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A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON  - FOR SHABBAT, JULY 18, 2009

Emptiness and Hope

We are now in the midst of the Three Weeks: between the fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz, which marks the day (in the year 586 BCE) the Babylonians breached Jerusalem's outer walls, and the ninth of Av, when they  destroyed the Temple. This is a mournful season of the year. Weddings are not scheduled at this time. Celebrations are curtailed. The haftarot chanted in shul during these three weeks drive home the message that we - the Jewish People - have brought this horrible tragedy on ourselves. Consider this section from this week's haftarah, (Jeremiah chapter 2): Jeremiah chastises the people for having strayed from God and Torah. 

Hear the word of the Eternal, O House of Jacob and all the clans of the House of Israel. Thus says the Eternal One: What wrong did your ancestors find in Me, that they moved away from Me, and went after empty things (hahevel) and themselves became empty (va'yehbalu)? 

Israel's betrayed God, and that is why the foe has brought destruction. Israel had once been as loving as a bride, she has now turned on God. God suffers pain at having been rejected. In the asking of the question "Why?" it sounds as if God is trying to make sense of the breakdown. 

I redeemed them, I watched over them as they journeyed to the Land of Promise. I settled them in their Land! How can it be that I am not good enough for them? There can be no good answer.

Israel betrayed God and "went after empty things (hahevel)." This word -  hevel, emptiness - famously opens the book of Ecclesiastes:

Havel havalim amar kohelet (Utter futility! said Kohelet)
Havel havalim hakol havel (Utter futility! All is futile!)

We wonder what it was that made the Israelites give up on God? In going after empty things, they gave into the fear that this life is futile. Even with God promising to always be with them, the Israelites lost their grip on hope. Ecclesiastes speaks to us in our modern moment of unease and insecurity. We can understand the challenge of holding on to hope in the face of the unsettling realities of our world. But in the context of the haftarah of this Shabbat, this turning toward emptiness and vanityis cause for severe punishment:

For My people have done a double wrong:
they have forsaken Me,
the Fountain of Living Waters,
and have hewn for themselves cisterns,
cracked cisterns that cannot hold water. 

If only they could have stayed true to God, they would have had access to mekor mayim hayyim (the Fountain of Living Waters). Listen closely for the echoes of the Garden of Eden and its Tree of Life. Adam and Eve are banished from the garden...

God said, "Now that the man has become like one of us, knowing good and bad, what if he should stretch out his hand and take from the tree of life and eat, and live forever! 

In Genesis, God is the one who banishes Adam and Eve in order to keep humanity from abusing the source of life. The separation, though painful, is necessary. In our haftarah, it is the people who distance themselves from life and their own humanity. Instead of accessing the Fountain of Living Waters, they construct broken cisterns, symbols of the broken world in which we live.

God wonders: what fault did the people find with me? Perhaps they did not find any fault. Maybe the people's distancing themselves was not a willful act. Rather, it was the gravitational pull of the world's brokenness that made it impossible for the people to stay connected to God's promise of redemption.

A midrash unlocks our imagination, as we picture the painful drama between God and Israel. God,  witnessing the Temple's destruction, weeps, saying to the ministering angels and Jeremiah:

"Woe is Me for My ruined house! My children, where are you? My priests, where are you? My lovers, where are you? What shall I do with you, seeing that I warned you but you did not repent?" The Holy One said to Jeremiah, "I am now like a man who had an only son, for whom he prepared a marriage-canopy, but he died under it. Do you feel no anguish for Me and My children? Go, summon Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and Moses from their sepulchers, for they know how to weep!"

God is overwhelmed by the reality of the people's banishment, and God is bereft. God is angry with Jeremiah for not weeping, for not fully grasping the horror God feels in the wake of the destruction. God is not consoled by the idea that the people brought this on themselves. All God wants is for someone to heighten God's compassion, which is why God sends Jeremiah to bring Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, the great ancestors who know how to weep. 

So Jeremiah brings the ancestors and each, in turn, argues with God about why Israel deserves God's mercy (rahamim). Each one makes persuasive arguments, but God is not moved. Suddenly, Rachel jumps before God and makes her case. She describes her wedding night, on which she and Jacob had arranged a special sign between them, to make certain that Laban, her father, would not trick them by substituting Leah as Jacob's bride. But Rachel has compassion for her sister and tells her the sign—and even lies under the bed so that Jacob will hear her voice speaking with him and be tricked into thinking that he is lying with Rachel. Rachel tells God:

"And if I, a creature of flesh and blood, formed of dust and ashes, was not envious of my rival and did not expose her to shame and contempt, why should You, a King Who lives eternally and is merciful, be jealous of idolatry in which there is no reality, and exile my children and let them be slain by the sword, and their enemies have done with them as they wished?" 

God hears Rachel's words and flows with compassion for the people, which prompts the divine promise that they will be allowed to return.

Why is Rachel's argument somehow stronger than all the other ancestors who took up Israel's cause? Why do her words encourage God's mercy to flow? Rachel challenges God by saying that it is more important to protect Israel from shame, just as she protected Leah, than to act out of jealousy. Rachel is bold in her language as she describes Israel having gone astray. In referring to Israel's sin of idolatry, Rachel ridicules idolatry as eyn ba mamash, something which lacks real substance. Here is an echo of the emptiness referred to in our haftarah. Rachel is saying: when the people fall into despair, when they do not have the strength to hold onto hope, God, have compassion. Do not shame them further, but pick them up and help them to draw near to You, the Source of Hope, the Fountain of the Living Waters.

In this world we recognize our separation from God, and we encounter the broken cisterns, all the hope leaking through the cracks. But as we journey through this period of mourning, we can be consoled with the knowledge that God weeps over our separation and has promised that "there is hope for your future" (Jer. 31:17).

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Aaron

Editorial note: This drash was written by a friend and colleague, Rabbi Mychal Springer, director of the Center for Pastoral Education and Helen Fried Kirshblum Goldstein Chair in Professional and Pastoral Skills at JTS . I've tweaked it a bit here and there. Her insights about Emptiness and Alienation speak powerfully to the poignant way in which we desperately grasp at straws in our loneliness and isolation.