annual pilgramage to Mecca to which every Muslim is required to participate at least once in his/her lifetime, and which this year brought over six million Muslims to Mecca) is commemorated by Muslims around the world, in part to commemorate the event in which Abraham, to prove his faith in God, brought his son to be sacrificed.
The Koran's version of the story differs from the Torah's version in several different aspects, one of which is that the Koran has Abraham bring Ishmael to the sacrifice whereas the Torah has Abraham bring Isaac. Some variants of Christian theology see the crucifixion as an even more intense verion of these two stories, because in it God brings His only son to be sacrificed, and whereas the Jewish and Muslim version have God stopping the sacrifice at the last moment, in the Christian version God lets Jesus be sacrificed.
In my book
Jewish Renewal: A Path to Healing and Transformation, I point out that in the original Hebrew version the word for "the Lord" that calls Abraham to sacrifice his son is very different that the word for tha angel of God (YHVH) who tells Abraham to NOT GO THROUGH WITH IT, and that the reason we Jews celebrate Abraham as the father of our people is NOT becase of his faith in being willing to carry out this violent and bloody act, but rather because he was able to hea the voice of God as a voice that allowed him (and through him all subsequent Jewish andMuslim belieers) to NOT FOLLOW THE VOICE OF CRUETLY AS SOMEHOW THE VOICE OF GOD.
This then leaves open an important question to Christian theologians: is it really the God that they believe in who voluntarily sacrificed his only son in order to bring salvation to the world? What kind of a a cruel God would require such a sacrifice? That, at least, is the jumping off point for a very intense questioning of the role of the Cross in Christianity that takes place in the Fall issue of Tikkun magazine, which should be received at your home this week if you are a suscriber (and if not, you could subscribe now on line at
www.tikkun.org/nextgen/purchas...bscription-to-tikkun
). You could then read the whole debate about whether the Cross is really the best way to convey the liberation and love consciousness that many Christians today wish to see as central to their religious beliefs (read the debate--its fascinating).
But of course this same objection could be put to Jews and Muslims. Jews read this passage on Rosh Hashanah, Muslims on Eid Al Ahda--and some in both communities wonder whether it isn't time to become more modern and avoid this discussion of child sacrifice. Some anti-religious voices point to this as proof of the cruelty that once existed and which only at the last moment God allowed to be overcome.
But before allowing the anti-religious to get on their high horse, we might point out that war, the greatest contemporary living embodiment of the way that parental generation sends their children to be sacrificed, along with pious statements about how sad it is for them to put their children "in harm's way," has been a central vehicle for contemporary a-religious, atheistic, and also pro-religious societies to unite in their unconscious desire to act out violence against their children, often on the flimsiest of all possible excuses (what were we doing in Vietnam or Iraq, really?) In fact, we might see Eid Al Ahda and Rosh Hashanah as far more advanced than the rest of the world precisely because these holidays call to consciousness this repressed but real tendency to pass on the pain that was done to us onto our children, and to remind us that the great spiritual leader Abraham was able to NOT DO IT, thereby giving us the message that we too need not sacrifice our children either actually by supporting the war machine or symbolically by passing onto them various other forms of hurt, oppression and cruelty.
SO JOYOUS EID AL AHDA TO EVERYONE ON THE PLANET!!!!
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