Right to the Edge
In the narrative of the Akeda, the binding of Isaac, we see that God lets Abraham arrive at the very moment when he is about to cut his son's throat, before sending an angel to command him to stop:
10. And Abraham stretched out his hand, and took the knife to slay his son.
11. And the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham; and he said, Here am I.
12. And he said, Lay not your hand upon the lad, nor do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, seeing that you did not withheld your son, your only son from me.
Why wait until the very last moment? A couple of possible reasons present themselves.
1) In order to verify that he actually meant to go through with it, so it would be as if he had done it, and shown the dedication and obedience G-d wanted.
Or
2) In order to have Abraham and Isaac undergo the most powerful and transformative experience possible, without actually going through the act of father sacrificing son.
Which one of the above is true would depend on the divine purpose of the Akeda. Perhaps both are true.
But what strikes me most, right now, is the demand from Abraham to pull back at the very last second. It is not at all easy to stop an action when the momentum is already in place. Yet Judaism sometimes demands precisely that.
A vivid example is on the wedding night. After merely one conjugal act, in the passionate heart of their first night together as a couple, the groom and his bride must part because she has become impure (this is assuming she was a virgin):
"Following the expenditures [of the wedding], he immediately goes in and has relations with her. But when she says to him, 'I saw [blood] like a red lily,' he immediately withdraws from her. Who prevents him from drawing close to her? What iron wall or pillar stands between them? What snake bit him, what scorpion stung him so that he does not approach her? [It is] the words of the Torah, which are as soft as a lily, as the verse states: 'You shall not approach a woman in the impurity of her menstrual flow.'" (Shir Ha-shirim Rabba 7:3)
As in the Akeda, Judaism sometimes has a way of bringing you to the very edge of something and then requiring you not to cross the line.
People have a tendency to keep away from cliff edges and from edges of all sorts, just in case one might fall off them. This is the reason why in keeping halacha, many are stringent and keep the law more strictly than necessary, fearing that if they walk along the very edge of what is allowed, they will slip over it.
And yet, Judaism will not allow wholesale stringency and keeping far away from those liminalities, those risky boundaries. It challenges its adherents to come close, very close, yet not cross. "You can do this," it admonishes. "Be mature, be self-disciplined, do it."
A prime example is matzah, unleavened bread. Matzah, once it passes 18 minutes of exposure to moisture becomes bread, the food absolutely forbidden on Pesach. Were matzah not commanded, no one would eat it, for it is too risky that it might pass the forbidden 18 minute boundary. Yet the Torah demands that it is matzah of all foods that we eat on Pesach.
The Torah wants us to walk on the (right side of the) wild side, to stand in the risky zone, and to do it successfully.
I also think of how the rabbis commanded us to light two candles before Shabbat came in. This is also a risky custom, for lighting of fire is completley prohibited on Shabbat, from the Torah. If the person lights a minute after Shabbat comes in, instead of doing an admirable act, they have committed a prohibition. So the rabbis did their best to put a fence around this halacha, by adding "tosefet Shabbat", 20 or 40 minutes.
In the olden days, the candles would have to be lit anyway to create llight in the house, so the custom caused them to be lit before Shabbat, which was good. But today, we light these flames solely because of the rabbinically instigated action.
And in fact I know people do light late, including people who aren't Shabbat observant but like the custom. So it really IS a risky proposition. That is why the calendar left by the Jerusalem municipality's religious department in my mailbox says in huge bold letters beneath lighting times: REMEMBER TO LIGHT ON TIME, FOR IT IS PROHIBITED TO BURN FIRE ON SHABBAT!)
And yet the rabbis did not just take the safe route and say, "You know what, never mind, you don't have to light candles. Just pretend, or make the blessing on an electric light." They won't allow us to be wholesale "machmir" and avoid risk always, even if it does say אשרי אדם מפחד תמיד.
Go rabbis!
Yael Unterman