Parashat HaShavua - Rosh HaShanah

Parents and Children, Love and Loss

One of the ways we engage in the process of reflection during the High Holiday season is to take a step back, trying to look at our lives from a distance.  This enables us to identify concepts and connections that we may not be able to see from our usual vantage point.  Similarly, each Torah and haftarah reading for Rosh Hashanah has its lessons to offer when looked at individually, but taking a step back, new and different themes emerge.  This year, let us consider the themes of parents and children, love and loss.  

The Torah reading for the second day of Rosh Hasanah is the story of akeidat Yitzchak (the binding of Isaac).  The haftarah for the second day is a vision of the prophet Yirmiyahu (Jeremiah).  Initially, the theme of redemption stands out as the point of connection between the two readings.  Just as Yitzchak is saved from death, so too will the dispersed tribes of Israel and Judah be saved from exile.  But the relationship between the Torah reading and the haftarah is more than parallel.  The haftarah builds on the Torah reading by teaching us about the nature of the redemption that the people of Israel were to experience in the future, and by extension that we ourselves are seeking through our Rosh Hashanah rituals.  All of this is accomplished by way of the themes mentioned above: children and parents, loss and love.

In Yirmiyahu’s vision, we see Rachel crying for her exiled children.  When God forced them out of the land, she remained, once again, childless.  

Yirmiyahu 31: 15

Thus said Adonai,  A cry is heard in Ramah-  Wailing, bitter weeping -  Rachel weeping for her children.   She refuses to be comforted for her children,  for they are gone.

כֹּ֣ה ׀ אָמַ֣ר יְהֹוָ֗ה  ק֣וֹל בְּרָמָ֤ה נִשְׁמָע֙ - נְהִי֙ בְּכִ֣י תַמְרוּרִ֔ים - רָחֵ֖ל מְבַכָּ֣ה עַל־בָּנֶ֑יהָ  מֵאֲנָ֛ה לְהִנָּחֵ֥ם עַל־בָּנֶ֖יהָ  כִּ֥י אֵינֶֽנּוּ׃

In his commentary on this verse, Rabbi David Sabato points out beautiful linguistic parallels between Rachel’s tears for her exiled children (represented by the tribe of Ephraim, her son Yosef’s son), and Yaakov’s grief over Yosef, who he thought had been killed by a vicious beast. 

The first parallel  is the word “einenu.”   Rabbi Sabbato writes:

She refuses to be comforted for her children, because he is not (einenu)." The word einenu is difficult, because it follows mention of "her children" in the plural, and therefore it should have stated "einam" (they are not)! It seems that in this way the prophet alludes to the words of Yaakov concerning Yosef: "And the one is not (einenu)." (Bereishit 42:36) The word einenu is mentioned seven times in the story of Yosef and his brothers regarding Yosef and Binyamin, the children of Rachel.

The second linguistic connection is in Rachel’s refusal to be comforted.  Yaakov too, refused to be comforted and wept for their son Yosef:

“Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be comforted, because they are not," and similarly regarding Yaakov the Torah says: "But he refused to be comforted; and he said: For I will go down to my son mourning into Sheol. Thus his father wept for him" (Bereishit 37:35). 

Rachel and Yaakov are reunited across time by their shared love of their children, and their shared refusal to let them be “not.”  

One of the terrifying things about being a parent is how quickly children change.  And whether these changes come naturally from within them, or are forced on them from without, and whether these changes move them toward sickness or health, or stagnation or growth, they accumulate losses in their wake- the losses of the child who was and is not any more.  In this way, the gap between child and parent may deepen.  Yet, our ancestors Rachel and Yaakov teach us, we must stay, we must wait to see who the child will become, who will emerge.  We must remain attached and in love.  To do anything else is abandonment, for we see in the next section of the prophecy, the child too is filled with their own story of loss.

Now it is Ephraim who is crying, filled with regret.  Ephraim says “hashiveini v’ashuvah”  “receive me back, let me return.” The tribe of Ephraim “does teshuvah” and takes their share of responsibility in the break between God and themselves.  And we, the reader, know that God was already turning toward Ephraim. God had just previously comforted Ephraim’s grandmother Rachel, saying, “Restrain your voice from weeping, your eyes from shedding tears, for there is a reward for your labor…Your children shall return to their country.”  (Yirmiyahu  31:16, 17 )

Redemption in this haftarah, and in this season, comes in the form of reunification.  Reunification of the people and the land, of parents and children, of Parent and humanity.  In this new year, may each of us have the strength and the courage to remain attached to and in love with our children, no matter the circumstance.  In so doing, we bring the world a little closer to redemption.

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tovah,

Rabbi Miriam Greenblatt
High School Learning Specialist