"With ten tests our Avraham was tested by Hashem and he withstood them all." The Hebrew word for test is ?Nisayon? which is related to the word Nes. Nes means a flag. Tests and challenges are made to raise us to a higher level, just as a flag is raised.

What were the ten tests?

Hashem commands Avraham to leave his home at age 75. (1) In the Holy Land, a famine breaks out and he has to leave for Egypt. (2) In Egypt his wife gets kidnapped by Pharaoh. (3) Avraham?s nephew Lot, is captured by four strong kings and Avraham has to fight them to rescue his nephew. (4) After being childless for ten years, he must take Hagar the maid (who was actually an Egyptian princess) for a wife. (5) At age 99 Hashem commands Avraham to circumcise himself. (6) Sarah gets kidnapped again; this time by King Avimelech. (7) Sarah tells Avraham to send Hagar away and Hashem tells Avraham to listen to everything his wife tells him. (8) Sarah realizes that Yishmael is harmful to her son Yitschak, and Avraham must send him away too. (9)

Then one day Hashem appears to Avraham and says: "PLEASE take your only son, whom you love, Yitschak, and take him to the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you." Avraham wakes up early, personally saddles his donkey, and travels with 37-year-old Yitschak to the mountain where later the Temple would be built. When they reach the bottom of the mountain Avraham tells his servant to stay behind with the donkey and only he and Yitschak continue. Half way up, Yitschak realizes the purpose of the trip, but willingly continues the climb. With Yitschak fully bound on the altar, Avraham lifts his arm with the knife to slaughter his beloved son, and an angel calls out to him and cancels the ceremony. "NOW I know that you are a G-d fearing man" Hashem tells him.

This story is the most reoccurring argument when asking Hashem to have mercy on us. We say it every morning in the prayers, and we read it from the Torah on Rosh Hashanah (which is also the day it happened ).

When Hashem commands Avraham to take his son, He says "please take your son". The Talmud says that Hashem was begging Avraham to pass this final test in order that people would not say that the previous tests were worth nothing.

This passage seems to be hard to understand. If Avraham had failed this test, no one would have blamed him. To say that people would think that ALL the previous tests were nothing because of that, seems a little extreme.

Many people have asked, why do we use the story of the Akeida when reminding Hashem of the self-sacrifice of our forefathers? There have been many cases of actual self-sacrifice where the person actually DIED for Hashem! We see how the great sage Rabbi Akiva, teacher of tens of thousands of students, was brutally murdered by the Romans when he refused to stop disseminating Torah.

It may even be better to mention R? Akiva as an example of self-sacrifice instead of Avraham. Avraham had been told personally by the creator of the world to do this act of mesirut nefesh, whereas R? Akiva did not have personal instruction to do so.

To say that Avraham?s case was harder because he had to kill his own child, which might be harder then sacrificing one?s own life, is also not possible. We all know the story of Chana who saw seven of her children being killed in front of her eyes because they refused to bow down to an idol. And as the story goes: When the last one gets killed, she screams out: " Avraham you built one altar, I built seven!" Aside from that story, we know of many such cases throughout history where parents had their children killed for the sake of Hashem?s name. Why then do we only mention the Akeida, where Yitschak wasn?t even killed?

One of the explanations is that Avraham?s self sacrifice differed from the other cases later in history in that there was nothing forcing him to do it. Hashem never COMMANDED him to slaughter his son, he only begged him to do so. . In later generations however, there was already a commandment to sanctify G-d?s name.

This explanation is not sufficient, though. First of all, to say that Avraham would not listen to a personal request from Hashem is not probable. And to say that in later generations there was a commandment to be killed al kiddush Hashem (to sanctify Hashem?s name) is also not so simple. According to the Torah, one is not always allowed to give his life. Only when one is given the option to worship idols, kill, or perform certain immoral acts, or to be killed, is there is an obligation not to do those sins. In case of any other sin one is only allowed to have himself killed when he is being forced to perform the act to show he is going against G-?ds will. In many of the stories we know of people who gave their lives but it is not so simple to explain why they were permitted to do so.

There is a famous saying that ?all beginnings are hard?. After something has been done once, it becomes easier for everyone to do it. The advantage of Avraham?s mesirut nefesh over the mesirut nefesh in later generations is that he was the FIRST ONE to do it.

By nature people want to stay alive. The ability and strength to give up ones own life comes from the most inner part of the soul. This part of the soul is usually hidden from our revealed feelings When a Jew ? no matter how irreligious- is being asked to deny G-ds existence, this inner part of the soul gets aroused and will never allow the person to do so, even if it has to die for that belief. Avraham was the first one to open this ?pipeline? between the soul and the revealed feelings.

This explanation also brings some problems with it however. The mesirut nefesh of the akeida happened when Avraham was an old man, but till then he has also been involved in mesirut nefesh. When he was still living with his father in Ur Kasdim, he already used to preach monotheism, much to the dislike of many people in his surroundings. It even came to a situation where his own father took him to the king who threw him into a burning furnace. Only by means of an open miracle did he survive. That should have been used as an example of real self-sacrifice, especially since there he had not been personally asked by Hashem to do it. (As opposed to the akeida as we said before) . Why then do we always speak about the Akieda?

Another question one can ask is: Why is it that we find other nationals who give their lives for their religion? Obviously, suicide bombers are not doing what they do because of a calling from their soul.

We can understand that by explaining the real meaning of mesirut nefesh. It means to totally give oneself away for the sake of G-d. People who give their lives for their religion may do so for different reasons. Suicide bombers are promised a physical reward in the spiritual world to which they go after this life. They don?t give themselves for the sake their religion, they kill themselves in order to receive the reward for their deed. (If only one of them would come back to tell his friends what really awaits them there, there would probably never be a suicide bomber again!)

It is also possible that people give their lives for their religion because they cannot imagine living without it. Only recently the world was looking in amazement at how the Taliban forces held strong against tremendous military pressure. For them it was impossible to imagine living under a ruler who does not live according to the laws of their religion, causing many of them to commit suicide. In other words, it is not G-d who is the center of the attention by them, it is their own being that they look at. Since life without their religion is not life it is better not to live at all. Mesirut nefesh, on the other hand, is having Hashem as the center of attention.

When we look at everything Avraham did till the akeida, including his being thrown into the burning furnace, we do not clearly see mesirut nefesh. There is still room to think that he did everything for personal motives. He may have known of the reward he would get for telling people about G-d, and it may have looked impossible for him to live in a world that denied His existence. Only by the akeida did he prove that everything he had done till then was also because of his real mesirut nefesh.

At the akeida there was no room to think that Avraham was going to slaughter Yitschak for a personal reason. Since he had only been asked to do it (and not commanded) there was no reward involved. But it was also not possible to think that he was doing it for a religious REASON. If he would have made a big ceremony in the town-square he would have been able to teach the world how far one must go in the service of Hashem. Instead he made sure no one was around. Even the servant was told to stay behind at the bottom of the mountain.


Since Yitschak was his only son that was following in his ways, killing him would have brought an end to the belief in one G-d in the world. Not only wouldn?t he sanctify Hashem?s name; he would cause the opposite effect. Hashem?s name would be forgotten.

Since there was no personal or even religious motive involved, it was clear to all that Avraham was doing the akeida ONLY because Hashem told him to. That is why only the akeida can be used as an example for real mesirut nefesh. That also explains why the Talmud said that if he would have failed this test all the others would be nothing worth. Only when it became clear to all that all Avraham had in mind was fulfilling Hashem?s will did they understand that all previous actions had been for the same reason.

Avraham opened the pipeline of mesirut nefesh we said earlier. That means that all his descendants have the power and ability to have genuine mesirut nfesh. There are different types of mesirut nefesh. The easy one is to DIE for Hashem; the hard one is to LIVE for Hashem. Avraham gave us an inheritance to be able to LIVE for Hashem. It is up to us to use it out to the fullest potential.

By Avraham it was not clear that his actions were done with mesirut nefesh till a very late stage in his life. Similarly we should know that in essence all out deeds are done with the power of real mesirut nefesh that we inherited from Avraham, even when it may look at times that personal or other motives are involved. So the next time it appears that a Dvar Torah in the Jewish press was only written for the name of the author in bold letters on top of the article, remember that deep down every Jew has the same intention as Avraham and Yitschak when they were going to the Akeida.

May the deeds of all the Jewish people throughout the generations who lived and died with mesirut nefesh be enough to convince Hashem to bring an end to our dark exile and bring Moshiach NOW!
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