Earlier this week, I saw almost every rabbi of this county at a vigil we held in support of the hostages in Gaza. It was good to be together but also nerve-racking to gather and try to give space to our worry and our care, and to do it in a way that could feel right and inviting to a wide range of Jews. Nerve-wracking like everything in the last 8 weeks has felt nerve-racking.
And having seen all the rabbis I woke up today with the sound of their sharpened pencils in my ears, scribbling on notebook paper, figuring out what tonight’s insight, tonight’s Torah, tonight’s spin might be. Some pencils were flying and some tapping, as if painfully extracting a sermon from unyielding rock.
I myself woke up in tears today. There were some dreams involved, and news reports. The truth is I no longer even know what I’m crying about. At this point, I seem just to be yielding to the big blur of suffering.
One piece of it is certainly about the end of the truce. Not that I expected it to continue, but I always have hope. What is it, my mind wonders, that makes violence an easier or more satisfying path than restraint? It never feels like a war could end at any moment, but peace always feels that way. We commonly describe peace as fragile. Why can’t war be fragile instead? Why can’t we read a history book that says So-and-So started a war, but no one really wanted it or had the stomach for it so it just devolved into peace? What would it be like if when left alone, things devolved into peace? If peace were humanity’s default position? The low-hanging fruit, and not the high branch always out of our reach.
So this morning, there I was shedding tears at this new round of missiles.
And it’s not like the week of truce was tear-free. Hostages were measured out in a cruelly miserly fashion. And then when we started hearing their stories, I found myself plummeting to a new depth.
There is more in the mix too. A beloved teacher whose husband died suddenly and unexpectedly yesterday. And I’m feeling underlying worry for a beloved friend in Israel who spent October 7 barricaded in a room at a border kibbutz that he was visiting for the first time. He survived that day but I think about him and his memories and my heart breaks.
So yes, a big blur of suffering. A root stock of grief that sprouts up out of any crack in the pavement.
I feel that at this moment the only thing that in fact holds humanity together is our tears. Once words are attached to the tears, any sentiment, instinct, idea, or sympathy is subject to debate and dismissal. But the tears themselves are a sea that we are all swimming in.
Many of you were here in this room with me on October 8, the day after the attack on southern Israel. It was Simchat Torah. We unrolled the entire Torah scroll in a spiral around the room. At one point, I drew your attention to a line from what is now this week’s Torah portion. It’s the moment when Jacob, after 20 years of living with his uncle Laban, and marrying and building a family, is at last about to reunite with his brother Esau, from whom he had taken both birthright and blessing in a most shameless way. For 20 years he has imagined his brother’s venom, his brother’s fratricidal rage. For 20 years he has dreaded this meeting.
I brought our attention that day to that spot in Torah because our scribal tradition requires six dots to be placed over the word vayishakehu, “they kissed.” because when they at last see each other, that is what they do. They fall on each other’s shoulders and kiss and Torah places these dots like a ballyhoo of theater lights on a marquee to draw our eyes. Of all the things in the book of Genesis, all of the stories, all of the promises, all of the betrayals, all of the journeys, this is the moment Torah wants us to notice. Vayishakehu. Against all odds, against all predictions and fears, they kissed.
I confess I felt more hopeful about that conciliatory kiss on October 8. Today my eyes go to that kiss and I lower them. But then I notice that there is one more word in the sentence. Vayivku. They wept. Tears that they’d already been shedding or tears that they’d held back for years – it’s impossible to tell. But for a moment, there they are, united in grief. Grief for all they had lost. All they had missed out on for 20 years. Or grief in suspecting that this reconciliation wouldn’t hold. That it was a moment of peace in a sea of enmity. Were they crying for themselves, for their parents’ disappointment, for the generations who would be born into this struggle? Or were they shedding tears of relief, tears of long elusive but sweet hope?
We don’t know. Maybe all of it. Like all of us. When our plans and analyses and strategies fail us. When our bright ideas are insufficient. When our pencil points break before the perfect word can be written. In those moments we have our tears – saltwater to keep us afloat while we await the next chapter, the next verse.