Why We Remember the Binding Every Single Morning

Good morning everyone. Welcome back to Learn to Daven - Day 30.

We've just stepped into a brand-new section of the siddur - the Korbanos, the sacrifices. And the very first thing many siddurim place here, right before we get to the offerings themselves, is the whole Akeidah - the Binding of Isaac. The entire passage, all nineteen verses, read out loud every single morning.

And I want to ask the most basic question, the one nobody asks because it feels too obvious. Why? Why do we read this story every day? We don't read the splitting of the sea every morning. We don't read about Mount Sinai every morning. But the Akeidah - Avraham, his son, the knife, the mountain - that, we say daily. What is going on?

Here's the verse it opens with. "And God tested Avraham. He said, 'Avraham.' And Avraham answered - Hineni. Here I am."

Listen to that word. Hineni. Before he even knows what's being asked. Before God says a single word about Isaac, or the mountain, or the knife. God just says his name - and Avraham says, "I'm here. Whatever it is. Ready." That's the posture. Total availability. Mesirus nefesh - self-sacrifice - before he even knows what the sacrifice will be.

Now here's the answer to our question. Why every morning?

The Shulchan Aruch - Orach Chaim, siman 1, se'if 5 - actually rules on this. It says a person should say the parsha of the Akeidah. And then it gives the reason, and the reason is everything. We say it, the Shulchan Aruch explains, in order to remember the merit of the avos - zechus avos - and so that the yetzer hara, the inclination to give up, should be subdued. We invoke the moment our great-grandfather was ready to give everything, and we say, in effect: Hashem, remember this. This is who we come from.

There's a stunning Gemara behind this. In Rosh Hashanah, daf 16a, the Talmud asks why we blow a ram's horn - a shofar - specifically. And the answer: so that the Akeidah of Yitzchak will be remembered before Me, and I will credit it to you as though you bound yourselves before Me. The ram caught in the thicket, the one Avraham offered instead of his son - its horn becomes the sound we blow to wake up Heaven's mercy. The Akeidah is built into the very instrument of Rosh Hashanah.

And there's a prayer we say right after the parsha - Ribono shel olam - "Master of the universe, just as Avraham our father suppressed his compassion to do Your will with a whole heart, so may Your compassion suppress Your anger toward us." We're literally saying: he held back his mercy for You - now, please, hold back Your strict judgment for us. We're trading on the merit.

But here's the part that I think is the deepest, and it comes straight from Chassidus. You might think - that was Avraham. That was a giant. I could never. The Alter Rebbe, in Tanya, chapters 18 and 19, says something that should change how you read this whole thing. He teaches that every single Jew - no matter how far, no matter how ordinary - carries a hidden, inherited capacity for mesirus nefesh. There's a point in the soul that simply will not let go of God, that would give up everything before it gives up its connection. We don't usually feel it. But it's there. It's a yerusha - an inheritance - from Avraham himself.

So why do we read the Akeidah every morning? Not just to remind Heaven who we come from. To remind ourselves. To wake up that buried point. To say, before the day even starts: there is something in me that, like my zeide Avraham, would answer Hineni - here I am - to anything God asked.

Tomorrow, we stay inside the Akeidah, but we zoom into one strange phrase: "And on the third day Avraham lifted his eyes and saw the place from afar." We'll ask - what exactly did he see that nobody else could?