Torah Study Blog

Throughout history there have been times of despair, or sadness, or loss, or social upheaval. With a pandemic impacting the entire world and close to 200,000 people dead from it in the US, and social injustice being played out on camera, and riots in the streets, and fires on the West Coast, people may find themselves asking, as we head toward the High Holidays, “How can I find meaning in my prayers?” Or, “How can I find God in my prayers?” Or, “How to I regain my sense of connection when there is so much going wrong around me?”

The randomness of despair is terrifying and made worse by this sense of isolation imposed on us by maintaining social distance. We may wonder, is there a God who is angry and it doing all of this to us?! Or, perhaps you do not believe in God and only attend services out of tradition. Neither of these possibilities is likely to compel us to go to synagogue and pray during the High Holidays. But there is a human need to search for answers.

The words from Psalms 27 may have resonance for some of us: O Lord, I seek Your face.

Do not hide Your face from me;

Do not thrust aside Your servant in anger;

You have ever been my help.

Do not forsake me, do not abandon me,

O God, my deliverer.

- Psalms 27:8-9

Rabbi Roberts led our discussion today and turned to the writings of a man whose suffering was on a scale unimaginable to most of us – the Holocaust. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira was born in 1889 in Poland, and he rose to the position of Grand Rebbe in Piaseczno – a town outside of Warsaw. The Rebbe was interned in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1939 where he lived until 1943 (the year of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising). After being transferred to a work camp, he was shot to death in November of 1943.

While living in the Ghetto, the Rebbe was a beacon to the people around him and gave inspirational speeches. He recognized the struggle of many

to maintain their faith in God in the face of such horrific circumstances. His writings were collected and hidden in buried milk cans in the Ghetto with a note that, should they be found, they be sent to his brother who lived in Palestine. His final collection was known as Aish Kodesh, or Holy Fire, which is also the name the Rebbe came to be known as.

The Rebbe used, as one of his sources of inspiration, a passage from the book of Jeremiah. The 6th century BCE prophet Jeremiah is also known as The Weeping Prophet. Jeremiah lived during a tragic and critical time in Israel’s history – during the years leading up to the destruction of the first Temple, and then during the dispersion of the people in what is now known as the Babylonian Exile.

The passage in Jeremiah addresses the emotional toll of crisis:

For if you will not give heed,

My inmost self must weep,

Because of your arrogance;

My eye must stream and flow

With copious tears.

- Jeremiah 13:17

This passage could be interpreted as Jeremiah asking God why God was not giving heed, and Jeremiah was the one weeping. What kind of god would allow this destruction to happen? Or, considering the destruction that rained down upon the people, how wonderful could this god really be?

A Talmudic passage interprets the words as God speaking though Jeremiah, who tells the people that they did not give heed to his words and God was the one who was weeping. This interpretation allows that humans have free will and, if they choose to behave in ways that have negative consequences, God will weep.

Rabbi Roberts posited that God is emotional and becomes sad. Then she asked: Does God only get sad inwardly, and we would never know? Or, is it the case, as according to a Talmudic teachings by Rav Shmuel, God experience sadness and physically goes somewhere else. Rav Shmuel said that God goes to a place called mistarim, which translates to “secret.”

This idea anthropomorphizes God as a physical being with a physical body. Why would God want to conceal himself? Perhaps some of us have a

memory of the first time, as a child, we ever saw one of our parents’ cry. That memory might have given us an overwhelming sense that something was terribly wrong. Humans have an instinctual need to protect people we love, and some people display that by not letting others see them cry. They are trying to protect other people from being horrified by our pain.

Rabbi Roberts pointed out that it is more of a Reform theology that we should see God’s weakness so that we can become partners with God and work together toward healing. Being alone, in isolation, with your pain can break a person. But if you allow yourself to cry with God you can take strength from that shared experience. The crying that a person does with God can make us strong. Outward crying can lead to empathy and inspire social action to make change.

The Rebbe from the Warsaw Ghetto wrote: “I am broken, I am ready to burst into tears at any moment, and in fact I break down in tears from time to time. How can I possibly learn Torah? But... the Holy Blessed One is crying within the inner chamber, and whoever presses himself close to God through Torah is able to weep there together with God.”

As we move toward the beginning of the Jewish new year, we have a lot happening in the world right now that we could be crying about. You may not agree that public crying or despair is the right path for you, but Rabbi Roberts noted that drawing closer to God is a compelling way to grieve. When God is crying with us, he does not just hear our prayers and do nothing. We are experiencing the pain together.

Unfortunately, things will not get better in the next few of weeks. But Rabbi Roberts hope that the new year is one with fewer tears and more blessings to tell each other about.

You can find our podcast on iTunes or Spotify under “TINW Torah Study” or “Jennifer Jaech.” Subscribe and rate us!

misquotes or misunderstandings in what Rabbi Roberts taught us are the responsibility of Tara Keiter