[The following is my sermon for Kol Nidre, the evening that begins Yom Kippur, at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.]
Catholics traditionally fast on Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, a time to prepare spiritually for Easter. Raised Catholic, I fasted each year—not at the insistence of my parents or my teachers, but from my own desire to do my religion “right.”
I fainted each year, too.
As an adult convert to Judaism, I struggle with Yom Kippur and the fast. Why do I fast? How do I fast? Do I continue the same fast of my childhood, the one that inevitably leads to fainting? What does that fast teach me? Does it help me turn back to God? Fasting to the point of fainting treads dangerously into the territory of donating money just to get the recognition, into the territory of “I-am-more-observant-than-you.” I am not sure what I learned from these fasts, what I learned about God and my spiritual and ethical duties.
In some ways the opposite of the Lenten fast, which precedes what Christians call the renewal of Easter, the Yom Kippur fast comes after the renewal of our year. We have eaten the apples and the honey, and now we stand, shrouded in white as we will in our own graves, standing before an Ark empty and stark as a coffin (for this analogy, I am indebted to my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman). Our tradition calls us to know, in our minds and our hearts and our bodies, that we are mortal and fragile. That this life is temporary. We become more aware of our bodies.
Yet many people assert just the opposite: fasting takes us out of the physical, and into the spiritual. Relying on a stark divide between body and soul, religious leaders (not only in Judaism but in other spiritual traditions as well) claim that we can pay better attention to the “spiritual” when we “overcome” the physical. In an online forum, Orthodox rabbi Mendy Hecht calls Yom Kippur “G-d’s designated annual day of total spirituality,” a day on which we do things “that make us like the angels the most” instead of things “that make us like animals the most.” Yom Kippur makes us less human, some people say, and that’s a good thing; humans are bogged down in the physical, in necessity and desire. We should strive to be more spiritual, more like the angels.
It’s a big fad: spiritual fasting. A few weeks ago, I browsed the bookstore at the Pittsburgh Airport and found dozens of Christian evangelical books and journals on fasting for spiritual insight. You can buy fasting kits online, complete with promises that days of consuming just vegetable broth will give you a “natural high,” that it will rid your body of otherwise unspecified toxins, that it will bring you closer to God. Fasting websites abound with language of “discipline,” “submission,” and “control”: fasts are supposed to make you a “servant” or a “soldier” for God; no longer dependent on food, you can focus instead on serving the spiritual.
Yet today, we stand, shrouded in the color of burial and death, very likely aware of our bodies—as we will likely be even more so tomorrow, as Ne’ilah approaches. We come here tonight in the spirit of teshuva, turning, repenting. We reflect on our actions over the past year, all the things we have sown, and we come face to face with what we will reap. We come with the sound of the shofar still ringing in our ears, a clarion call for us to live Jewishly, a plea for God to remember the covenant.
In Leviticus, we read “In the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and do no work […]. For this day will atone for you, to purify you from all your sins; before God you will be purified. It is a Sabbath of Sabbaths for you, and you shall afflict yourselves” (16:29-31). Is all our fasting about affliction?
In the Book of Samuel, King David fasts in an attempt to effect change. The prophet Nathan has just confronted David with the grievous sin he committed with Bathsheba, who was another man’s wife. David not only violated the marriage, but arranged for the husband to be killed in battle. God vows to punish David’s household. The guilty David suffers, watching his innocent son, born to Bathsheba, fall critically ill. “David entreated God for the boy; David fasted, and he went in and spent the night lying on the ground” (2 Samuel 12: 16). David’s servants try to get him to eat, but he refuses. After seven days, the child dies, and David’s servants fear what he will do when he learns of this tragedy. But David does not continue his fasting; instead, he bathes, puts on fresh clothes, and bows down in the Temple. He returns home and breaks his fast. His servants are confused: “[N]ow that the child is dead, you rise and take food!” they wonder aloud. David answers, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept because I thought: ‘Who knows? The Eternal may have pity on me, and they child may live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?’” (2 Samuel 12:22-23).
Perhaps David’s fast is like ours: we plead, we afflict ourselves, we wonder whether God is paying attention to our suffering, and we hope that God will forgive us before the Gates close at Ne’ilah. Rabbi Michael Strassfeld writes of our Yom Kippur fast, “We are meant to feel that the natural course of our existence is suspended on this day while our lives, or at least the quality of our lives, hang in the balance. We are to face what a permanent suspension of existence—death—would be like, and thus to learn how to better embrace life” (Strassfeld, The Jewish Holidays, 111). This fast is not a self-absorbed attempt to have spiritual visions or a pointless test of our self-control. At the end of our fast, like David, we return to the rhythm of our lives, hopefully more aware of not only our capacity to miss the mark, but our capacity to make things right.
Why do we fast? Not to prove to ourselves that we can. Not to prove to others how observant we are. While the discipline of a fast can remind us viscerally of the discipline required for teshuva, turning or repentance, our fast cannot end there. We spend a day in self-assessment and public confession, as individuals and as a community. We make amends for past wrongs and we make resolutions for the future. Strassfeld writes, “Yom Kippur is supposed to lead from thought to deed—from looking at ourselves to transforming the way we act” (Strassfeld 119). This, indeed, is the message of the haftarah passage we will read tomorrow, from the prophet Isaiah: “Is this the fast I desire, a day for men to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush and lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, a day when the Eternal is favorable? No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin” (Isaiah 58:5-7). In turning our attention to one another, to the most vulnerable among us—in being present for one another, God in turn will be present for us. As Isaiah says, “When you call the Eternal will answer; when you cry, he will say, Hineini, Here I am!” (Isaiah 58:9).
Spiritual fasting websites claim that fasting will not only rid your body of harmful toxins but will give you a direct experience of that hineini, that presence of God—the feeling that something Divine is listening to you, looking out for you. Writer David Rakoff, who is basically an atheist, embarked on one of these fasts, paying three hundred dollars in exchange for email consultations and a strict regimen for a twenty-day fast: three days of restricted intake on either end, and fourteen days of a very limited liquid diet of broth and herbal tea. He wondered whether he would shed not only toxins and weight but the rationalism that kept him away from all things spiritual. He wanted enlightenment and clarity and focus—all virtues the website promised he could gain through denying his physical body. He thought the experience would show him something new, like “a new color,” something impossible, something he had never seen before (This American Life, Episode 259, “Promised Land”).
But Rakoff did not experience peace or tranquility or insight. He didn’t have visions. He felt sleepy, he reported at first, and he had a hard time concentrating. As the fast continued, he felt better, focused—but no new insights. On day six, he worried that something had gone terribly wrong; he felt faint. He got reassurance from his doctor, who was skeptical and would have preferred that Rakoff end this quest. But he continued with the fast, which he calls “self-obsessed”: twenty days of “narcissistic rumination” that served to increase what the writer calls his “usual feelings of venality and guilt.” Fasting doesn’t solve anything for him, doesn’t reassure him that life and the universe have a purpose. Toward the end of the ordeal, Rakoff recalls a slight feeling of detachment; he was “aware” of the problems in his life, but they didn’t matter as much to him. Worried that he had gone about the fast incorrectly, he called a woman who has fasted like this five times. She reported a radical cleansing of her body; she saw and felt the toxins released. “You feel like you’re new,” she said, “like you’re a new person […] your highest self” (This American Life). Is this the fast we desire?
About halfway through his fast, Rakoff rode the subway in New York City. I will try to retell the story as he told it on the radio: “One night on the subway, I see a woman at the end of the car. She leans over to the people sitting next to her and asks in a quiet, friendly, almost business-like tone, ‘Do you have any extra food I can buy off of you?’ I can only hear her because the train is silent. She isn’t standing in the middle of the car addressing us. She’s just asking those within earshot. I walk over and give the woman a dollar before I get off at Union Square. ‘But do you have any extra food?’ she asks me. I apologize and say that I do not have any extra food. But I know in that moment that there is neither clarity nor serenity enough in the world that would give me the chutzpah to tell her why not” (This American Life).
Is this the fast God desires? Is this the fast we, as a Jewish community, seek on Yom Kippur? Choosing not to eat so that we can gain something for ourselves, some kind of insight or spiritual experience—choosing not to eat while others go hungry? Rakoff saw the sadness in fasting for “spiritual enlightenment,” out of choice and whim and as an intellectual experiment, in the midst of a city where too many people go home hungry, or can go to no home at all. The woman on the subway asked quietly not just for food, but for extra food. She did not want others to go hungry to feed her, but she wanted something to eat. Such a fast gets it backwards: we pay so much attention to our own bodies, to ourselves, that we cannot see the person in need right before our eyes.
What matters tonight and tomorrow is not what passes our lips, not the form our fast takes. We each make our own decisions about our health as we decide how to restrict the intake of food and water and the pleasures of the body denied to us on Yom Kippur. What matters is not that we torture ourselves or punish ourselves. What matters is not that we go on a spiritual quest for visions and enlightenment.
What matters is that our fast awakens us in ways the shofar call did not—awakens us to the fragility of our lives, to our role as partners with God in bringing about a just society. What matters is that we face the empty Ark, dressed as the dead are dressed, with a new awareness of our duty to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, and to welcome the stranger. What matters is not that we think today alone about our bodies, but that we carefully consider each day what we eat, where it comes from, who prepares it, how they are paid and treated.
God, through the prophet Joel, declares that our fast is desirable. God instructs us, “Turn back to Me with all your hearts, and with fasting, weeping, and lamenting” (Joel 2:13). But this fast cannot be a show. “Rend your hearts rather than your garments,” God urges (Joel 2:13).
May our fast move us, in our very being, to turn our lives toward the care of the neglected, the vulnerable, and the lonely. May we be partners with God in caring for one another.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Here I Am
The following is my sermon for Rosh HaShana Morning at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.
“Present!” I would answer when my grade-school teacher took attendance. For some reason, “Here” seemed too informal to my mind. I was ready to learn, even eager to diagram sentences in English class. I was present!
A friend of mine recently told me that she, too, would answer her teacher with a more formal response to the mundane role call. But this was in a different language, in a different kind of school. At her afternoon Hebrew school class, my friend responded not with “I’m here” (in Hebrew, Ani po). Instead, she called out, “Hineini!” Here I am! Other students snickered as her teacher tried to explain the rich and sometimes subtle difference between two Hebrew expressions that can both indeed be translated as “Here I am.”
In the Tanakh and in our liturgy, hineini represents much more than physically being here. Hineini indicates a presence and an intention and a humility that can clue us in to our duties as Jews and as morally-conscious human beings. Last night, at the beginning of our service, I recited the traditional words of the prayer leader, a humble statement of intention and responsibility. The prayer begins hineni, here I am. With all my own faults, grateful for the trust of this community on whose behalf I invoke Jewish tradition, here I am.
For the prophet Isaiah, hineini is his immediate, perhaps even instinctual, response to what is literally a call from God: “Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Hineni, sh’lacheini, Here I am, send me’” (Isaiah 6:8). But the Bible does not reserve this special word for human encounters with the Divine. Hineini symbolizes a son’s willingness to take action for his father. When his father Isaac calls to him saying, “My son,” Esau responds, “Hineini, here I am” (Genesis 27:1). Esau responds openly, willingly, though he does not know what his father will ask of him. This call to a son answered so openly and willingly marks the beginning of a conversation. Isaac asks his son to hunt some game and prepare a stew for him; Esau follows through on his hineini, hunting as his father requested. Making the stew demonstrates just how present Esau can be for his dying father, who plans to bestow upon his son his “innermost blessing,” a blessing from the depths of his soul (Gen. 27:4). Hineini symbolizes a beloved child’s willingness to put himself at risk. When his father Jacob sends the young Joseph out to the fields to check up on his competitive brothers, he answers “Hineni, Here I am”—or, as one translation renders it, “I am ready” (Gen. 37:13). Jacob’s trust in his son is met by Joseph’s loyalty.
And as we see so clearly in the Akeida, the story of the binding of Isaac, hineini indicates far more than proximity or attendance. Hineini represents a bond between one person and another, between a person and God. A covenantal tie or a feeling of responsibility prompts one to reply, Hineini, Here I am.
Climbing Mount Moriah together, Abraham and his son, his only one, his beloved, Isaac, have not wandered far from one another. The Torah tells us, “vayeilchu sh’neihem yachdav”—“and the two walked off together” (Gen. 22:6). When Isaac cries out, “Father,” he does not need Abraham to tell him physically where he is; Isaac can see Abraham clearly. Perhaps he can reach out and touch him, steadying himself on the rocky ground during the long climb. Isaac calls out in his own fear and confusion, seeking the love and loyalty of a father, asking just with that one word, that one name—Father—for Abraham to remember the responsibility that binds him to Isaac. “Then Isaac said to Abraham his father, ‘Father!’ And he answered, ‘Hineini, vni’—‘Here I am, my son.’ And he said, ‘Hinei, Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?’” (Gen. 22:7). Abraham reassures his son that God will provide for the offering, though this father had already pledged to offer up his beloved son; he has the knife in his hand even now. Abraham reassures his son not only with the words, “God will see to the sheep for the offering,” but by twice addressing Isaac as “my son”: “God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son” (Gen. 22:8); and “Hineini, vni”—“Here I am, my son” (Gen. 22:7). Abraham reassures his son with the very word he used earlier to respond to God, the Most High. “Hineini, vni”—“Here I am, my son.” Here I am, willing to take responsibility for you, remembering the love and loyalty I feel toward you, bound in two directions, bound by the covenant with a God who tests me with this ultimate sacrifice, bound by the ties of father to son.
When God first calls to Abraham in this story, the response is immediate, open, and willing. As many classical commentators note, Abraham commits himself to fulfilling God’s call before he knows what God is asking of him (Genesis Rabbah and Or Ha-Hayyim). “Abraham,” God cries. “Hineini” (Gen. 22:1). And then God asks the impossible: “Take, please, your son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac, and take yourself (lech-lecha) to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Gen. 22:2).
I wonder how it felt to be present, there in that moment, atop the mountain, binding his beloved son to the wood for the burnt offering. Isaac has asked only one question; whether he was reassured or horrified we cannot know. The Sages say that the Angel of God blessed Isaac with a tear as he lay, bound to the wood atop the altar—a single tear to blind Isaac, sparing him from the terrible sight of his father: “Vayishlach Avraham et yado vayikach et hama’achelet lischot et b’no”—“And Abraham put out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son” (Gen. 22:10). In that moment, could Abraham be truly present, or had he turned his brain to autopilot, carrying out the motions? In that moment, the Angel of God calls Abraham to be present again: “Then an angel of the Eternal called to him from heaven: ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ And he answered, ‘Hineini’” (Gen. 22:11). Called to be present in the moment, shaken from the terrible truth of the knife in his hand, Abraham can now fulfill the promise he made with each previous Hineini. He can be loyal to the God of the covenant, and he can be loving toward his son. He can be present to two crucial relationships in his life—relationships that bind Abraham to take on the sometimes messy project of discerning what it means to live a Jewish life.
Rabbi Dr. Norman Cohen sees in the Biblical examples of Hineini a challenge to us. We must not assume that this word, and the attention to relationship it carries with it, was meant only for the ancient Israelites (Hineini in Our Lives). We can bring hineini into our own relationships.
To be present, truly present, with another human being, and to feel responsible in relationship to another human being—not knowing what will be asked of you, not knowing the consequence—this is hineini. And hineini is something I learned this summer through an internship in hospital chaplaincy.
In the Bible, hineini indicates a conversation, an exchange, a reciprocal encounter between two beings tied to one another in relationship. Hineini does not open the conversation; it is a response; it continues an ongoing exchange. Hineini can link past, present, and future: because of our past covenant, I will commit to taking action for you in the present, accepting the consequences for our shared future.
For Isaiah, hineini happened in an unprecedented direct conversation with God. The covenant between God and Israel was not new to Isaiah, but his role as a prophet came upon him like a bolt from the blue, a voice from the heavens calling out to him alone. And he answered, Hineini, here I am.
It is this kind of call we answer when we dare to be present to other human beings. Bound by the ethics of Jewish religious tradition, I walked into hospital rooms this past summer feeling a generalized sense of responsibility, an abstract call to be present. But in the face of each new human being, each stranger lying vulnerable in a hospital bed, I was called individually and anew. “Will you be present for me?” Hineini. Here I am.
When I first visited Wanda, she immediately grabbed my hand. “You’re the chaplain,” she said, relieved. “Pray for me. Pray for God to change the minds of all these doctors and social workers. They won’t let me go home. Pray for God to change their minds.”
Wanda’s story was complex, her stay in the hospital lengthened by her own unwillingness to be transferred to a rehabilitation center where she could get proper care. Alone at home, Wanda had no support, and she needed at least two people to help her get out of bed. Resistant and angry and afraid, Wanda could not hear the reasoned, and at times impatient, words of the social worker, nor could she interpret the nurses’ care as attentive.
Over the course of my visits with Wanda, she often changed her mind about what she wanted. One day she refused to be transferred to rehab; the next day she complained that the doctors wouldn’t let her go.
During each visit, I tried to simply be present with Wanda—not to argue for or against the social workers’ recommendations or to determine whether Wanda was “right” or “wrong” about the nurses. Instead, I tried to discern what Wanda was asking of me, present with her in the moment of her pain and vulnerability. And loneliness.
“People treat me like I’m dog meat,” she said, seemingly referring not only to the hospital staff but to everyone she had ever encountered—all of humanity. “I’m a person.”
The last time I prayed with Wanda, I began with a song: Don’t hide your face from me; I’m asking for your help. I call to you, please hear my prayer, O God. If you would answer me as I have called to you… please hear me now; don’t hide your face from me.
In that prayer, I asked that Wanda come to know, in her interactions with the hospital staff, throughout her healing process, and indeed throughout her life, that each person is created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God. In our humanity, we share a bit of the Divine, and we are called to reach out to one another in responsibility and in humility and with care. Being present with Wanda meant saying hineini to her loneliness and her pain. Being present with Wanda meant urging her to reconnect to the other people around her even as I acknowledged that sometimes people fall short, sometimes they fail to see the human being in pain right in front of them.
Being able to say hineini means recognizing that, when we stand in the presence of another human being who is willing to reach out to us in relationship, we stand upon holy ground. Present in that moment, we each have the opportunity to remind the other that she is human in the best sense. We have the opportunity to remind the other that she is not only mortal or vulnerable or fragile, but that she is created in the Divine image, that she is capable of taking action in her own life, that she is capable of climbing the mountain or calling the world to justice.
Being able to say hineini means paying attention to who is calling us. Asleep in the Temple, the young Samuel hears a voice in the night: “Vayikra Adonai el Shmuel vayomer ‘Hineini’”—“and the Eternal called out to Samuel and he answered, ‘Here I am’” (1 Sam. 3:4). Throughout the night, Samuel misses the call, not realizing it is God reaching out to him. Samuel thinks it is Eli, the High Priest, calling him to some particular duty; he willingly answers, Hineini, but he answers the wrong person. The Jewish Publication Society indicates the difference between the kind of answer Abraham gives to the Angel of God and the answer Samuel gives to a voice he thinks is Eli. JPS translates Samuel’s nighttime hineini as “I’m coming”—a more casual response to a voice Samuel thinks he has heard dozens of times. Eventually, Eli unravels the mystery and instructs Samuel on a new answer: “Speak, Eternal, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam 3:9,10).
Sometimes we respond in our relationships with rote replies. “I’m coming,” we say, rolling our eyes. But our tradition teaches us that we must open our ears to the extraordinary call, the radical call to be vulnerable to another, responsible for another, willing to live in relationship with an other. Hineini, here I am, here I am with all my faults and in love and in loyalty. Here I am, for you, in this moment.
As we embark upon this new year, let us be attentive to our relationships. Let us answer one another’s call. And let us remember that God, too, reaches out to us in relationship. Through the prophet Isaiah, God assures us, “When you call, the Eternal will answer. When you cry, He will say, Hineini, Here I am” (Isaiah 58:9).
“Present!” I would answer when my grade-school teacher took attendance. For some reason, “Here” seemed too informal to my mind. I was ready to learn, even eager to diagram sentences in English class. I was present!
A friend of mine recently told me that she, too, would answer her teacher with a more formal response to the mundane role call. But this was in a different language, in a different kind of school. At her afternoon Hebrew school class, my friend responded not with “I’m here” (in Hebrew, Ani po). Instead, she called out, “Hineini!” Here I am! Other students snickered as her teacher tried to explain the rich and sometimes subtle difference between two Hebrew expressions that can both indeed be translated as “Here I am.”
In the Tanakh and in our liturgy, hineini represents much more than physically being here. Hineini indicates a presence and an intention and a humility that can clue us in to our duties as Jews and as morally-conscious human beings. Last night, at the beginning of our service, I recited the traditional words of the prayer leader, a humble statement of intention and responsibility. The prayer begins hineni, here I am. With all my own faults, grateful for the trust of this community on whose behalf I invoke Jewish tradition, here I am.
For the prophet Isaiah, hineini is his immediate, perhaps even instinctual, response to what is literally a call from God: “Then I heard the voice of my Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Hineni, sh’lacheini, Here I am, send me’” (Isaiah 6:8). But the Bible does not reserve this special word for human encounters with the Divine. Hineini symbolizes a son’s willingness to take action for his father. When his father Isaac calls to him saying, “My son,” Esau responds, “Hineini, here I am” (Genesis 27:1). Esau responds openly, willingly, though he does not know what his father will ask of him. This call to a son answered so openly and willingly marks the beginning of a conversation. Isaac asks his son to hunt some game and prepare a stew for him; Esau follows through on his hineini, hunting as his father requested. Making the stew demonstrates just how present Esau can be for his dying father, who plans to bestow upon his son his “innermost blessing,” a blessing from the depths of his soul (Gen. 27:4). Hineini symbolizes a beloved child’s willingness to put himself at risk. When his father Jacob sends the young Joseph out to the fields to check up on his competitive brothers, he answers “Hineni, Here I am”—or, as one translation renders it, “I am ready” (Gen. 37:13). Jacob’s trust in his son is met by Joseph’s loyalty.
And as we see so clearly in the Akeida, the story of the binding of Isaac, hineini indicates far more than proximity or attendance. Hineini represents a bond between one person and another, between a person and God. A covenantal tie or a feeling of responsibility prompts one to reply, Hineini, Here I am.
Climbing Mount Moriah together, Abraham and his son, his only one, his beloved, Isaac, have not wandered far from one another. The Torah tells us, “vayeilchu sh’neihem yachdav”—“and the two walked off together” (Gen. 22:6). When Isaac cries out, “Father,” he does not need Abraham to tell him physically where he is; Isaac can see Abraham clearly. Perhaps he can reach out and touch him, steadying himself on the rocky ground during the long climb. Isaac calls out in his own fear and confusion, seeking the love and loyalty of a father, asking just with that one word, that one name—Father—for Abraham to remember the responsibility that binds him to Isaac. “Then Isaac said to Abraham his father, ‘Father!’ And he answered, ‘Hineini, vni’—‘Here I am, my son.’ And he said, ‘Hinei, Here are the fire and the wood, but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?’” (Gen. 22:7). Abraham reassures his son that God will provide for the offering, though this father had already pledged to offer up his beloved son; he has the knife in his hand even now. Abraham reassures his son not only with the words, “God will see to the sheep for the offering,” but by twice addressing Isaac as “my son”: “God will see to the sheep for the offering, my son” (Gen. 22:8); and “Hineini, vni”—“Here I am, my son” (Gen. 22:7). Abraham reassures his son with the very word he used earlier to respond to God, the Most High. “Hineini, vni”—“Here I am, my son.” Here I am, willing to take responsibility for you, remembering the love and loyalty I feel toward you, bound in two directions, bound by the covenant with a God who tests me with this ultimate sacrifice, bound by the ties of father to son.
When God first calls to Abraham in this story, the response is immediate, open, and willing. As many classical commentators note, Abraham commits himself to fulfilling God’s call before he knows what God is asking of him (Genesis Rabbah and Or Ha-Hayyim). “Abraham,” God cries. “Hineini” (Gen. 22:1). And then God asks the impossible: “Take, please, your son, your only one, the one you love, Isaac, and take yourself (lech-lecha) to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I will show you” (Gen. 22:2).
I wonder how it felt to be present, there in that moment, atop the mountain, binding his beloved son to the wood for the burnt offering. Isaac has asked only one question; whether he was reassured or horrified we cannot know. The Sages say that the Angel of God blessed Isaac with a tear as he lay, bound to the wood atop the altar—a single tear to blind Isaac, sparing him from the terrible sight of his father: “Vayishlach Avraham et yado vayikach et hama’achelet lischot et b’no”—“And Abraham put out his hand and took the knife to slaughter his son” (Gen. 22:10). In that moment, could Abraham be truly present, or had he turned his brain to autopilot, carrying out the motions? In that moment, the Angel of God calls Abraham to be present again: “Then an angel of the Eternal called to him from heaven: ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ And he answered, ‘Hineini’” (Gen. 22:11). Called to be present in the moment, shaken from the terrible truth of the knife in his hand, Abraham can now fulfill the promise he made with each previous Hineini. He can be loyal to the God of the covenant, and he can be loving toward his son. He can be present to two crucial relationships in his life—relationships that bind Abraham to take on the sometimes messy project of discerning what it means to live a Jewish life.
Rabbi Dr. Norman Cohen sees in the Biblical examples of Hineini a challenge to us. We must not assume that this word, and the attention to relationship it carries with it, was meant only for the ancient Israelites (Hineini in Our Lives). We can bring hineini into our own relationships.
To be present, truly present, with another human being, and to feel responsible in relationship to another human being—not knowing what will be asked of you, not knowing the consequence—this is hineini. And hineini is something I learned this summer through an internship in hospital chaplaincy.
In the Bible, hineini indicates a conversation, an exchange, a reciprocal encounter between two beings tied to one another in relationship. Hineini does not open the conversation; it is a response; it continues an ongoing exchange. Hineini can link past, present, and future: because of our past covenant, I will commit to taking action for you in the present, accepting the consequences for our shared future.
For Isaiah, hineini happened in an unprecedented direct conversation with God. The covenant between God and Israel was not new to Isaiah, but his role as a prophet came upon him like a bolt from the blue, a voice from the heavens calling out to him alone. And he answered, Hineini, here I am.
It is this kind of call we answer when we dare to be present to other human beings. Bound by the ethics of Jewish religious tradition, I walked into hospital rooms this past summer feeling a generalized sense of responsibility, an abstract call to be present. But in the face of each new human being, each stranger lying vulnerable in a hospital bed, I was called individually and anew. “Will you be present for me?” Hineini. Here I am.
When I first visited Wanda, she immediately grabbed my hand. “You’re the chaplain,” she said, relieved. “Pray for me. Pray for God to change the minds of all these doctors and social workers. They won’t let me go home. Pray for God to change their minds.”
Wanda’s story was complex, her stay in the hospital lengthened by her own unwillingness to be transferred to a rehabilitation center where she could get proper care. Alone at home, Wanda had no support, and she needed at least two people to help her get out of bed. Resistant and angry and afraid, Wanda could not hear the reasoned, and at times impatient, words of the social worker, nor could she interpret the nurses’ care as attentive.
Over the course of my visits with Wanda, she often changed her mind about what she wanted. One day she refused to be transferred to rehab; the next day she complained that the doctors wouldn’t let her go.
During each visit, I tried to simply be present with Wanda—not to argue for or against the social workers’ recommendations or to determine whether Wanda was “right” or “wrong” about the nurses. Instead, I tried to discern what Wanda was asking of me, present with her in the moment of her pain and vulnerability. And loneliness.
“People treat me like I’m dog meat,” she said, seemingly referring not only to the hospital staff but to everyone she had ever encountered—all of humanity. “I’m a person.”
The last time I prayed with Wanda, I began with a song: Don’t hide your face from me; I’m asking for your help. I call to you, please hear my prayer, O God. If you would answer me as I have called to you… please hear me now; don’t hide your face from me.
In that prayer, I asked that Wanda come to know, in her interactions with the hospital staff, throughout her healing process, and indeed throughout her life, that each person is created betzelem Elohim, in the image of God. In our humanity, we share a bit of the Divine, and we are called to reach out to one another in responsibility and in humility and with care. Being present with Wanda meant saying hineini to her loneliness and her pain. Being present with Wanda meant urging her to reconnect to the other people around her even as I acknowledged that sometimes people fall short, sometimes they fail to see the human being in pain right in front of them.
Being able to say hineini means recognizing that, when we stand in the presence of another human being who is willing to reach out to us in relationship, we stand upon holy ground. Present in that moment, we each have the opportunity to remind the other that she is human in the best sense. We have the opportunity to remind the other that she is not only mortal or vulnerable or fragile, but that she is created in the Divine image, that she is capable of taking action in her own life, that she is capable of climbing the mountain or calling the world to justice.
Being able to say hineini means paying attention to who is calling us. Asleep in the Temple, the young Samuel hears a voice in the night: “Vayikra Adonai el Shmuel vayomer ‘Hineini’”—“and the Eternal called out to Samuel and he answered, ‘Here I am’” (1 Sam. 3:4). Throughout the night, Samuel misses the call, not realizing it is God reaching out to him. Samuel thinks it is Eli, the High Priest, calling him to some particular duty; he willingly answers, Hineini, but he answers the wrong person. The Jewish Publication Society indicates the difference between the kind of answer Abraham gives to the Angel of God and the answer Samuel gives to a voice he thinks is Eli. JPS translates Samuel’s nighttime hineini as “I’m coming”—a more casual response to a voice Samuel thinks he has heard dozens of times. Eventually, Eli unravels the mystery and instructs Samuel on a new answer: “Speak, Eternal, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam 3:9,10).
Sometimes we respond in our relationships with rote replies. “I’m coming,” we say, rolling our eyes. But our tradition teaches us that we must open our ears to the extraordinary call, the radical call to be vulnerable to another, responsible for another, willing to live in relationship with an other. Hineini, here I am, here I am with all my faults and in love and in loyalty. Here I am, for you, in this moment.
As we embark upon this new year, let us be attentive to our relationships. Let us answer one another’s call. And let us remember that God, too, reaches out to us in relationship. Through the prophet Isaiah, God assures us, “When you call, the Eternal will answer. When you cry, He will say, Hineini, Here I am” (Isaiah 58:9).
Sow in Tears, Reap in Joy
The following is my sermon for Erev Rosh HaShana at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.
Shana tova. Tonight we greet each other this way, eating apples and honey and thinking about a sweet new year. We proclaim, “Today is the birthday of the world.” It is a day of renewal and joy. Yet today is also a day of responsibility and even trembling: U’netane tokef kedushat hayom, ki hu norah v’ayom. Let us proclaim the holiness of this day, for it is terrible and full of dread.
During these ten Days of Awe, our liturgy is pleading and humble. Through the rest of the year the Reform prayerbook edits out certain references to a theology of reward and punishment; for example, our Shema omits a paragraph where God warns that, if we do not obey God’s commandments, God’s anger will “flare up” against us, interrupting the natural order of the world and causing calamity. But reward and punishment fill the pages of our High Holy Day liturgy. We address God as King and as Judge—all-powerful, towering above us, lowly and unworthy. We plead with God not to close the Gates on our prayers for forgiveness. In some synagogues, congregants weep and wail as they recite the u’netane tokef prayer: “On Rosh HaShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be; who shall live and who shall die; […] who shall perish by fire and who by water; […] who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled, who shall be poor and who shall be rich.” This litany of disastrous consequences, often distanced from our modern understanding with beautiful organ music and cantorial improvisation, seems harsh. For some of us, in some years, it can be nearly impossible to face, to recite those cold and indeed dreadful words.
It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall be poor and who shall be rich” when our nation struggles through a long economic depression. When our loved ones or we ourselves fear for our job security or face yet another month unemployed. It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall live and who shall die” when our minds and hearts are with someone lying in a hospital bed. When we live each day with the knowledge that a terminal disease threatens our very being or someone we hold dear. It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled” when each day can be a battle against stress or depression or a learning disability. I confess, sometimes when we’ve reached u’netane tokef in our liturgy I have sat in the pew thinking, “Give me a break this year, God. I cannot say these words.”
It is hard to pray a liturgy that depicts God as so very invested in reward and punishment. It is hard to voice precisely how little control we have over crucial aspects of our lives: the economy that secures or threatens our sustenance and shelter, our own health and the health of loved ones, natural disasters like the devastating floods in Pakistan, accidents like the oil spill whose effects continue to alter the landscape of an entire region of our country. It is hard to pray when we have seen in our own lives that God doesn’t always seem to respond and make everything better. During these Days of Awe, faced with the knowledge that so much in this world is out of our control, how can we pray?
From praise to thanksgiving to supplication, our Bible and rabbinic literature depict Jews praying to God for various reasons and in different ways. The prophet Daniel models a confessional prayer seeking mercy and forgiveness, much like the confessions we will offer on Yom Kippur. Like our modern-day liturgy, Daniel’s prayer begins with intention and attitude: “I turned my face to the Lord God, devoting myself to prayer and supplication” (Daniel 9:3). Daniel turns his prayer to confession with words like those we pray at the end of Avinu Malkeinu when we say “be gracious and answer us, for we have nothing.” “We have sinned,” Daniel laments, “we have gone astray. […] With you, God, is the right, and the shame is on us to this very day” (Daniel 9:5,7). These are the kinds of prayers we offer during the Days of Awe, and perhaps less often during the rest of the Jewish calendar. They are prayers that profess collective belief in human powerlessness.
Jewish tradition offers us other ways to pray, too. We call upon God as one who remembers the covenant. God remembers Sarah and Rachel in their intense desire for children. As we read each Rosh Hashanah, God remembers Hannah. In these stories, human beings cry out to God, emotional and vulnerable, and God not only hears but grants their requests, blessing each with a son. How many of us have prayed that same prayer, pining for a miracle? In the story of Hannah in the Book of Samuel, we read that Hannah, so distressed by barrenness, wept, refused to eat, and began to pray: “[I]n the bitterness of her soul, [Hannah] prayed to the Eternal, weeping all the while” (1 Samuel 1:10). Praying silently, only her lips moving, Hannah appeared drunk to the priest Eli, who chastised her until Hannah promised that she had drunk no wine but had been pouring out her soul to God. We do not know the entirety of Hannah’s prayer, but we do know that she made a vow: if God granted her a son, Hannah would dedicate that son to service in the Temple. And of course, this is what happens—despite her barrenness, despite the ridicule she endured, despite Eli’s misunderstanding. “Elkanah knew his wife Hannah and the Eternal remembered her. Hannah conceived, and at the turn of the year bore a son. She named him Samuel, meaning, ‘I asked the Eternal for him.’” (1 Samuel 1:19-20).
I can certainly relate to heartfelt prayers going misunderstood. And I can relate to Hannah’s despair and the loneliness she must have experienced when even her own husband could not comprehend how deep was her desire for a child. It is harder for me to understand the end of the story, where God remembers Hannah. Will God remember each of us, in our distress, by granting our prayers?
Yet something else happens to Hannah. She prayed for a son, yes, but perhaps she prayed, too, for comfort. Perhaps she prayed for a lessening of her loneliness and isolation. Leaving the Temple, perhaps Hannah is so confident in her prayer that she has no doubt God will grant her a son. I’m not sure I can have that kind of confidence. But I take comfort in the peace Hannah gained from pouring out her soul to God: “And she went on her way, and she ate, and was no longer downcast” (1 Samuel 1:18). That is to say, Hannah gained comfort through her prayer, even before it was literally answered, simply by saying the words. Sometimes letting go of our loneliness, voicing the deepest desires of our souls, and pouring out our fears can be liberating. I find in Hannah’s tale a hint that prayer can be effective even when we see no recognizable “answer.” It can help us to let go of some of the things over which we have no control.
Yet prayer is not only about results, nor is it only about our comfort. In shaping our daily liturgy, the rabbis taught that prayer is a call to action. Each day, after reciting the blessing for Torah study, the rabbis instituted the practice of reading aloud an adaptation of a passage from the Mishnah: Eilu devarim she’ein la’hem shiur… “These are things that are limitless, of which a person enjoys the fruit of this world, while the principal remains in the world to come. They are: honoring one’s father and mother, engaging in deeds of compassion (gemilut chasadim), arriving early for study, morning and evening, welcoming guests, visiting the sick,
providing for the wedding couple, accompanying the dead for burial, intentionality in prayer, and making peace among people. But the study of Torah encompasses them all.” This text, recited each day, states unequivocally why we engage with Judaism, why we pray, why we study ancient texts in a language that has become for many of us distant and challenging. In Hebrew, “to pray” is a reflexive verb, something one does to oneself: lehitpalel. To examine oneself, to go inside oneself. The rabbis wanted to ensure that our prayers neither wandered into the territory of narcissism nor remained in the mode of prostration and wailing. Instead, they built into our liturgy a reminder of Judaism’s ultimate aim: to do mitzvot in the world. If Torah does not lead us from this sacred space into the world to fill bowls at the soup kitchen or listen to the stories of the residents of the nursing home or advocate for peace in Israel and all the world, then we have not prayed.
So what do we do with u’netane tokef? When we already bear so much responsibility and pain, how do we find words to carry us through the Days of Awe into the new year?
As I have been preparing for these Days of Awe, coming from a summer of working in hospital chaplaincy, surrounded by terminal illness and death and often hopelessness, I have been thinking about a different prayer, from Psalms. It is a text that many people lean on when they want to believe that prayer is magical and immediate, that God responds straightaway, in humanly recognizable terms, giving us all that we ask for. We are suffering now, people say, but God will provide for us in the future, suddenly and without precedent. “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy” (Psalm 126:5). Many times, I have heard this phrase as a surrender: there is nothing more I can do, so I will wait for God. I am here, suffering, but God will suddenly turn all of this upside down.
Indeed, Psalm 126 is a vision of some unknown future when God will reverse the plight of the Israelites in Exile:
When the Eternal restores the fortunes of Zion
---we see it as in a dream---
our mouths shall be filled with laughter,
our tongues, with songs of joy.
[…]
They who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Though he goes along weeping,
carrying the seed-bag,
he shall come back with songs of joy,
carrying his sheaves.
Certainly, such a vision promises that God will reverse expectations, allowing us to reap joy where we have planted only tears. But I want to think just about that one line: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” At least for me, raised in the suburbs and now a confirmed Brooklynite, sowing and reaping are not daily activities. I often think about the backbreaking work of preparing the soil, bending to cast the seeds over the ground, but then I skip to the part where we’re all gathered around the table eating the bread. We have reaped, and we joyously benefit from what we worked so very hard to plant.
But reaping is hard work! Now, at the beginning of our Days of Awe, we prepare to reap what we have sown this past year. That is the essence of u’netane tokef. Today is terrible and full of dread because we face the consequences not of the whims of some faraway God, but because we, renewing our commitment to Jewish tradition each year, reflect upon our own actions. How have we enacted our prayers, transforming the pouring out of our emotions into mitzvot in the world?
To affirm that “those who sow in tears will reap in joy” ought to be neither a surrender nor an admonishment. If we do not find ourselves reaping in joy at the moment, we need not assume that it is all our fault, that we are being punished for the tears we have sown. And if we do find ourselves at this moment sowing in tears, suffering and worried, we cannot assume that God will turn it around, make everything better.
How can we approach prayer during these ten Days of Awe? We can approach it thinking, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” We can approach it knowing that our tears matter—to this community, to one another, and to God. We can approach prayer knowing that we must not only sow but reap; we must attend to those crucial tasks the rabbis included in our daily prayer routine: caring for the sick, celebrating life’s joyous moments, studying Jewish tradition, and honoring our nurturing relationships. We can approach prayer hoping that our own efforts to reap what we have ourselves planted will be matched by an ability to see the joy around us, to see the small miracles amidst the challenges we each face. Our tears are necessary; they sink into the fertile ground and sprout up a newly-appreciated ability to recognize joy. We cannot control events like earthquakes and cancer diagnoses, ultrasound results and economic downturns. But we can do the hard work of shaping our reactions to those events.
I think this is how prayer worked for Isaac—the young son who, as we will hear tomorrow morning—lay atop a pile of dry timbers, his father holding the fire and the knife. Likely traumatized by his experience on the mountaintop, Isaac disappears from the narrative in Genesis, while Abraham buries Sarah and arranges for Isaac’s marriage. The next time we see Isaac, he is pensive. Isaac does not cry out or pray for God to return his mother to him; he does not petition for anything. We read, “Vayetze Yitzchak lasuach basadeh lifnot erev vayisa einaiv vayar v’hinei g’malim baim”¬—Translation here is complicated by the verb lasuach, used rarely in the Bible. “And Isaac went out to lasuach in the field at the coming of evening, and he lifted his eyes, and he saw, and—behold!—camels approach!” (Gen. 24:63). The rabbis of the Talmud interpret lasuach as “to meditate” or “to pray” (Brachot 26b). So at twilight, as one day ends and another begins, Isaac walks out into the field, his head and his spirits lowered, meditating and praying. His prayer does not revive his mother from the dead; instead, Isaac’s prayer changes the way he sees the world.
“And he lifted his eyes, and he saw, and—behold!—camels approach! And Rebecca lifted her eyes, and she saw Isaac, and she fell from her camel. […] And Isaac brought her to the tent of Sarah his mother, and he took Rebecca as his wife, and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother” (Gen. 24:63-64,67).
Isaac went to pour forth his sadness in prayer; his evening meditation allowed him to lift up his eyes and look again at the world, despite the grief he still carried. And, in looking up, the world surprised him. He found Rebecca, found the ability to risk loving again in spite of loss, found comfort. The tears he sowed and the prayer he offered allowed Isaac to reap in joy.
These Days of Awe, may our prayers represent our willingness to pour forth our tears and to do the work of reaping what we have planted. May our prayers make us ready to lift up our eyes and see the world anew. May our prayers be, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel urges, “our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living” (Quoted in Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Way into Jewish Prayer, 15). Today is full of awe. Vayisu eineinu. And we lift up our eyes.
Shana tova. Tonight we greet each other this way, eating apples and honey and thinking about a sweet new year. We proclaim, “Today is the birthday of the world.” It is a day of renewal and joy. Yet today is also a day of responsibility and even trembling: U’netane tokef kedushat hayom, ki hu norah v’ayom. Let us proclaim the holiness of this day, for it is terrible and full of dread.
During these ten Days of Awe, our liturgy is pleading and humble. Through the rest of the year the Reform prayerbook edits out certain references to a theology of reward and punishment; for example, our Shema omits a paragraph where God warns that, if we do not obey God’s commandments, God’s anger will “flare up” against us, interrupting the natural order of the world and causing calamity. But reward and punishment fill the pages of our High Holy Day liturgy. We address God as King and as Judge—all-powerful, towering above us, lowly and unworthy. We plead with God not to close the Gates on our prayers for forgiveness. In some synagogues, congregants weep and wail as they recite the u’netane tokef prayer: “On Rosh HaShanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed: How many shall pass on, how many shall come to be; who shall live and who shall die; […] who shall perish by fire and who by water; […] who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled, who shall be poor and who shall be rich.” This litany of disastrous consequences, often distanced from our modern understanding with beautiful organ music and cantorial improvisation, seems harsh. For some of us, in some years, it can be nearly impossible to face, to recite those cold and indeed dreadful words.
It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall be poor and who shall be rich” when our nation struggles through a long economic depression. When our loved ones or we ourselves fear for our job security or face yet another month unemployed. It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall live and who shall die” when our minds and hearts are with someone lying in a hospital bed. When we live each day with the knowledge that a terminal disease threatens our very being or someone we hold dear. It is dreadful to pray to a God who is deciding, right now, “who shall be tranquil and who shall be troubled” when each day can be a battle against stress or depression or a learning disability. I confess, sometimes when we’ve reached u’netane tokef in our liturgy I have sat in the pew thinking, “Give me a break this year, God. I cannot say these words.”
It is hard to pray a liturgy that depicts God as so very invested in reward and punishment. It is hard to voice precisely how little control we have over crucial aspects of our lives: the economy that secures or threatens our sustenance and shelter, our own health and the health of loved ones, natural disasters like the devastating floods in Pakistan, accidents like the oil spill whose effects continue to alter the landscape of an entire region of our country. It is hard to pray when we have seen in our own lives that God doesn’t always seem to respond and make everything better. During these Days of Awe, faced with the knowledge that so much in this world is out of our control, how can we pray?
From praise to thanksgiving to supplication, our Bible and rabbinic literature depict Jews praying to God for various reasons and in different ways. The prophet Daniel models a confessional prayer seeking mercy and forgiveness, much like the confessions we will offer on Yom Kippur. Like our modern-day liturgy, Daniel’s prayer begins with intention and attitude: “I turned my face to the Lord God, devoting myself to prayer and supplication” (Daniel 9:3). Daniel turns his prayer to confession with words like those we pray at the end of Avinu Malkeinu when we say “be gracious and answer us, for we have nothing.” “We have sinned,” Daniel laments, “we have gone astray. […] With you, God, is the right, and the shame is on us to this very day” (Daniel 9:5,7). These are the kinds of prayers we offer during the Days of Awe, and perhaps less often during the rest of the Jewish calendar. They are prayers that profess collective belief in human powerlessness.
Jewish tradition offers us other ways to pray, too. We call upon God as one who remembers the covenant. God remembers Sarah and Rachel in their intense desire for children. As we read each Rosh Hashanah, God remembers Hannah. In these stories, human beings cry out to God, emotional and vulnerable, and God not only hears but grants their requests, blessing each with a son. How many of us have prayed that same prayer, pining for a miracle? In the story of Hannah in the Book of Samuel, we read that Hannah, so distressed by barrenness, wept, refused to eat, and began to pray: “[I]n the bitterness of her soul, [Hannah] prayed to the Eternal, weeping all the while” (1 Samuel 1:10). Praying silently, only her lips moving, Hannah appeared drunk to the priest Eli, who chastised her until Hannah promised that she had drunk no wine but had been pouring out her soul to God. We do not know the entirety of Hannah’s prayer, but we do know that she made a vow: if God granted her a son, Hannah would dedicate that son to service in the Temple. And of course, this is what happens—despite her barrenness, despite the ridicule she endured, despite Eli’s misunderstanding. “Elkanah knew his wife Hannah and the Eternal remembered her. Hannah conceived, and at the turn of the year bore a son. She named him Samuel, meaning, ‘I asked the Eternal for him.’” (1 Samuel 1:19-20).
I can certainly relate to heartfelt prayers going misunderstood. And I can relate to Hannah’s despair and the loneliness she must have experienced when even her own husband could not comprehend how deep was her desire for a child. It is harder for me to understand the end of the story, where God remembers Hannah. Will God remember each of us, in our distress, by granting our prayers?
Yet something else happens to Hannah. She prayed for a son, yes, but perhaps she prayed, too, for comfort. Perhaps she prayed for a lessening of her loneliness and isolation. Leaving the Temple, perhaps Hannah is so confident in her prayer that she has no doubt God will grant her a son. I’m not sure I can have that kind of confidence. But I take comfort in the peace Hannah gained from pouring out her soul to God: “And she went on her way, and she ate, and was no longer downcast” (1 Samuel 1:18). That is to say, Hannah gained comfort through her prayer, even before it was literally answered, simply by saying the words. Sometimes letting go of our loneliness, voicing the deepest desires of our souls, and pouring out our fears can be liberating. I find in Hannah’s tale a hint that prayer can be effective even when we see no recognizable “answer.” It can help us to let go of some of the things over which we have no control.
Yet prayer is not only about results, nor is it only about our comfort. In shaping our daily liturgy, the rabbis taught that prayer is a call to action. Each day, after reciting the blessing for Torah study, the rabbis instituted the practice of reading aloud an adaptation of a passage from the Mishnah: Eilu devarim she’ein la’hem shiur… “These are things that are limitless, of which a person enjoys the fruit of this world, while the principal remains in the world to come. They are: honoring one’s father and mother, engaging in deeds of compassion (gemilut chasadim), arriving early for study, morning and evening, welcoming guests, visiting the sick,
providing for the wedding couple, accompanying the dead for burial, intentionality in prayer, and making peace among people. But the study of Torah encompasses them all.” This text, recited each day, states unequivocally why we engage with Judaism, why we pray, why we study ancient texts in a language that has become for many of us distant and challenging. In Hebrew, “to pray” is a reflexive verb, something one does to oneself: lehitpalel. To examine oneself, to go inside oneself. The rabbis wanted to ensure that our prayers neither wandered into the territory of narcissism nor remained in the mode of prostration and wailing. Instead, they built into our liturgy a reminder of Judaism’s ultimate aim: to do mitzvot in the world. If Torah does not lead us from this sacred space into the world to fill bowls at the soup kitchen or listen to the stories of the residents of the nursing home or advocate for peace in Israel and all the world, then we have not prayed.
So what do we do with u’netane tokef? When we already bear so much responsibility and pain, how do we find words to carry us through the Days of Awe into the new year?
As I have been preparing for these Days of Awe, coming from a summer of working in hospital chaplaincy, surrounded by terminal illness and death and often hopelessness, I have been thinking about a different prayer, from Psalms. It is a text that many people lean on when they want to believe that prayer is magical and immediate, that God responds straightaway, in humanly recognizable terms, giving us all that we ask for. We are suffering now, people say, but God will provide for us in the future, suddenly and without precedent. “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy” (Psalm 126:5). Many times, I have heard this phrase as a surrender: there is nothing more I can do, so I will wait for God. I am here, suffering, but God will suddenly turn all of this upside down.
Indeed, Psalm 126 is a vision of some unknown future when God will reverse the plight of the Israelites in Exile:
When the Eternal restores the fortunes of Zion
---we see it as in a dream---
our mouths shall be filled with laughter,
our tongues, with songs of joy.
[…]
They who sow in tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Though he goes along weeping,
carrying the seed-bag,
he shall come back with songs of joy,
carrying his sheaves.
Certainly, such a vision promises that God will reverse expectations, allowing us to reap joy where we have planted only tears. But I want to think just about that one line: “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” At least for me, raised in the suburbs and now a confirmed Brooklynite, sowing and reaping are not daily activities. I often think about the backbreaking work of preparing the soil, bending to cast the seeds over the ground, but then I skip to the part where we’re all gathered around the table eating the bread. We have reaped, and we joyously benefit from what we worked so very hard to plant.
But reaping is hard work! Now, at the beginning of our Days of Awe, we prepare to reap what we have sown this past year. That is the essence of u’netane tokef. Today is terrible and full of dread because we face the consequences not of the whims of some faraway God, but because we, renewing our commitment to Jewish tradition each year, reflect upon our own actions. How have we enacted our prayers, transforming the pouring out of our emotions into mitzvot in the world?
To affirm that “those who sow in tears will reap in joy” ought to be neither a surrender nor an admonishment. If we do not find ourselves reaping in joy at the moment, we need not assume that it is all our fault, that we are being punished for the tears we have sown. And if we do find ourselves at this moment sowing in tears, suffering and worried, we cannot assume that God will turn it around, make everything better.
How can we approach prayer during these ten Days of Awe? We can approach it thinking, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.” We can approach it knowing that our tears matter—to this community, to one another, and to God. We can approach prayer knowing that we must not only sow but reap; we must attend to those crucial tasks the rabbis included in our daily prayer routine: caring for the sick, celebrating life’s joyous moments, studying Jewish tradition, and honoring our nurturing relationships. We can approach prayer hoping that our own efforts to reap what we have ourselves planted will be matched by an ability to see the joy around us, to see the small miracles amidst the challenges we each face. Our tears are necessary; they sink into the fertile ground and sprout up a newly-appreciated ability to recognize joy. We cannot control events like earthquakes and cancer diagnoses, ultrasound results and economic downturns. But we can do the hard work of shaping our reactions to those events.
I think this is how prayer worked for Isaac—the young son who, as we will hear tomorrow morning—lay atop a pile of dry timbers, his father holding the fire and the knife. Likely traumatized by his experience on the mountaintop, Isaac disappears from the narrative in Genesis, while Abraham buries Sarah and arranges for Isaac’s marriage. The next time we see Isaac, he is pensive. Isaac does not cry out or pray for God to return his mother to him; he does not petition for anything. We read, “Vayetze Yitzchak lasuach basadeh lifnot erev vayisa einaiv vayar v’hinei g’malim baim”¬—Translation here is complicated by the verb lasuach, used rarely in the Bible. “And Isaac went out to lasuach in the field at the coming of evening, and he lifted his eyes, and he saw, and—behold!—camels approach!” (Gen. 24:63). The rabbis of the Talmud interpret lasuach as “to meditate” or “to pray” (Brachot 26b). So at twilight, as one day ends and another begins, Isaac walks out into the field, his head and his spirits lowered, meditating and praying. His prayer does not revive his mother from the dead; instead, Isaac’s prayer changes the way he sees the world.
“And he lifted his eyes, and he saw, and—behold!—camels approach! And Rebecca lifted her eyes, and she saw Isaac, and she fell from her camel. […] And Isaac brought her to the tent of Sarah his mother, and he took Rebecca as his wife, and he loved her, and Isaac was comforted after the death of his mother” (Gen. 24:63-64,67).
Isaac went to pour forth his sadness in prayer; his evening meditation allowed him to lift up his eyes and look again at the world, despite the grief he still carried. And, in looking up, the world surprised him. He found Rebecca, found the ability to risk loving again in spite of loss, found comfort. The tears he sowed and the prayer he offered allowed Isaac to reap in joy.
These Days of Awe, may our prayers represent our willingness to pour forth our tears and to do the work of reaping what we have planted. May our prayers make us ready to lift up our eyes and see the world anew. May our prayers be, as Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel urges, “our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living” (Quoted in Lawrence A. Hoffman, The Way into Jewish Prayer, 15). Today is full of awe. Vayisu eineinu. And we lift up our eyes.
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