Akeida Alone: Where is the Lamb?

"Out of the depths I call You, O Lord. O Lord listen to my cry; let Your ears be attentive to my pleas for mercy" (Psalm 130). The biblical figure of Isaac and God's command to his father, Abraham, to sacrifice his son have served as the artistic inspiration for many of Richard McBee's paintings. For him, God's "test" of Abraham constituted a command to slaughter his beloved son and thereby eradicate all future generations. After completing 100 paintings in 35 years, McBee concluded that "after the Holocaust we Jews are all Isaac". History, for McBee, had seen the Jews face total annihilation as victims and survivors; the most recent example being October 7, 2023. In his own words: "We are all Isaac and the modern world turned its back on Israel." This series of 6 paintings opens in mid-narrative answering Isaac's unnerving question: "Where is the lamb?", to which Abraham replies: "God will provide." Abraham then carefully binds his son Isaac to the altar, a sacrifice, when an angel suddenly appears and physically restrains Abraham's murderous obedience. Defeated, Abraham begins to walk away, but Isaac is suspended atop the altar, abandoned by his father. Now under a Divine cloud, Isaac turns furiously back to his father's retreat. Finally, Abraham has brutally left his son and decided to return home, rejoining Ishmael and his servant Eliezer. Isaac is left on the mountain where he was to die. He is totally alone. "For yours is the power to forgive, so that You may be held in awe" (Psalms 130:4). Some of us manage to walk away from the terror, we...at least some of us, can survive the depths. Nonetheless, we find ourselves after such cruelty, again, alone.