Oh How the Mothers are Weeping: Rosh Hashanah Day 1 Sermon, 5775

Shira spent her summer ordering pizzas. It was not what she planned for the summer, but this summer did not turn out how anyone expected. So she made the best of it. Shira’s children were supposed to go to summer camp, but camp was canceled. It was not safe to go outside, so they spent the summer with their mother, ordering pizzas. Shira, and her family live in southern Israel, not far from the Gaza Strip, and the threat of rocket fire kept them confined to their home for much of the summer. So they did a lot of ordering pizzas. But not for themselves. Or, at least, not only for themselves. Shira’s daughter volunteered for a project organized by their community where they would call women whose husbands and sons were on milluim – reserve service, and offer to have a pizza sent to their house for dinner. Judaism teaches us that when someone is having a hard time, friends and neighbors should bring them a meal, but if we can’t leave our house, then we order them a pizza. Shira and her daughters called women from all over the country, women who were losing, at the very least, sleep as the violence continued and their husband’s and son’s service stretched on. They sent dozens and dozens of pizzas. In an e-mail a few weeks ago, Shira told me that the remarkable thing was how the women responded. She wrote, “They were all so grateful, but they were also sure that there were other people more needy or deserving than they.” She was also awestruck at their determination and grit, and selflessness. Shira and her children didn’t take no for an answer. They sent pizzas.

Wassam lives in Canada, with her husband, and her three children. Wassam is a pharmacist and her husband is a pediatrician at a hospital in Ontario. This past spring, Wassam’s husband planned a trip to Gaza, where he grew up, to renew his medical license. He thought he would bring his youngest, his daughter, 8-year-old Salma, to meet her grandmother. They arrived in early June. When the hostilities broke out, the doctor volunteered in a hospital emergency room, helping children wounded in the airstrikes. Soon, he was working 24 hour shifts. Salma stayed with her grandmother.

Wassam sat at home in Ontario, watching the news and fearing the worst. Once the war started, travel out of the Gaza strip was next to impossible, even for foreign nationals. What’s more, Wassam’s husband felt like he could not miss even one shift at the hospital to transport Salma to the border. He was one of very few qualified pediatric emergency physicians in Gaza. There were children there who needed him. So Salma remained inside with her Grandmother, while Wassam, on the other side of the world, watched and prayed, and mobilized a network of supporters and government officials to help her get her daughter home.

When Israel and Hamas agreed to a short-term ceasefire for international aid workers to enter Gaza, Wassam’s network seized the opportunity. Canadian officials worked with the consulates in Tel Aviv, Ramallah, and Amman to extract her. Wassam’s husband drove her to a bus, where she joined other Canadians leaving Gaza. Then he returned to the hospital to continue to help the children there. Salma and the others were driven to Jordan, where they were safely put on a plane. On Friday, August 8, Salma was reunited with her mother, after more than a month away.


Two mothers. Shira and Wassam. A world apart. United by conflict, united by hope, united by care for others and fear for their children. Today, I think of them. But not just these two mothers. The mothers who Shira called, who prayed for their husbands and sons to be safe. The mothers of the children who lay injured in that Gaza hospital, while Wassam’s husband tried to heal them. Mothers praying, and mothers wailing, and mothers having, and losing, and finding hope again. Mothers calling out for their children.


The imagery of the Torah and Haftarah readings on Rosh Hashanah is all about mothers. Sarah and Hagar, Rachel, and Hannah. And not just about mothers in general, but about their pain and struggles, their prayers, hopes, and tears. So many mothers call out to us on this day.

Today we read from Genesis 21, the story of Sarah, and the birth of Isaac. When Sarah finally gave birth, she became jealous of her maidservant Hagar and the son that Hagar had borne to Abraham. She wanted her own son to have the birthright, the inheritance of God’s promise, so she asked Abraham to banish Hagar and Ishmael from their home.

Hagar and Ishmael were sent out into the wilderness. When their water and food ran out, and Hagar could not go on, she placed her son under some bushes and walked a bit further. She thought to herself “let me not look on as the child dies.” And the Torah says וַתִּשָּׂא אֶת־קֹלָהּ וַתֵּבְכְּ “And she raised her voice and wept” (Gen 21:16 WTT). Out in the wilderness, Hagar cries out for her son.

In our Haftarah, we read from the book of Samuel the story of Hannah. Hannah was married to a man named Elkanah. Elkanah had two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had several children, and Hannah had none. This distressed Hannah greatly, especially because Peninnah would tease her mercilessly. Yearly, Elkanan, his wives and children went to the alter at Shilo to make sacrifices and on this family outing, surrounded by Peninnah and her children, Hannah would become acutely aware of her situation. At the annual festive meal, the Haftarah saysוַתִּבְכֶּה וְלֹא תֹאכַל , she wept and did not eat (1Sa 1:7 WTT). Up in the shrine, Hannah cries out for a son.

For tomorrow’s Torah portion, we will read Genesis 22, the Akedah –the story of the binding of Isaac. God commands Abraham to take Isaac and offer him as a sacrifice on mount Moriah. The Torah tells us nothing about Sarah in this story, we have no idea how she felt. Did she know it was going to happen? Did she learn about it afterwards? Did she try and stop it?

Responding to Sarah’s silence, the rabbis wrote a number of midrashim, stories to fill in the gaps in the text. Many pick up on the fact is the next thing that we hear about Sarah, in the section that follows the Akedah, is that she has died. The Rabbis wonder if the news of what Abraham did, or almost did, caused her so much grief and agony that she actually let go of life. Alone in her tent, Sarah cries out for her son.

In tomorrow’s Haftarah, we will read from the book of Jeremiah, written at the beginning of the Babylonian Exile. In it, the prophet writes, “A cry is heard from Ramah – Wailing and bitter weeping” -- רָחֵל מְבַכָּה עַל־בָּנֶיהָ (Jer 31:15 WTT) “Rachel weeping for her children”. Our tradition imagines Rachel, buried near the road from Jerusalem generations before, could “see” as the Israelites went into exile, and she wept for them, praying to God to remember them. Even from beyond the grave, Rachel cries out for her children.


Two days, four readings, and four wailing mothers. Hagar, Sarah, Hannah, and Rachel. Three of the readings explicitly use the world לִבכּוֹת – to weep. The only outlier is the Akedah, where so much pain is implied that the rabbis created a whole library of midrashim. So many tears are shed in our text, on this great and awesome day. Too many mothers cry out for their sons.


It’s been a summer of too many tears. Too many mothers crying out for their sons. Like many Jews around the world, I spent my summer in a haze. When I turned on the news, I was inundated with images of war and destruction, pain and death. My Facebook feed was a constant barrage of posts about conflicts. But I did not see a lot of weeping mothers on the news. Not as many as you would think. I saw a lot of talking heads and pointing fingers. I saw a lot of analysis and punditry. Stories about people like Wassam and Shira were drowned about by the din of body counts and rocket tallies, by the noise of sirens and politicians.

And it was not just abroad. Here at home we had our own share of conflict. Watching the news from places like Ferguson, Missouri was painful, too, and there were so many moments that called on our conscience. I was struck by how quickly the conversation turned from one about a community grieving to a conversation about race in America, about police funding, about wealth and poverty and class. And somehow, in our quickness to put the events in Missouri into their broader context, I worry we lost sight of the pain and the needs of the people involved. Just like in our Torah cycle for today, there were wailing mothers in Missouri, mothers calling out for their children. Rosh Hashanah calls us to respond to them, and not just to the politics of the moment.

I'm not saying we don't need analysis. On the contrary. Clearly a conversation about context is crucial to creating the conditions for change. And perhaps it is also true that the wails of mothers can be overwhelming and hard to hear, and it is all too easy to block out the realities of their pain with the persistence of our rhetoric. Our instinct when we hear reports of suffering individuals on TV is to respond to their pain with analysis. How could this have happened? Who is right? Reports of the fighting in Gaza quickly turn into debates about Israel’s right to defend itself and about the morality of war. Conversations about Ferguson quickly evolved into conversations about race, and class, and privilege. But even as each of the mothers in our holiday readings was situated in a larger context, each one’s pain was real. Ironically, it’s easier to talk about the big picture than to listen to the stories of people in pain. Perhaps it is easier to see the context than to hold in our hearts the sometimes contradictory emotions that come with empathy. Empathy compels us to say, “Even if I don’t agree with you, I feel for you.” The annual reading of the stories of Sarah, Hagar, Hannah, and Rachel call us to check if our inclination to analyze makes us deaf to the wails of mothers.


In today’s Torah portion, God says to Hagar, even though I have chosen to side with Sarah and Isaac, this does not mean I will ignore you in this moment of need. God has chosen Isaac. By the God’s reckoning, Sarah is right to kick out Hagar and Ishmael so that Isaac can be guaranteed the birthright. And yet our tradition also focuses on Hagar’s pain. Even if Sarah is right, or justified, this does not mean that Hagar has to be wrong. In the story, God never speaks to Sarah, but God does speak to Hagar, saying, “Fear not, for I have heard the cry of the boy where he is. Come, lift him up… for I will make a great nation of him.” Hagar cries out for her son, and God answers her.

It always surprises me that the Torah and Haftarah we read on Rosh Hashanah are not about the big picture, about the rhetoric of the day. Today is the birthday of the world, we could read Genesis 1, the story of creation. Many Reform congregations do. But instead we spend these days reading deeply powerful stories of personal petition and divine intercession. We don’t read about the creation of the cosmos or the need for repentance, we read about the wailing of mothers.

Let’s look more closely at the story of Hannah for a minute. Hannah is wracked by pain. The pain of feeling incomplete, the pain of being teased by Peninnah. And so one night, she goes into the sanctuary at Shilo. The Torah says that with the bitterness of her soul she offered a prayer to God. She prays fervently, but silently. She rocks back and forth and weeps. She is alone in the building, though the Priest Eli sits just outside the door. Eli looks over at her and thinks that she is drunk. He approaches her and says, "How long will you make a drunken spectacle of yourself? Sober up!"

Eli cannot see Hannah. He sees her only in the context of the temple, for which he is responsible. It’s sacrilege to be drunk in this sacred space! He does not see her pain, he only sees how she appears in this context, as he perceives her to be defiling the house of God. He sits at the doorway of the shrine, literally he is outside, looking at the whole. He only sees Hannah as a small piece inside this larger puzzle. His concern for the integrity of this institution blinds him to the woman who sits before him in tears.

Hannah turns back to him and says "Oh no, my lord! I have drunk no wine… I have only been speaking all this time out of my great anguish and distress." Suddenly Eli sees her. She is not only a woman in his shine, she is a woman in pain. When he acknowledges her pain, she is no longer just an “other,” now he sees her as a mother, calling out for a son.

It’s not that Eli should not be concerned with his shrine. It is his job to sit at the gate. But until his concern for the bigger picture is balanced against empathy for the individual, he lacks the ability to hear Hannah’s story. We must all be like Eli, who balances a concern for the shrine with compassion for the people who sit within it.

Why do we read about so many wailing mothers on Rosh Hashanah? To remind us that these next ten days are not just about ideas like the birthday of the world, the nature of the universe, the power of repentance and forgiveness. Rather these stories of wailing mothers remind us that these ten days are about people. Sarah and Hagar, Hannah and Rebecca are crying out, begging us to remember them. And not just them, but the real people in our lives. Who are the people we have hurt this year? Who are the people who are crying out to us, who we do not hear? And when we see the people around us hurting, we must resist the urge to be right, and instead, we must be sensitive. Our job is not to justify our actions or react defensively, but instead to help them feel heard. Just like Sarah and Hagar and Hannah were heard. This is our call for the next ten days. To reach out to the people we might have hurt this year and begin to make peace. So when we stand here together at Yom Kippur, we can focus again on the big picture of our lives and our souls, having first heard the call to compassion for those around us.

The stories we read today are not just the stories of mothers who call out for their children, they are also the stories of mothers being answered by God. Sarah prays for a son and is answered. Hagar prays that she and her son be saved, and God hears them. Hannah calls out to God in pain, and God blesses her with a child. We are challenged to be like God, to hear the mournful call of the people around us and ask ourselves how we might answer them. Like Eli, we must first recognize that they are in pain. When we see a person’s agony on TV, we must resist the urge to change the channel or dial up the rhetoric. We must respond to them in their pain.

The Talmud says that the 100 blasts of the Shofar on Rosh Hashanah are related to the wails of the mother of Sisera, the Canaanite General, enemy of the Jews. According to the book of Judges, Sisera’s mother stood on her balcony and wailed at the news of the death of her son. The midrash says she cried out 101 times. Tradition says we blow the shofar to counteract any affect that her crying might have on the heavenly hosts, so that our T’shuvah might not be discredited on her account. Yet we don’t blow the shofar 101 times to cancel out every single tear. Instead we honor that fact that even the mother of our biggest enemy mourns for her son. When we hear the shofar today, let it be a call to hear the cries of pain that come from near and far. The sound of the shofar reminds us of the cries of mothers in pain, and calls us to hear their stories.


About a week after Michael Brown was shot to death in Ferguson, his mother Lesley and their family received a letter from a person who recognized her pain all too well, Sabrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin. In this letter, Sabrina models for us balancing the need to have larger conversations with our obligation to acknowledge the individual. She speaks to Lesley as the leader of The Travon Martin Foundation, an organization whose mission is both to end violence that claims too many children in America, and also to provide support to the families effected by that violence. But she writes to Lesley primarily as a mother. A mother who recognizes her pain. She says:
Michael is much more than a police/gun violence case; Michael is your son. A son that barely had a chance to live. Our children are our future so whenever any of our children – black, white, brown, yellow, or red – are taken from us unnecessarily, it causes a never-ending pain that is unlike anything I could have imagined experiencing.


This Rosh Hashnah, let us be like these mothers. Let us balance the cosmic and the global against the human and the personal. Let us hear the blasts of shofar, not just as a call to action, but a call to listening. Let us be responsive to those around us and those on TV who cry out to us in pain, so that we can be better neighbors, better friends, and better citizens. Let us make this year a year of empathy and listening. A year when we take to heart the message of the Shema: Listen, Israel.