Sacrificing Your Faith for Your G-d

Please take your son, your only one, whom you love, Yitzchak, and go away to the land of Moriah and bring him up there for a burnt offering.

Sacrificing Your Faith for Your G-d

To knowingly give up your life runs contrary to the basic hu‑man instinct for survival. Yet our history is filled with ke-doshim—holy martyrs who chose to die rather than submit to a belief contrary to the Torah. Chassidus explains that they drew their strength from Avraham, who “opened the chan‑nels of self‑sacrifice,”⁷ enabling his descendants to access the soul’s supernatural ability to part with life itself for the sake of sanctifying G‑d’s name.

But people of other faiths, too, have sacrificed their lives for their beliefs. What makes Avraham’s sacrifice different?

Martyrdom on its own can be driven by a desire for re‑wards promised in the afterlife, or by a feeling that life with‑out following your beliefs is not worth living, both of which are motivated by the desire to improve one’s current state of existence. Avraham’s spirit of self‑sacrifice, however, was unique: not only was he ready to give up his life for G‑d, he was ready to surrender his entire sense of identity and purpose of existence for G‑d.

Avraham had dedicated his life to propagating his belief in One G‑d, Creator of heaven and earth, contrary to all the pagan beliefs of his time. Avraham’s willingness to sacrifice his own life to stand by his convictions, one could argue, was not in defiance of his identity—it was his very purpose in life! To sacrifice Yitzchak, on the other hand, especially with no one around to witness it, would not further this belief but defeat it. It would extinguish any hope that the belief system that had been Avraham’s raison d’être would be passed along to future generations. This was truly a sacrifice of everything that Avraham lived for.

Therein lies the singularity of Avraham’s self‑sacrifice, and consequently his descendants’, which was evident in the Akeidah, the Binding of Yitzchak. In the act of the Akeidah, Avraham demonstrated that his self‑sacrifice was not driven by hopes of achievement or even spiritual gain; it was motivat‑ed solely by his unbreakable devotion to G‑d’s every command.

—Likkutei Sichos, vol. 20, pp. 74–77; ibid., vol. 18, p. 322

7. See Sefer Hamaamarim 5678, p. 283.