Kolot: Voices from The Ark Synagogue
Sep 11, 2026 · 13 min · 6 segments
In this sermon Rabbi Andrea Kulikovsky explores how the wound of Isaac’s near‑sacrifice lives on as intergenerational trauma, and how the Hebrew verb nasa (“to lift, bear, carry”) offers a way to bear…
Andrea KulikovskyGuest
Lea MühlsteinHost
If you rest your hand on your heart, do you feel the pain? In each beat, with the faint echo of your breath, can you feel something that seemingly does not belong to your body, but still somehow beats in your heart? Our sages tell us that we were standing at the foot of Mount Sinai when we received Torah.
But what if our inheritance had already begun to take shape on another mountain? This morning, we heard that moment.
a father, a son, a mountain, a knife raised, and then, at the very last possible moment, not lowered.
We don't know what she knew, but the rabbis could not ignore what happens next.
The very next chapter announces her death, and Amidrash imagines that the shock of hearing what happened on Moriah is too much for her.
The Israeli poet Chaim Gudi wrote about this moment and about what it left behind.
The ram came last of all, and Abraham did not know that it came to answer the boy's question, first of his strength when his day was to wane.
The old man raised his head, seeing that it was no dream and that the angel stood there.
He lived for many years, saw what pleasure had to offer until his eyesight dimmed.
We carry Sarah's silent pain, we carry Isaac's terror, and we carry the wounds accumulated by the generations who came after them.
Trauma can travel through family behavior, silence, stories, and patterns of fear.
But Judaism did not need the language of psychology to recognize that human beings inherit more than names, property, color of eyes.
If you rest your hand on your heart, do you feel the pain? In each beat, with the faint echo of your breath, can you feel something that seemingly does not belong to your body, but still somehow beats in your heart? Our sages tell us that we were standing at the foot of Mount Sinai when we received Torah.
But what if our inheritance had already begun to take shape on another mountain? This morning, we heard that moment.
a father, a son, a mountain, a knife raised, and then, at the very last possible moment, not lowered.
We don't know what she knew, but the rabbis could not ignore what happens next.
The very next chapter announces her death, and Amidrash imagines that the shock of hearing what happened on Moriah is too much for her.
The Israeli poet Chaim Gudi wrote about this moment and about what it left behind.
The ram came last of all, and Abraham did not know that it came to answer the boy's question, first of his strength when his day was to wane.
The old man raised his head, seeing that it was no dream and that the angel stood there.
He lived for many years, saw what pleasure had to offer until his eyesight dimmed.
We carry Sarah's silent pain, we carry Isaac's terror, and we carry the wounds accumulated by the generations who came after them.
Trauma can travel through family behavior, silence, stories, and patterns of fear.
But Judaism did not need the language of psychology to recognize that human beings inherit more than names, property, color of eyes.
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