heaven.” above all else absolutely.”
“But God’s voice did resound from heaven,” said
Avrom. “It’s one thing to speculate and philosophize
about what you would say, but it’s another when God
actually talks to you. When the mysteries of the uni-
verse, the question of whether God exists or not, all be-
come moot points. When God tells you that the future
of humankind is in your hands.” “That’s obvious,” countered Avrom,
Avrom got up and paced the room. Now Suzanne was
emphatic, “People say no to God all the time. They
say no to the commandments, kill and steal and covet
their neighbors’ wives. They say no so they can indulge
selfish impulses and desires. It happens every day.”
“But this is different. I want to give God a reason,”
Avrom replied.
“Why is that important?” asked Suzanne.
“Because God is wrong,” said Avrom.
Distraught, he walked to the window. Sunlight filled
his eyes as his shadow spread across the carpet.
Suzanne tilted her head to one side, and said, “Some
scholars have said that when God asked Abraham to
kill Isaac, it wasn’t a test of love but a demonstration of
a moral principle, that the binding of Isaac represented
a major break of Judaism with pagan culture. It showed
that human sacrifice was wrong and not what God
wants.”
Avrom responded, “If that’s true, why didn’t God just
issue a commandment, like He gave Moses on Sinai,
not to do it?”
“You know that questioning God won’t get you any-
where,” said Suzanne.
“Why do we have the ability to reason if God is going
to be unreasonable?” he asked.
Suzanne’s eyes narrowed; she sucked in her lips, then
said, “I read that some rabbis say that the story shows
what it means to be a religious person: to obey God
Suzanne was trying to think, but the strain pulled at
her face; her mouth was tense and her eyes overflowed
with sadness. “We have to be suspect of what we think
are messages from God. We can think we hear the
voice of God commanding us to hijack airplanes full of
innocent people and crash them into the World Trade
Center.” Suzanne took a deep breath. “The most com-
pelling argument, I think, is the rabbis who say it’s all
about ethics, that the angel who commanded Abraham
to stop was really Abraham’s own God-given voice of
conscience. That is why a lesser power, an angel, could
override the supposed commandment of God.”
“I get so sick of the fucking metaphors!” said Avrom,
“If it was Abraham’s conscience why does an angel have
to voice it? Because it was god given?”
Avrom didn’t believe that God would want to, or have
to, talk in metaphor, riddle and allegory. If we are
talking about the salvation of the world here, the pur-
pose of life and the concepts of right and wrong, why
play games? Avrom got up and went to the door, “I’m
going for a walk,” he said.
Outside, Avrom looked up at the blue sky. White
clouds piled up in myriad shapes and moved slowly
across the heavens. “You have infinite wisdom, but are
you perplexed that I don’t just trust you? You created
me, but can you understand me?”
Avrom watched a bee buzzing around the garden. “I
can’t understand the universe. I know there are heav-
ens within heavens where time and space curve and
warp and wend a path of purpose beyond my grasp.”
The bee descended rapidly, directly into a welcom-
ing rose. “I look at the blink of a star that exploded
nine million light years ago, yet whose light is just
now reaching my eyes. I know that even more distant
stars have died billions of years ago, but for me they
have not yet been born, because their light has not yet
traversed that vastness. And I know that those stars
and I contain many of the same elements. I marvel at
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