Few things are less interesting than other people’s medical history, but bear with me for one moment. A brain tumor taught me a new way to look at the Akeda, the binding of Isaac.

In 2003, right after speaking at the opening of the University of Pennsylvania Hillel I had a grand mal seizure. A few weeks later, I had surgery for what proved to be (thank God!) a benign brain tumor. Seven years later, a leak developed in the original site of the surgery and I had to have another brain surgery.

Although you may have intuited this, I can attest that brain surgery is not fun. I recommend avoiding it. I have also had chemo for lymphoma, which is also not fun, but in a different sense. Recovering from my second surgery, they put a plaster cast around my head and I had a swollen head (insert joke here) and was immobile, pretty miserable, for a few days.

However, when they cut the cast off and I could go home, I was suddenly and unexpectedly exhilarated. This giddy moment gave me a new way to look at the parasha.

Most commentary on the Akeda deals with the motive of God and the reaction of Abraham. (And a beautiful Yehuda Amichai poem about the fate of the ram.) Relatively little is written about the feelings of Isaac.

Leaving the hospital, I realized everyone goes under the knife. For many it is a literal experience, as for so many of our brothers and sisters in Israel right now. For others, as for those of us who watch each day with anxiety, it is a trial that threatens what we love. The Akeda is a paradigm for the existential questions of fear and fate.

Many feelings coexist in the human heart, and surely alongside Isaac’s perplexity and faith there was fear. Yet could there not also have been exhilaration? Isaac stepped away from the altar, as I did from the hospital, with the electrifying recognition that he had been under the knife and survived.

Despite the enormous tragedy and enduring shock, should Israel succeed as we wish and pray in this struggle, perhaps we will feel a bit as Isaac did after the Akedah. “Yitzhak” literally means, “He will laugh.” Yet there is no instance in the Torah of Isaac laughing. When did our patriarch fulfill the destiny of his name?

After I left the hospital, I imagined that perhaps, as he walked down the mountain, Isaac laughed. Ken Y’hi Ratzon – so may it be God’s will for us and all Israel.