"I lift my eyes to the mountain, From where will my help come?
My help comes from God, Creator of Heaven and Earth." ( Psalms 121:1 )

The Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hashanah, Akeidat Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac, is one of the most familiar stories of the whole Torah. It is also one of the most disturbing, because it deals with every parent's worst nightmare -- the potential loss of a child.

Recently, I heard a presentation by the head of the Israel Center for the Treatment of Psycho-Trauma at Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem. He and his staff had been dealing with the fallout from the traumas that Israel had been experiencing. He noted that the hardest trauma to recover from is the loss of a child. Like our ancestor Avraham, the Jewish people find themselves today being tested. And like Avraham, what is at stake is nothing less than the potential loss of our children.

We are more than aware of the threat to the physical lives of our children: Jewish children who are fighting in the Israeli army to defend the people and the State of Israel, and Jewish children who become the cruel targets of terrorist attacks. The physical threat takes priority, as it should. And yet another serious threat to which we must pay attention is the risk to the spiritual and moral lives of Jewish children. We read the Akeidah to remind us that the choices we make in the face of heart-wrenching dilemmas, both individually and collectively, define us more than anything else.

I picture Avraham walking up the mountain asking himself, from where is my help going to come? Taking the walk up that mountain was not his idea. Under these circumstances, in the face of possibly giving up the life of his son, he could have snapped at Yitzhak, he could have beaten the servants who accompanied him -- there were many things he could have done. But when his son Yitzhak calls to him, "Avi," my father, Avraham responds "Hineni B'ni" -- "Behold, it's me, it is still me." The situation might be a nightmare, but I am still Avraham, the father who loves you and who will walk with you and be with you.

In order to deal with the catastrophic moments in our lives, we, like Avraham, have to be able to hold on to our humanity while we are struggling to climb that mountain. So how did Avraham do it? Ezri mei'im Hashem -- he reached inside himself and drew on the deepest spiritual resources he had. I imagine that Avraham said to himself, "God is going to help me get through this." And in reminding himself that he was not alone, he was able to say hineni, I am here and I am still me. Avraham was one person -- by himself, the first Jew. But we don't have to face this individually. We have our connection to the Jewish people and the members of our community to help us keep our moral footing.

My prayer for us this Rosh Hashanah is that as we climb the mountain of the years of challenge in Israel, and as we struggle with the moments of suffering in our own lives, we can draw on our connection with God and the power of community. We should be able to say hineni, here we are, God: it is still us, we are still trying to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. And if we can do that, if we can hold fast to our basic moral core and our sense of mission as a people, then no enemy, no matzav and no force will be able to defeat us.

Rabbi Elana Kanter, a member of the UJC Rabbinic Cabinet, is co-Rabbi of the New Shul, Scottsdale, AZ. This article originally appeared in the Fall 2003 edition of The Orchard.

UJC Rabbinic Cabinet Chair: Rabbi Ronald Schwarzberg
Vice Chairs: Rabbi Jonathan Schnitzer, Rabbi Steven Foster
President: Bennett F. Miller, D.Min.
Honorary Chair: Rabbi Matthew Simon
Vice President, Jewish Renaissance and Renewal: Dr. Eric Levine
Mekor Chaim Editor & Coordinator: Saul Epstein
Senior Consultant, Rabbinic Cabinet: Rabbi Gerald Weider