THE BINDING OF THE SONS
Day of Remembrance, 1941
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ON behalf of the religious authorities of this country we have been asked by the Chief Rabbi to observe this Sabbath before Armistice Day “as a Day of Remembrance and Dedication as last year—Remembrance not only of those who gave their lives in the last war but of those, both of our people and of our Allies, who have given their lives in the present war; and of Dedication to the high cause which has been committed to our nation”.
Remembrance and Dedication are two words which have worn dangerously thin in the course of human history; they have been used much too often and always in the same unsatisfactory way.
It is unfortunately the case that in every generation there are those who have to give their lives and have, therefore, to be remembered.
Unfortunately too, every generation is at least once in its life-time committed to “the high cause” that demands of us to be prepared to give our lives.
The constant recurrence of these demands only proves that we do not know how to remember or how to dedicate ourselves to “the high cause”. For, surely, the purpose of the dedication should be to create a world in which no man need ever be committed to the famous high cause that necessitates our giving lives in order that future generations may live more happily.
So far we have failed in this.
Surely, the meaning of remembering our dead cannot be only to honour their memory and to express our sorrow and our gratitude. The purpose of remembering should be the creation of a world in which there is no remembrance of those who brought the supreme sacrifice, because there has been no necessity to die for “causes”.
So far, we have failed in this. We have failed because we do not know yet how to remember, we do not know how to dedicate ourselves. Where lies the fault or the mistake?
It is possible to approach this question from many angles. On this Day of Remembrance and Dedication, however, I will try to approach it through the medium of one of the simplest and plainest of words, the word Mother. We do not know how to remember, how to dedicate ourselves because we have built up a civilisation that has neglected and often even ignored the Mother.
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What I mean is very impressively illustrated in the week’s Sidra. There we read the famous story of the Binding of Isaac. God spoke to Abraham: **Genesis XXII, 2.“Take now thy son, thine only son, whom thou lovest, even Isaac, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering”. And Abraham rose early in the morning … eager to fulfil the command of God, and he took his son Isaac.
Much has been said and written on the subject. We have been accustomed to admire Abraham. But, for the last few years, since the present tragedy of mankind began, whenever we read the story of the “Akedah”, I seldom think of Abraham; I think of somebody else, of somebody who is not even mentioned in the story, who seems to be entirely forgotten, whose share was yet the most tragic in the great drama: Sarah, the Mother.
Abraham and Isaac undertook to fulfil a command of God, they dedicated themselves to a very high cause, they were heroes. But there was no command for Sarah. She was only the mother and nobody thought of her.
Take your son, your only son, whom thou lovest, take Isaac, said God to Abraham. And Abraham was a great man, very great indeed; he did not waver. He rose early in the morning and took his son.
And yet, I wonder, would he not have been even greater if he had answered like this: Almighty, I am prepared to do your bidding. I am prepared to offer you my son. But, you see, he is not only my son. There is Sarah too, and he is much more her son than mine. After all, I am only the father, she is the mother. Let us ask her too. Is she prepared to give her son as a burnt offering?
But there is no mention of the mother. There was the high cause of a great man and in it a mother had been forgotten.
Remembering the innumerable Isaacs who have been offered by their fathers to one or the other great cause, we must describe our civilisation as the history of “the great man” who continually commits himself to “high causes” and forgets the mother.
The “great man” is hardly ever so great as Abraham was: the “high cause” is hardly ever so high and so pure as Abraham’s cause was. In the terrible drama of the Binding of the Sons and their delivering up to the “high causes”, which is being acted by the nations all through recorded history, the place of God has often been taken by some bloodthirsty Moloch and the place of Abraham by so-called great men who have been the mad servants of Moloch. And because of this, unlike the case of Abraham, there is no one to stay the hands of the fathers.
And yet it seems to me that there is one thing that could check the outstretched arm, chase Moloch from his usurped throne, and call back the “great man” to normality: the remembrance of the Mothers.
In these terrible years, I have often wondered whether those who are so well prepared to destroy life and happiness ever think of their own mothers. Whether, thinking of their mothers, they would still be able to destroy and to commit all the acts of brutality with which they are dishonouring human nature? Whether, bearing in their hearts a picture of their own mothers, they would not remember that the other man is also a son, a child, and his mother too wishes him to live and to be happy?
Would there ever be wars if the fathers would realise that their sons are first of all the sons of the mothers? If, instead of being so eager to sacrifice their sons for their causes, they would think for a while of the mothers, and then go to them and speak like this: Mothers of our sons, there is a great cause in the world to which we have committed ourselves. We need the sons, your children, we need their lives in the interest of the great cause. Can we have them?
Would the mothers, if left to decide for themselves, recognise any other high cause than the greatest and holiest of all causes, that of being a mother, of giving life and protecting life?
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We do not think of the mothers. We forget them. They have neither the place, nor the respect, and certainly not the power that should be theirs. For ours is the civilisation of the “great father” with his “high cause”. And one must fear that so long as this remains so, we shall have to continue remembering generation after generation of those “who have given their lives”.
The “great father” is usually so small that he does not even know how to remember his sons. He remembers them as heroes who have died for something worth dying for; thus, he is able to see some justification and sense in their tragedy. Remembering them we wish to comfort ourselves for the loss; there is always the high cause that justifies the greatest sacrifice. But, if you justify the loss, if you can find meaning in it, you are already preparing the next war.
Let us, at least, learn from the mothers how to remember. The healthy instinct of the mother, if not corrupted by our masculine civilisation, does not remember glorious heroes, but children who died before their time, who died because the fathers were stupid enough to allow a world “order” to exist in which war became the readiest way to human happiness.
At this moment, it certainly is an imperative necessity to gather all the remaining strength of all free men on earth to destroy the forces of darkness which threaten to engulf mankind. But let us feel horror at a world in which such a situation can arise. Let us remember the madness of previous years which has led inevitably to the present catastrophe.
There are many plans for avoiding the recurrence of such a situation. There were such plans after the last war, there are such plans after every war. So far, they have been of no avail. And sometimes, one feels that they failed because they were drawn up by the fathers. Fathers are prone to commit themselves to all kinds of causes in which they forget the mistakes of the past, the tragedies of the past, and so allow the world to drift into a situation in which the sons must give their lives that Life may be possible.
To-day, let this be our dedication: to rid the world of every purpose that demands human sacrifice.
Let this be our remembrance: to remember the sufferings of the mothers all over this unhappy globe.
And let this be the aim of the peace: no more suffering mothers; never again should a mother suffer because her child is hungry or because her child has no chance of a full and contented life. Never again should mothers be miserable because their children must dedicate themselves to one or other of the “high causes”.
Remembering the dead, let us remember the mothers. Dedicating ourselves, let us dedicate ourselves to this one aim: Happy mothers all over the world.