On the first day of the upcoming holiday of Rosh Hashanah, the synagogue service traditionally includes the opening passage of the book of Samuel, which describes how God promises the childless Hannah that she will have a son—the judge and prophet of the book’s title. She then takes that child, still at a tender age, and brings him to the Tabernacle, where his life will be dedicated to the service of God. Kate Rozansky notes the similarity of this story to that of another biblical passage read on Rosh Hashanah, Genesis 22, which describes Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac:

In fact, the Torah and Haftarah readings for Rosh Hashanah bring us three episodes of child sacrifice—in addition to the binding of Isaac, both Abraham and Hagar are forced to give up Ishmael, with very different results. Hannah’s giving up of Samuel is not often interpreted as a parallel sacrifice, but reading these stories together is illuminating. She is a parent who longs many years for a child, and finally has one after a divine remembrance. The child is a source of joy, but also one of terror, for the God that gives also requires return.

When it is time, both Hannah and Abraham set out on a journey with their n’arim, their little boys. The journey from Hannah’s home to the [Tabernacle] is described as a going-up, and Abraham’s task is, famously, to bring Isaac up as an olah, [literally, “a thing that goes up”], a burnt-offering. Abraham ends up slaughtering a ram, while Hannah slaughters a bull. Crucially, both boys live on after their parent’s journey, but no one in the story is ever the same.

At the moment of sacrifice, Abraham sees a ram with its horns (karnav) stuck in a thicket, and offers the ram “in place of (taḥat) his son” (Genesi 22:13), but no angel stays Hannah’s hand or annuls her vow. After Hannah gives up Samuel, [the high priest] Eli blesses Hannah’s husband with: “more children from Hannah in place of (taḥat) the one you lent” (1 Sam 2:20). Here, the meaning of “taḥat,” the substitution, is reversed. While Abraham’s substitution means he gets to keep the boy, Hannah’s means she is never getting Samuel back.

After she gives him up, Hannah sings, “my horn (karni) exults in the Lord,” but her horn is only metaphorical—the boy is gone, there is no ram (1Samuel 2:1). Of course, Hannah visits Samuel at Shiloh every year, but this means she also leaves him behind every year. It is an annual Akeidah.

Reviewing Stranger Than Fiction, a new history of the 20th-century novel, Joseph Epstein draws attention to what’s missing:

A novelist and short-story writer who gets no mention whatsoever in Stranger Than Fiction is Isaac Bashevis Singer. When from time to time I am asked who among the writers of the past half century is likely to be read 50 years from now, Singer’s is the first name that comes to mind. His novels and stories can be sexy, but sex, unlike in many of the novels of Norman Mailer, William Styron, or Philip Roth, is never chiefly about sex. His stories are about that much larger subject, the argument of human beings with God. What Willa Cather and Isaac Bashevis Singer have that too few of the other novelists discussed in Stranger Than Fiction possess are central, important, great subjects.