Minor Arcana Midrash: Genesis 22 and the Ten of Wands

We all carry the unconscious burden of oppression. Inherited from our parents, and from our culture.

What can we do to lay this burden down?

Millennials aren’t wrong to blame the older generation.

We failed them. Just as Abraham failed Isaac. Just because he passed the test set by the small “g” god character in this Bible passage doesn’t mean he didn’t fail his son(s). What does this have to do with the Ten of Wands?

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the weekly readings from the Torah, Parsha Vayera (a parsha is one of the weekly sections from the Torah, read in synagogue, and this week is Vayera, which takes its name from the first word in the parsha) includes the binding of Isaac, and his near sacrifice by Abraham at the command of YHVH. Let’s look at the image on the card and consider the description from Genesis 22:6:

“Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac.”

When I see the figure in the Ten of Wands, bending under the oppressive weight of a bundle of wood, I think of Isaac as he followed his father, unaware of what was coming but under the yoke of what is the origin of an oppressive patriarchy.

Strong words for a Jew. Then again, while I see the Torah as a collection of sacred stories that doesn’t mean I draw the same lessons from these stories that you’ll hear in many synagogues.

These two brothers are not the only children sacrificed in this weekly reading. Because this rather long Torah section also includes the story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. If you recall, two “angels” visit Abraham’s brother, Lot, to warn him of the coming destruction of the city. When men of the city gathered outside Lot’s door, demanding he give up his visitors for them to rape, he offered up his virgin daughters instead, because after all, his children were his property to dispose of as he saw fit.

So in fact we have four children in this parsha who are sacrificed. True, Isaac and Ishmael didn’t die. And Lot didn’t have to give up his daughters because the angels confounded the mob with a blinding light. But that doesn’t change the willingness of these patriarchs to give up their children. And it doesn’t mean these children weren’t traumatized.

After Isaac asks his father, “where is the lamb” for the sacrifice, we don’t hear his voice again for a long time. Can you imagine what he must have been thinking on the way back down the mountain?

What must these 4 children feel about their fathers? How does this connect to the 10 of Wands? I’ll get there…

I’m a “Baby Boomer.” And I learned in my teens that my parent’s generation was ready to sacrifice their children for stories based on lies.

The most obvious lie, admitted to by former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara was that North Vietnamese navy ships attacked the USS Maddox on August 4, 1964. It was one of many lies that led to the sacrifice of more than 58,000 American military lives, not to mention over a million Vietnamese. And of course the destabilization of Cambodia, the genocide of over 1.5 million of its people and the destruction of their culture was a direct result of US policy and the lies of the war criminal Henry Kissinger, and the traitor, Richard Nixon.

There was a reason young people in the 60s said “never trust anyone over 30.”

Of course, I watched our government do this again, in Iraq, with the completely manufactured “weapons of mass destruction” story that led to the further destabilization of the Middle East to enrich Dick Cheney and his fellow oil, arms and mercenary army oligarchs. Meanwhile more than 350,000 US soldiers suffered from traumatic brain injuries. Not to mention the Iraqi civilians dead and injured.

It was my generation this time that sacrificed young people in a war to protect wealth and ego.

And today, millennials suffer under the oppression of an economy that is rigged against them. They have been sacrificed in the greatest transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top in our country’s history.

I can say I’ve protested the Vietnam war, the Iraq wars, and the oligarchs who have pillaged our economy—and the planet’s resources and ecosystem so that the survival of our species is in doubt. But these protests have not changed anything. So when millennials say “Ok Boomer,” for any number of reasons I am not offended. Like generations before them they’ve been sacrificed.

Other sacred traditions tell of the sacrifice of children.

By the gods themselves, when Cronus ate all his children to prevent them from taking his place. By Agamemnon, who sacrificed Iphigenia and by Jephthah who sacrificed his (unnamed) daughter in Judges 11. We can spend time analyzing why these stories appear across cultures, though I think the story of Cronus gives a good clue.

But I want to, finally, come back to the 10 of Wands and the 4 children of Vayera. All those children carried the scars of their trauma for the rest of their lives. So when I see the figure in the 10 of Wands carry that bundle of wood, like Isaac going up the mountain, I see how all of us, in every generation, carry the trauma that was inflicted on our elders, and the trauma they reenact in our own lives.

It is the oppressive weight of a patriarchy that demands unquestioning obedience.

We all have inherited and carry this weight—and some of us “bequeath” it to the next generation.

For me, this year at least, one of the questions I ask when reading this parsha and looking at the 10 of Wands (its divinatory meaning which includes oppression, and carrying a weight that doesn’t belong to us) is how can I put this weight down in my life? How can I step outside of this story of inherited trauma and keep myself from handing this story down so that I don’t continue this chain of oppression? Perhaps asking these questions is a start—and sharing these thoughts with others may help them free themselves from this story. I hope so.