In the summertime ten years ago I converted to Judaism through the Reform temple in Berkeley, California, aware of the contentious nature of denominational divisions. By the time of Rosh Hashanah that fall I was engaged in a more rigorous practice and study but never completed an Orthodox conversion. The lessons, however, would imprint me powerfully. A drash (a sermon) delivered at my first Jewish New Year, a somber but hopeful occasion stayed with me all those years. Part of the liturgy of the holiday is the story of the Akedah, the binding of Isaac--one of the most chilling moments in the Torah narrative, when God asks Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son as a test of faith. At the last moment, an angel appears and he is spared, a ram caught in the thickets sacrificed instead. They descend. But what haunted on the way down and in the years to come? The memory of the event remained, the experience remained between father and we can only speculate on the emotional and mental repercussions. We all have those journeys.
In the intermingling voices of time, we all have transformative moments that stay with us long after the physical aspects have fallen away. Metaphorically speaking, those are the mountains we return to just like Isaac must have returned to the moment on the threshold of life and death at the hand of his father. They can represent any of our reflective relationships, with our parents, partners, friends, God or ourselves. What remained of that sermon from my first Rosh Hashanah is that each return is an opportunity to retell the narrative: we can rethink the details and reframe the experience. Through reflection and new understanding, we can change the story of our own binding and acknowledge and release people and events that hold us back.
The act of narration of our life is an act of creation. The way we tell our story is the way we create our life. All enslavements are at the core self-enslavements of the mind and heart and only we can set ourselves free from the thickets of the past, bound to the altars of failure long gone. Only we can choose life.