Abel Pann, The Binding of Isaac, 1940’s. Private collection.
Isaac Dies in the Akedah: From Bible to Midrash to Art
The biblical narrative presents Isaac bound on the altar and spared by an angel—but hints in the text suggest that in an earlier version Abraham actually sacrificed his son. Medieval midrash, projecting national grief and destruction onto the biblical story, imagines Isaac was killed and resurrected. In the 20th century, Jewish artists likewise depict Isaac as dead as a symbol of mourning over the Holocaust, war, and more recently October 7th.
Published December 25, 2025
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Last Updated September 7, 2026
This research was financed by the National Science Centre of Poland as part of the Opus 17 grant based on the decision 2019/33/B/HS2/01823. Project title: “Akedah as an Actual Sacrifice in 20th Century Jewish Culture.”
On the representations of the Binding of Isaac in Jewish ritual art see Joseph Gutman “The Sacrifice of Isaac in Medieval Jewish Art,” Artibus et Historiae 8.16 (1987): 67-89; Shalom Sabar, “‘The Fathers Slaughter their Sons’: Depictions of the Binding of Isaac in the Art of Medieval Ashkenaz,” Images 3 (2009): 9-28; and Shulamit Laderman, “Models of Interaction between Judaism and Christianity as Seen Through Artistic Representations of the Sacrifice of Isaac,” in The Actuality of Sacrifice: Past and Present, ed. Alberdina Houtman, Marcel Poorthius, Joshua J. Schwartz, and Joseph Turner (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 343-376.
Sacrifice of Isaac. Dura Europos, Syria, c.245. Editor’s note: For more on the Dura Europos synagogue, see Hagith Sivan, “Retelling the Story of Moses at Dura Europos Synagogue,” TheTorah (2019).
E.g., his paper Mizrah plaque with Sacrifice of Isaac in Kuba (early 1910’s). On various works by Moshe Shah Mizraḥi depicting the Binding of Isaac, see Shalom Sabar, “The Binding of Isaac in the Work of Moshe Shah Mizraḥi A Persian-Jewish Folk Artist in Early Twentieth-Century Jerusalem,” in Iran, Israel, and the Jews: Symbiosis and Conflict from the Achaemenids to the Islamic Republic, ed. Aaron Koller and Daniel Tsadik (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019), 254–86.
Biblical translations follow NJPS with modifications.
The translation is from Sefaria Midrash Rabbah, 2022.
Mikraot Gedolot: Multi-commentary on Torah: Hachut Hameshulash, translated by Eliyahu Munk (Jerusalem: Lambda Publishers, 2006).
Lamentations Rabbah Petichta 24 (author’s trans.). Editor’s note: For more on Eichah Rabbah, see the discussions in Edward L. Greenstein, “Where are God’s Tears in Lamentations?” TheTorah (2021) and Hagith Sivan, “Rachel Weeps in Ramah: Of All the Patriarchs, God Listens Only to Her,” TheTorah (2019).
Kinnot for Tisha B’Av Day chapter 26 (author’s trans.). The Koren Mesorat HaRav Kinnot, second edition (Koren, 2013), p470.
Shlomo Eisenberg, The Jews and the Crusaders: Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 33. See also Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah, trans. Judah Goldin (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing, 1967; originally published in Hebrew, as Me-Aggadot ha-Akedah, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1950). Editor’s note: For more on the account of the first Crusade in The chronicle of Solomon bar Samson, see Jennifer Seligman, “To Explain the First Crusade, Jews and Christians Turned to the Bible,” TheTorah (2024).
Pirkei de Rabbi Eliezer, translated by Rabbi Gerald Friedlander (London: Kegan Paul, 1916), 228, with modifications.
According to the Beit Yosef (112.1) this second blessing was recited by the angels at the time of the Akedah. For more on the history of the connection between Isaac and the second blessing of the Amidah, see Spiegel, The Last Trial, 29-32.
In the same way Isaac's descendants will be revived in the future resurrection of the dead (see, e.g., Shabbat 88b, Chagigah 12b). Translation from Spiegel, The Last Trial, 33, with modifications.
R. David Adani (13th/14th century), Midrash Hagadol to Genesis 22:19.
Ibn Ezra's Commentary on the Pentateuch, translated and annotated by H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver (New York: Menorah Publishing Company, 1988), 226-227. Editor’s note: For a discussion of how Ibn Ezra and other medieval commentators grappled with problematic aspects of this story, see Devorah Schoenfeld, “Akedah: How Jews and Christians Explained Abraham’s Faith,” TheTorah (2017).
See Tzemah Yoreh, “The Sacrifice of Isaac in Context: Recovering a Lost Ending of the Akedah,” TheTorah (2014), who observes that before the sacrifice, there is an emphasis on Abraham and Isaac walking to the designated site together:
בראשית כב:ו וַיִּקַּח אַבְרָהָם אֶת־עֲצֵי הָעֹלָה וַיָּשֶׂם עַל־יִצְחָק בְּנוֹ וַיִּקַּח בְּיָדוֹ אֶת־הָאֵשׁ וְאֶת־הַמַּאֲכֶלֶת וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו. כב:ז וַיֹּאמֶר יִצְחָק אֶל־אַבְרָהָם אָבִיו וַיֹּאמֶר אָבִי וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֶּנִּי בְנִי וַיֹּאמֶר הִנֵּה הָאֵשׁ וְהָעֵצִים וְאַיֵּה הַשֶּׂה לְעֹלָה. כב:ח וַיֹּאמֶר אַבְרָהָם אֱלֹהִים יִרְאֶה־לּוֹ הַשֶּׂה לְעֹלָה בְּנִי וַיֵּלְכוּ שְׁנֵיהֶם יַחְדָּו.
Gen 22:6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and put it on his son Isaac. He himself took the firestone and the knife; and the two walked off together. 22:7 Then Isaac said to his father Abraham, “Father!” And he answered, “Yes, my son.” And he said, “Here are the firestone and the wood; but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?” 22:8 And Abraham said, “It is God who will see to the sheep for this burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them walked on together.
The place he was born was current-day Latvia, but at the time it was part of the Russian Empire.
For a full discussion of Pann’s Akedah, see Monika Czekanowska-Gutman, Amitai Mendelsohn and Devorah Schoenfeld, “Akedah as an Actual Sacrifice: Midrash Tanḥuma and Jewish Exegesis, Marc Chagall and Abel Pann,” Religion and the Arts 26 (2022): 660–678.
Abel Pann, The Binding of Isaac, Private collection.
Yigal Zalmina, Die Kunst des Abel Pann: Vom Montaparnase ins Land der Bibel. L’art d’Abel Pann. De Montparnasse au pays de la Bible (Jerusalem: Israel Museum, 2005), 10.
See Amitai Mendelsoh, Behold the Man: Jesus in Israeli Art (Jerusalem: The Isarel Museum, 2017), 93, and Czekanowska-Gutman, Mendelsohn, and Schoenfeld, Akedah as an Actual Sacrifice, 675.
For the complete discussion of these Pietàs see Czekanowska-Gutman, Mendelsohn, and Schoenfeld, “Akedah as an Actual Sacrifice,” 666-671.
Samuel Bak, Painted in Words: A Memoir (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 433. We are currently working on an article examining Samuel Bak's approach.
Zev Garber, “The Slaughter of Six Million Jews: A Holocaust or a Shoah?” TheTorah (2018).
Samuel Bak, “On My Art and Myself,” in Samuel Bak: Leben danach, Life Thereafter, ed. Samuel Bak, Eva Atlan, and Peter Junk (Osnabrück: Felix Nussbaum-Haus, 2006), 13.
This photo which was part of Jürgen Stroop’s 1943 report: Jürgen Stroop, The Stroop Report: “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw Is No More!” translated from the German and annotated by Sybil Milton; introduction by Andrzej Wirth (New York, 1979), unnumbered.
Bak, Painted in Words, 300.
We provide a thorough analysis of Gershuni’s engagement with the Akedah in Czekanowska-Gutman and Schoenfeld, “No Angel in Sight: A New Reading of the Aḳedah in Modern and Contemporary Israeli Art,” Word and Image 42 (2026, forthcoming).
On Kadishman’s Akedot see our Czekanowska-Gutman and Schoenfeld, “No Angel in Sight: A New Reading of the Aḳedah in Modern and Contemporary Israeli Art,” Word and Image 42 (2026, forthcoming).
For a more detailed treatment of this and his other works, see Czekanowska-Gutman and Schoenfeld, “No Angel in Sight: A New Reading of the Akkedah in Modern and Contemporary Israeli Art,” Word and Image 42 (2026, forthcoming).
Toni Hildebrandt with Menashe Kadishman, “Art and Subjecthood,” Rheinsprung –Zeitschrift für Bildkritik 11.4 (2012): 85-127 [p. 88].
Marc Scheps, “Fallen Leaves as Dialogue,” in Menashe Kadishman, ed. Jacob Baal-Teshuva (Munich and New York: Prestel Verlag, 2007), 156.
Yael S. Feldman, Glory and Agony: Isaac's Sacrifice and National Narrative, Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 274.
Hildebrandt and Kadishman, “Art and Subjecthood,” 96.
Hildebrandt and Kadishman, “Art and Subjecthood,” 97.
Hildebrandt and Kadishman, “Art and Subjecthood,” 95.
Samantha Baskin, “In Tel Aviv’s ‘Hostages Square,’ a Nearly 40-year-Old Sculpture Assumes New Meaning,” JNS, Jan. 26, 2024.
Dr. Rabbi Devorah Schoenfeld is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches Judaism, Bible, and Jewish-Christian Relations. Her PhD is from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley (2007), and she has
Dr. Monika Czekanowska-Gutman is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on twentieth-century Jewish art and culture in Israel and the America, and the contribution of modern
