Rabbi Julie Pelc Adler, Congregation Am Echod in Lindenhurst
I’ve always loved the Torah and
Haftorah readings selected by the rabbis to be read on Rosh Hashanah. I love them because in so many ways they’re
unexpected:
Rosh Hashanah is one of the days
of the year when the most people come to synagogue and hear the Torah and
Haftorahs read aloud. And so you might
expect that the rabbis would have chosen something dramatic and extraordinary
like receiving the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai, or a list of the very
particular laws that make up what is known as the Holiness Code, or even the
story of the Creation of the World in the beginning of the book of Genesis for
all to hear this morning. But, no. They chose a narrative that describes the
emotional life and personal challenges faced by a human family.
On the 1st day of Rosh
Hashanah it’s traditional to read the story of Sarah, a woman who had no
children despite God’s promise to the contrary. Previously, we’d heard that she gave her
maidservant, Hagar, to her husband so that he might have children through her,
instead. We imagine - though we do not
yet hear directly - her longing, her jealousy, and her outrage. We want to cry out on her behalf, “that’s not
fair. That’s not right!”
And then, today, on the 1st
day of Rosh Hashanah, we read the narrative wherein Sarah learns of her pregnancy in old age, her
laughter, and the birth of her son, Isaac.
And then we watch as she observes her son with Hagar’s son,
Ishmael. Her voice waivers with
jealousy, fear, and then her demand that Abraham send Hagar and Ishmael into
the wilderness. The Torah portion we
read today is a story of the emotional life - the longing, the sorrow, the conflicted
heart of one woman - Sarah, and those in her inner circle.
Sarah was a very prominent woman
- the wife of Abraham - but she, like her husband, is described in the Torah
using language that could describe any of us: the language of the human heart. Though in many ways, her situation was
extraordinary, she becomes for us on Rosh Hashanah a mirror for our own lives,
our own emotions, our own struggles to make sense out of the hand we’ve been
dealt.
*
And then, the story from the
Prophetic literature chosen by the rabbis to read as the Haftorah is, in many
ways, parallel to the story of Sarah. It’s
the story of Hannah, and it is just as unexpected and extraordinary in its ordinary-ness. Again we read about the emotional life and
personal challenges faced by a woman.
And again, the feeling in her heart is that of longing.
And, like Sarah, Hannah is
longing for a child. She, too, has
watched with envy as her husband’s other wife enjoyed the fruits of her
fertility while she herself felt left empty and alone.
*
On the first day of Rosh
Hashanah, we read both the Biblical and Prophetic stories of real people -
women - with hearts broken, crying out to God.
We read of families: husbands, wives; mothers, fathers; children, siblings.
I think this is because we, too,
stand before God (and beside one another) today with hearts filled with
emotion: sometimes grateful, sometimes sorrowful, often longing. I believe the stories
of Sarah and Hannah are meant to give us language to articulate what we most
want and need.
We are all here today with
different prayers, different dreams, different wishes for life in the New Year
before us.
I suspect there is not a single
one of us in this sanctuary today whose heart is not heavy - or filled with
longing - for some reason.
- There are those who have a
family member desperately fighting a disease.
- There are those who carry the
emotional weight of caring for an elderly parent.
- Others might have a child
suffering from addiction or mental illness.
- We may be struggling
financially and worry about paying bills, or living beyond our savings
- We may be waiting for approval
from our health insurance or Medicare for a procedure we need but cannot
afford.
*
The Hasidic master the Ba’al Shem
Tov taught, “Everyone has in him
something precious that is in no one else.”
Sometimes, that something
precious can be invisible to others, and horribly painful.
The simple truth is that none of
us really knows the details of each other’s lives. We all arrive at Rosh
Hashanah standing at a crossroads of some kind. If we are here, we have taken
the day off work, or changed our schedule. And we are all in the middle of
something complicated that challenges us.
Our ancestors Sarah and Hannah
were women who cried out in their longing, women who desperately wanted
children. They were women whose pain was hidden from everyone but God.
It’s possible that one of the
reasons we read these stories is as a reminder to keep hope alive:
The first thing we read from the
Torah on Rosh Hashanah (in the very first verse) is that God took note of Sarah, as
promised”. We might say that
Sarah’s is the story of an answered prayer.
Perhaps we read this story to remind us that we, too, might keep praying
- hoping beyond hope - that our prayer, too, might be answered like Sarah’s
was. Whether we are praying for healing,
or success, or help, or fertility - God just might take note of us, remember us.
But I think it’s something
deeper, too. I think we read these
stories because they point to an even more universal human experience: that of
the invisible, or silent, emotional life of the Other.
And so today on Yom Hazikaron,
the Day of Memory, the biblical name for Rosh Hashanah, I think it’s important
to remember that the pain experienced by our ancestors living centuries ago,
and the pain experienced by our neighbors living nearby, and the pain that we
ourselves experience is sometimes not
visible to those around us.
It’s important to remember that
people experience hardships and sorrow and they are often standing or sitting
right next to us.
“Everyone has in him something precious that is in no one else.” The Baal
Shem Tov’s words ring true today as they do everyday.
Our personal narratives, because
they are our own, are, by extension never entirely known by anyone else. I learned a teaching by my colleague and
friend, Rabbi Robyn Fryer Bozdin. She teaches that:
The Rabbis of the Talmud, in
tractate Brachot, codified a bracha that is recited upon seeing a large
faceless crowd:
“Baruch Atah Adonai
Eloheinu Melech HaOlam … Chacham HaRazim.
“Blessed are you Lord Our God
King of the Universe, knower of secrets”
Most brachot have an inner
logic. Even when we see a rainbow, we recite a bracha remembering
the covenant – to remember Noah and the flood. But why when one sees a
crowd do we call God the “knower of secrets?”
The Rabbis knew the effect of a
crowd results in a loss of personal identity. When you stare out into a massive
crowd of thousands it becomes difficult to see individuals. A bracha that acknowledges
God as the “knower of secrets” reminds us that, to God, we are never nameless,
never faceless, never unknown.
But, taking this one step
further, it’s also a reminder to us that just as nobody truly knows the secrets
of our lives, so too should we remember that everyone else in that crowd is
carrying stories and sorrows hidden from our
view.
Empathy can happen only when we remind
ourselves of these truths, and reach out to one another in compassion and
forgiveness for that which we could not have known.
We need to ask rather than
assume. When we ask “how are you?” we need to wait patiently for the answer to
come.
We need to slow down and listen
to stories. And in the process, we will become more sensitive to the mysteries
and secrets otherwise hidden from view.
If we respond and interact to
people with compassion and empathy, then this will truly be a Beit Adonai, a House of God, and we will
be able to dwell in it, all the days of our
lives.
Shana tova.
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