The Sacredness of Tears

 

When I was 9 years old, my father had to go to the hospital to repair a hernia. These days a hernia repair is an outpatient procedure followed by a few days of bedrest.  In my father’s day a hernia repair was treated quite differently.  My father was in the hospital for an entire week, was out of work for a month, and had to be careful moving about for an entire year! That was the year he could not go ice skating with me at the local park, he couldn’t lift any of his three children up, he couldn’t throw a football with me in the back yard. But the thing I remember most, that startled me the most, was the report I heard from my Aunt Bea, his sister, after she visited him in the hospital. I overheard her tell my mother that when she entered his hospital room, she found my father crying. My father crying? My father doesn’t cry, I thought to myself. I cry, but I’m a kid. My father is a big strong man, a veteran of World War ll. My father took part in the US army campaigns in Africa, in Sicily, in Italy, in Southern France and in Central Europe. How can my father be crying?  

 

Looking back now I find it interesting that even by age 9, I had been socialized to think that a man crying was a sign of weakness and a reason for shame. As we know, that was a strong and firm belief held by most Americans to the extent that when Senator Edmund Muskie shed some tears in public it derailed his 1972 presidential bid.  

Yet the Bible records many stories in which men cry. In the climax to the story of Joseph which we read this week, Joseph and his brothers fall into each other’s arms and cry when finally reconciled in Egypt. Next week we will read that Jacob “cried mightily” when he was re-united with Joseph in Egypt. These are all tears of joy. Earlier in the Bible Jacob and Esau cry when they met after a 20-year estrangement. These are tears of relief. David and Jonathan cry when they part. These are tears of sadness, as they know not when, and if, they will see one another again.  David cries when his son Absalom dies. These are tears of grief. The Psalms are replete with accounts of men crying at times of turmoil, desolation, misery or fear.  “Weary am I with groaning and weeping,” writes the author of Psalm 6, “Nightly my pillow is soaked with tears.” These are the tears of someone in pain. Hezekiah, the King of Southern Israel, weeps bitterly when he is told by the prophet Isaiah that he is about to die. His are tears of despair. Mordechai cries when he hears the decree of King Ahasuerus. These are tears of supplication. There are many other instances of grown men crying in the Bible. Clearly our Holy Scriptures do not view crying as a sign of weakness or something to be ashamed of.  

 

Our rabbis teach that Moses, our greatest teacher, our most courageous leader, a man of towering strength, wrote the final lines of the Torah not in ink, but with his own tears.  These final verses were the verses that recorded Moses’ own death. Rashi teaches us that G-d would dictate the Torah to Moses and he would repeat each word before writing it down in ink. But when it came to recording his own death, G-d dictated and Moses wrote with his own tears, unable to repeat the words. 

 

Why did Moses cry? Were these tears of anguish over his being denied by G-d entrance into the Promised Land? Were they tears of anxiety over what would happen to his people once he was gone? Were they tears of impotence over having to leave this world before his task was complete? Tears of happiness that his mission on earth was now complete? The rabbis don’t say.  

 

The Kotzker Rebbe teaches that our tears are desirable. Why? He explains that a child cries because the child believes that their mother or father will hear their cry. When we adults cry it is a sign that we believe that someone will hear us.  That “someone” is G-d, who loves us like a parent. The Kotzker Rebbe teaches that when someone turns to G-d with eyes full of tears, their prayers fly straight to Heaven and are heard by the Holy Blessed One. The Gates of Tears, says the Kotzker, are never closed.  

 

We should never be ashamed to cry. Tears are not a sign of weakness but wordless messengers that communicate a wide range of human emotions, whether anger, grief, contrition, or love.  We should not try to cover up what we are feeling, or judge others who are expressing their emotions. Our tradition teaches that tears are simply part of being human. Our tradition teaches that there is a sacredness, purity and holiness to our tears.   Shabbat Shalom 

Celebrating our Diversity

 

Levitt Home in Naperville

It seemed to come earlier this year. The weekend before Thanksgiving my neighbors began to put up their Christmas decorations. “Just taking advantage of the warm weather,” my next-door neighbor Steve said to me when I complimented the lights he and his son were stringing on the eaves of their roof. It was as if he felt he had to apologize for decking out his home so early! I thought to myself that possibly putting up the decorations early had  more to with the bleakness of the year and the desire to have something to celebrate than with the weather. No doubt about it. We are all eager to bring some light into this dark period  in  our lives, a tough and bruising year which has caused unimaginable pain and desolation in our country and all over the world.   

 As we all know Chanukah comes during the time of year when many of our friends, neighbors, and colleagues, are celebrating Christmas. It is a time when we American Jews most feel our sense of “otherness” from the majority culture. Everybody is doing one thing, and we are doing something else. Many of us have family members who celebrate Christmas as well.  We cannot avoid it, nor should we want to. Rather, we should see the celebrations of Christmas and Chanukah as expressions of the diversity that is one of our country’s greatest strengths. And we should take some pride in the knowledge that, without the Jewish people, there WOULD be no Christmas. At the same time, we should keep in mind that for us, Chanukah is a relatively minor holiday on our liturgical calendar despite being celebrated around Christmas, a major holiday for Christians.

Still, living as a Jew in a society that is flooded with the Christmas spirit can be challenging at times. Rabbi Reuven Taff tells about the time he and his wife Judy took their three-year-old son, Avi, to the mall one Friday afternoon in December. As they were sitting on a bench in the mall eating ice cream, Rabbi Taff noticed that Avi was fascinated by the group of children lined up to sit on Santa’s lap.

Rabbi Taff and his wife wondered whether their son would say something about wanting to speak to Santa. They pictured themselves dragging Avi out of the mall as he protested that he, too, wanted to visit with Santa. But, when it was time to go, Avi left with them quietly. As they were exiting the mall, Avi turned to his mother and said, “Ima, I’ll be right back.” He took off toward Santa, and as his mother ran after him, she heard him yell at the top of his lungs, “Santa, Santa”. Everyone in the line stopped to look. Then Avi yelled, “Shabbat Shalom, Santa”.

Shabbat Shalom and Chanukah Sameach!

 

 

Peter Paul Rubens
The Reconciliation
of Jacob and Esau

Last week we read in the Torah about Jacob fleeing from his home in Canaan in fear of his life. He had stolen his brother Esau’s blessing and Esau had vowed to kill Jacob once their father died. Jacob camps for a night on his way to Haran and has a dream of angels ascending and descending a ladder. In the dream G-d gives Jacob a blessing and promises to protect him in his journey and to bring him back to the land of Canaan.

Following this dream, Jacob makes a vow. He says, “If G-d remains with me, if He protects me on this journey I am making, and gives me bread to eat and clothing to wear, and if I return safe to my father’s house – Adonai will be my G-d.” This is an interesting vow because of what Jacob did not say. We might have expected him to vow, after experiencing such a vivid dream and divine promise: “Surely G-d will remain with me; surely G-d will protect me on my journey; surely G-d will give me bread to eat; surely I will return safe to my father’s house…..”

Why does Jacob use the word, “if” instead of “surely”? Because Jacob is not sure. He is only just starting out on a journey. He is not entirely sure that the G-d of his grandfather and grandmother, Abraham and Sarah, the G-d of his father and mother, Isaac and Rebecca, can fulfill his promise to him. Perhaps he is not sure that the G-d who is so powerful in the Land of Canaan can be equally powerful hundreds of miles away, in another country, whose people worship other gods. So Jacob qualifies this vow with the word “if”. As Jacob plunges into the unknown future, he has hope, but not certainty, that he will be able to meet the challenges ahead.

Throughout our history, we Jews, like Jacob, have faced crisis after crisis with the hope, but without a guarantee, that we would successfully meet the many challenges to our survival. This hope is symbolized by the lighting of the Chanukah candles, which begins next Thursday night. You know the story well. When the Maccabees were ready to rededicate the Temple in Jerusalem that had been defiled by the Syrian Greeks, they found only one vial of pure oil, an amount that would last but one night. They lit that oil, and it lasted for eight nights. One might well ask, “Why, then, do we celebrate Chanukah for eight nights?” The miracle, after all, was only for seven nights. The one vial of oil would certainly burn for one night. That first night was not a miracle!

The miracle of Chanukah lies not only in the fact that one days’ worth of oil lasted for eight days. The miracle of Chanukah also lies in the willingness of those who lit the menorah to take the first step to rededicating the Temple without any assurance that the lamp would continue to burn for eight days.  They had an opportunity and seized it without knowing how, or whether, they could keep the darkness out until new, pure oil could be found. We see this same spirit of hope expressed in Jacob’s journey to a foreign land; we see it expressed in millions of Jews throughout history who set down new roots in the lands which form our Diaspora; we see it expressed in the halutzim, the pioneers of modern Israel who were determined to found a new state in an ancient land. All took a step into the future not knowing how it would end but determined to begin nonetheless -- All of these actions based on hope alone.

 There are times in our own lives we do not start something because we are not sure where it will lead us. We don’t pick up a musical instrument because we cannot be assured of mastering it. We don’t embark on Jewish studies because we don’t believe we will become scholars. We convince ourselves that since success is far from assured, there is no sense in even making an effort.

As we begin our celebration next Thursday, let us remember that the Chanukah lights teach us to trust in our beginnings, to seize the opportunities that the moment presents, to begin despite the fact that we have no guarantee we will reach the goal we set out for. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, teaches us that there is a difference between optimism and hope. Jews, he says, are not optimists, but we are a people with hope. “Optimism is the belief that things will turn out for the better,” he says. “Hope” is the belief that if we work toward something, we can make things better.” As Jacob sets out for Haran, he is not optimistic. Rather, he hopes that through his intelligence, hard work, and help from G-d, he would succeed. It is a model for us all.

Shabbat Shalom