Rosh Hashanah Sermon 5768

Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman
Congregation Shaarei Shamayim
Rosh Hashanah Sermon, Day 1
September 13, 2007

Year after year, Hannah would go up to the House of the Lord in Shiloh, and her husband, Elkanah, would offer up a sacrifice. Elkanah was married to two women, Hannah and Peninah, and even though Elkanah loved her the most, it was Peninah who was blessed with children. God had closed Hannah’s womb, and each day she lived with deep anguish.

As if it was not hard enough to be unable to bear children, every time Hannah went up to the House of the Lord, Peninah would taunt her mercilessly. Elkanah may not have loved Peninah as much as he loved Hannah, but Peninah had given him sons and daughters. Peninah’s insults caused Hannah to weep bitterly. She refused to eat.

One day they went to Shiloh, and Elkanah offered the sacrifice. As always, Peninah was taunting Hannah, and Hannah was miserable. Elkanah, exasperated, said to her, “Hannah, why are you crying and why aren’t you eating? Why are you so sad? Am I not more devoted to you than ten sons?” Hannah was silent.

Hannah endured the family feast which seemed to last forever, and afterwards she arose. She was in a bitter mood, and so she went to the temple and she prayed to God while she wept and wept. Desperate, Hannah made a vow to God: “Creator of the Multitudes of Heaven,” she began, “if You will see my suffering, if you will remember me, if you will give me a child, then I will dedicate my child to you, the Eternal One, all the days of the child’s life…”

In our Haftarah today, God not only hears Hannah’s prayer, but God answers it by giving her a son. If only it were this easy – when we are the most desperate we pray to God, God intervenes, and God grants us our deepest wishes.

This theology may ring hollow to some of us. We may not believe in a God who can actually influence the events that transpire in our lives. Or we have witnessed a loved one who did pray to God – sincerely and frequently—but still died too young. Or we have long grown wary of prayer because when we were suffering God did not reach out a hand to us.

Like Hannah, we suffer through much loss and disappointment. We mourn the death of a beloved parent, spouse, partner, sibling, or child. We live with the scars of domestic violence, rape, incest, or other forms of child abuse. We long for a child but are infertile or miscarry, or we make the difficult decision to have an abortion. We are imprisoned by our addictions – to drugs, alcohol, gambling, food, shopping, sex, or work. We lose a job, get passed over for a promotion, hate our work, find ourselves in spiraling debt. We cope with a debilitating disease, survive a traumatic accident, or grow older, all the while finding that we are no longer able to do the things we once did. We long to be in a nurturing, intimate relationship, but we are unable to find a suitable partner, or we are stuck in a relationship that lacks love and respect, or we endure the loneliness of separation and divorce. We watch as a child or grandchild suffers from pain that we cannot control or lives a life not of our choosing. Or we do not know exactly why we suffer; we just know that there is a deep emptiness within us. Our lives lack meaning, they are filled with regret and resentment, or they are engulfed by sorrow.

We hold on to these pains, many of which are invisible to others. Losses from long ago or more recent in time. Losses that make us defensive, afraid, or unemotional. Losses that cause us to be angry at the world, or that have filled our lives with shame and humiliation. Losses that shape our lives in ways that are so jarringly different from what we had imagined. Losses that cause us to lose hope.

Sometimes we feel as if we have been singled out in our suffering, that we are the only one who feels so terrible and hopeless. And yet, we all suffer from loss. It is striking that each of our Torah and Haftarah portions on Rosh Hashanah involve incredible grief, pain, anger, and despair. In addition to the story of Hannah, we read of Sarah and Hagar, bound together in a painfully dysfunctional family. Sarah’s jealousy and rage almost cause the death of Hagar’s son, Ishmael, after Sarah cruelly banishes them from her home. The second day of Rosh Hashanah presents us with Abraham, who almost sacrifices his beloved son, Isaac. This is a story of trauma, painful decisions, and deep resentment. And then there is Rachel, who weeps bitterly in the Haftarah portion of the second day of Rosh Hashanah. She weeps for her beloved people, watching them trudge along, beaten, defeated. She cannot be consoled, for she is powerless to help them.

Perhaps we read so much about loss on Rosh Hashanah to affirm that we are not alone in our suffering and to remind us that life is filled with loss, pain, and grief. In the words of Ecclesiastes, “To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven… A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.” (Eccl. 3:1, 3:4) We carry our pain with us throughout our lives. We read about our ancestors’ pain on Rosh Hashanah to teach us that we cannot ignore it or wish it away.

We wonder why our world is filled with such cruelty, why human relationships break down, why loved ones die, why we hurt each other, why disasters befall us. And we wonder why God would allow such terrible things to happen. We may long for the God whom Hannah prays to, the God who can intervene in our lives and make everything better. But we wait and wait and God does not eradicate our suffering.

Perhaps the question, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” is not a helpful place to begin. For while we can posit answers, all too often the conversation remains theoretical and does not help us to heal from our wounds. Instead, a better question might be, “How do we live with the pain that follows after a terrible loss?” Or “How do we go on day after day when we experience such heartache?”

Hannah manages to endure the miserable family feast in Shiloh. Everyone is celebrating, but she wants to crawl under a rock. Depressed that she cannot conceive and unable to escape Peninah’s taunts, she searches for some outlet for her grief. And then, after the feast, Hannah does something remarkable. She gets up, goes to the temple by herself, and pours out her soul to God. Indeed, this was a radical act. For in Hannah’s time, the temple was a place for sacrifice, not a place for an ordinary individual, much less a childless woman, to go to pray. Hannah’s is the first account in biblical history of anyone doing such a thing. Hannah stands before God, without the priest as her intermediary, and she creates her own unique relationship with God.

A Hasidic rabbi once said, “Let me not die while I am still alive.” As depressed as she is, Hannah refuses to let her spirit die. Hannah chooses to live. In spite of her misery, she takes a small, bold step. Hannah’s path was prayer. For us, our small, bold act might also be prayer, but it could be walking into a therapist’s office, calling an estranged sibling, leaving an abusive husband, or attending an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. All of these are extremely courageous acts.

Healing is a long, slow, difficult process. It requires enormous strength to take the first step, and enormous strength to endure the difficult journey ahead. It also requires a willingness to change, to leave the comfort of what is – no matter how terrible it might be – and to enter a place that is unsettling and even frightening. We have tremendous capacity to transform our lives. But we must look at ourselves honestly and be open to making life-affirming choices. Finding wholeness again after loss is an act of courage. Healing does not mean that the pain will disappear, for we carry our losses with us throughout our lives, but it does mean that we make a concerted effort to find peace and to reconcile our reality with the dreams that we have left behind.

Even as we gather our courage to take that first, bold step, we sometimes have to admit to ourselves that we are not all-powerful. The process of healing requires accepting our limitations, moving away from denial, and realizing that some things will not change. We may hope against hope that we can pull ourselves out of debt by just closing one more deal, or that we will make someone fall in love with us if we just call one more time, or that we will get pregnant by trying just one more fertility treatment. But at some point we have to confront the truth of our lives and make painful decisions to move forward, albeit in a different direction from what we had hoped.

In seeing ourselves as we are, with all of our blemishes and imperfections, and carving out a space in our lives to mourn and to grieve our losses, we search for meaning. We search for some reassurance that life is not futile or worthless, that there is hope, that there is some order in a world that feels so chaotic.

And so, in confronting our loss, the question arises: “Can there be meaning in suffering? Can suffering lead to redemption?” Consider the following piece of Talmud:

Rabbi Hiyya ben Abba, Rabbi Yochanan's student, fell ill and Rabbi Yochanan went in to visit him. Rabbi Yochanan said to him, “ Are your sufferings welcome to you?” Rabbi Hiyya ben Abba replied, “ Neither they nor their reward.” Rabbi Yochanan said to him, “Give me your hand.” Rabbi Hiyya ben Abba gave him his hand and Rabbi Yochanan lifted him. (Berachot 5b)

Rabbi Yochanan, while visiting his student, attempts to learn whether there is something intrinsically positive in suffering. Perhaps suffering will allow us to make amends for our sins. Perhaps suffering will bring us closer to God. Perhaps suffering will allow us to grow stronger. If this was the case then Rabbi Hiyya ben Abba might appreciate the opportunities that suffering could impart upon him. Yet he is clear – his sufferings are not welcome, and even if something good could come out of the suffering, the rewards are also not welcome.

The last line of this passage, however, is important. Rabbi Yochanan takes Rabbi Hiyya ben Abba’s hand and “lifts” him – he heals him, either in spirit or body or both. We cannot explain suffering, and we do not welcome suffering. Yet in the midst of despair we find meaning in joining with another, in giving another our hand, in opening our heart to another.

When Hannah began to pray, she does not make a sound. But she is so intensely focused on her prayer that her lips are moving. The priest, Eli, sees this and mistakes her for a drunk. At first his words are harsh. He tells her to stop making a spectacle of herself and to sober up. Hannah could have shied away, but she musters up her courage and she challenges him. “Oh no, my lord!” she begins. “I am a very unhappy woman. I have drunk no wine, but I have been pouring out my heart to the Lord. I am not worthless. I am speaking out of my great anguish.” Eli in turn could have reacted defensively, but instead he answers her with kindness, and he blesses her. “Then go in peace,” he says. “And may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked for.”

There is a conversation in the Talmud whereby the rabbis discuss Moses smashing the first set of tablets when he saw the people worshiping the golden calf. They ask, “What became of this first set of tablets?” The answer is that both sets of the tablets, the new and the old, the whole and the broken, were placed side by side in the holy ark.

The rabbis understood that both tablets were holy – the new, whole tablets as well as the old, shattered fragments. The Israelites kept the broken tablets as a reminder of their past. On the Israelites’ journey through the wilderness, a time of great challenge and transformation, they did not try to forget their past. Rather, they claimed it as part of their story. So too, we must claim our brokenness as part of our own stories and recognize that the shattered parts of our lives are holy.

Like Hannah let us take that first small, bold step towards healing and join with others on our journey ahead.

L’shanah tovah tikateyvu – May we be inscribed for life, and may we truly be alive, on this Rosh Hashanah.