RABBI POSNER’S BOOK Part #2
Qwerty: [Posner] said that Abraham’s first nine tests weren’t tests.Rashi and Rambam and others have lists of the ten tests, but Posner disagrees with them. He holds that Avrohom was just being a nice guy.
Rabbi Posner actually just brought a famous vort, written by the Vilna Gaon and others. Rabbi Posner was quoting it from a maamar Rebbe Rayatz.
First, here is what the Vilna Gaon wrote: “By the Akeida Hashem said “Now I I know that you fear Hashem,” because until then Avraham was only a great rachman (merciful) for he would invite guests and do acts of kindness. However, the middah of Achzariyus (cruelty/severity) and forcing himself to fulfill Hashem’s mitzvos was not yet apparent in him, and people could have said that Avraham is not a tzaddik gamur ch”v.
However, at the Akeida, when he also acted with the middah of Achzariyus, for he had a complete desire to fulfill Hashem’s command and slaughter his only son, then he was complete, and it was clear that he was a tzaddik gamur.”
See it here, in his sefer Kol Eliyahu: https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=14227&st=&pgnum=7
Rabbi Posner echos this idea in his chapter on the concept of Avodah. He begins by bringing the holy words of Tanya, based on Gemara, that the true meaning of Avodah is not “serving Hashem,” rather, serving Hashem beyond one’s personal nature, through struggle. If one is accustomed to learning each inyan 100 times, avodah means learning it 101 times (this is from Gemara).
Rabbi Posner goes on to bring an example from a maamar of the Rebbe Rayatz: “After Abraham had passed his supreme test of faith, having bound his own son Isaac to the altar as a sacrifice, G-d said to him, “Now I know that you are G-d-fearing.” Now Abraham’s characteristic way of serving G-d had always been based on love. Is not that kind of service, the Rebbe asks, superior to a service founded on fear? He then proceeds to answer his own question. Without a doubt, Abraham’s love of G-d was sublime, and his love of man, too, was all-encompassing, extending even to the stranger and the undeserving. But Abraham did not acquire this quality through personal struggle; he had been born with it. … In fact, Abraham never considered himself to be an adequate servant of G-d, for he felt that all his service had been accomplished through gifts with which G-d had endowed him, and not through his personal endeavors. It would not be blasphemous to suggest that perhaps G-d, too, was not “sure” whether Abraham’s service was purely one of love because this was Abraham’s very nature, or whether Abraham consciously felt that this was the proper way of serving G-d. Abraham was, after all, a free agent with a free will. Is the kindly person hospitable because he is kindly, or because G-d wills him to be so?
When Abraham, the epitome of kindliness, is prepared to act so cruelly toward his son, “his only son whom he loves,” then he is acting contrary to his habit; he is suppressing his natural mercies, performing an act diametrically opposed to his innate nature. His motivation could only have been “fear of G-d,” a new mode of Divine service, not usual or natural to him, but the result of deep personal conviction and hard personal struggle. Whether the service born of love is superior to the service based on awe or “fear” is irrelevant for our present purposes. Our concern is only whether the service is “natural” or whether it represents the fruit of effort, of avodah. This is the test of effort that Abraham had to pass when he readied his son for sacrifice.
Abraham added a new dimension to his service of G-d, for now, in addition to utilizing his natural trait of love in his relationship with G-d, he had succeeded in serving G-d also through the acquired quality of awe….”