Scripture and Modern Israeli Literature 287(and politicians), one may rightly ask, I believe, how did Israelis manage to
turn around a scene traditionally read as a trope of obedience (à la “femi-
nine” resignation of Greek virgins) and to rewrite it as a trope of violence
and trauma, now identifi ed with the oedipal confl ict? Moreover, how could
the very same story give rise to two opposite readings that have been virtu-
ally ripping Israel apart for some time: in the fi rst, Genesis 22 is a story of
a willing self-immolation, in which father and son harmoniously “walked
together”; in the second, it is a story about an act of violence against an in-
nocent victim, one whose experience is not that of fear and trembling but
rather of trauma and pain?
A full answer to this question is too long to be rehearsed here. Suffi ce it
just to outline the high points of the story. I trace the invention of the Bind-
ing as a modern military sacrifi ce to Berl Katznelson, who in 1919 coined
the paradoxical expression “osher aqedah” (the bliss/glory of self-binding)
to describe the zeal and excitement felt by the fi rst volunteers to the Jewish
Legion in the British Army in World War I.18 Th e next step was taken up by
the next generation of pioneer-poets (that is, poets who came in the third
wave of modern Jewish immigration into Palestine, from 1919 to 1923). Yet
those young pioneering “Isaacs” were mostly fatherless — some literally or-
phaned, others miles away from the parents they left behind in Europe.
Th is condition left a clear mark on their literary output. Oft en there was no
“Abraham” in their literary reworking of the scene, nor was there an angel
to stop the act. Yitzhak Lamdan (1899 – 1954), for example, eloquently delin-
eates the diff erence between the biblical aqedah and his own. Waking from
drunken stupor and noticing a picture of “Aqedat Yitzhaq” on his table, the
poetic persona of a poem titled “Aqud ” (Bound) desperately inquires,
What do you intimate, an empty, open-mouthed bottle:
“Th at there is rescue . . . as echoed in this picture” —?
But this is not me, a diff erent Isaac was there.
Diff erent was the binder, and diff erent the binding. 19Th e nature of this diff erence need not preoccupy us for too long, for it is
stated boldly:
I did know where I was being led to
nor was it God who commanded my going for a test.
I myself so loved the journey
that I didn’t even inquire about the lamb. 20