Prayer of the Mothers
Rosh Hashanah 5785
Inspired by the prayers of so many mothers, including The Prayer of the Mothers by Yael Decklebaum, the Prayer of the Mothers written by Rabbi Tamar Elad Applebaum and Sheikha Ibtisam Maḥameed, and especially by Vivian Silver, whose deepest prayer is carried on by her children.
These words, delivered at Hevreh of Southern Berkshire on Rosh Hashanah morning 5785 are dedicated to Hersh Goldberg Polin, whose mother’s prayer was heard around the world. Today, as we celebrate the birthday of the world, Hersh would have turned 24 years old.
For a good part of the last 361 days, there is a song I have listened to on repeat. A song by Yael Decklebaum, Lubna Salame, and Miriam Toukan called “Prayer of the Mothers”. The song is a fierce battle cry of Mothers Everywhere.
It was born as a result of collaboration between singer-songwriter Yael Deckelbaum, and a group of women from an organization called “Women Wage Peace”. The song itself is written in Hebrew, Arabic and English, and was released in 2014, following the last war in Gaza.
The prayer of the mothers has been on my mind a lot lately.
The chorus of the song is rousing— a bold and strong call, sung in Hebrew, Arabic and English:
from the north to the south
from the west to the east
hear the prayer of the mothers
bring them peace
bring them peace.
What other prayer is there, really?
This year, I am certain: there really is no other more pressing prayer. On this first day of a new year, this is the prayer that our world needs: the prayer of the mothers.
And so a word about that: we call today “Yom Harat Olam”- the day of the world’s birth, and so I would invite you to expand your working definition of mothering. Mothering can be fathering can be parenting . It is a unique act of creation and care, and can be done by anyone who is invested in the physical and spiritual well being of another human.
The prayer of the mothers is the prayer of people who believe children should be free to grow in good health.
The prayer of the mothers is the prayer of every parent sending their children out into a broken world, hoping they return home whole in body and spirit.
The prayer of the mothers is heard on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as hundreds of thousands of people cry out for the return of the hostages.
The prayer of the mothers is not ours alone.
The prayer of the mothers is the prayer of countless human beings in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Sudan, and so many other places of the world where each night, the most fervent and urgent prayer is for peace and safety; for protection and wholeness in body.
***
On Rosh Hashanah we encounter multiple narratives of creation—
of birthing new worlds into being.
One about birth and creation.
One, that ultimately is about alienation and death.
And one that reminds us how powerful the prayer of a mother can be.
The stories we read on this holy day make the connection between God as creator with our human ability to create as we encounter three mothers: Sarah, Hagar, and Hannah.
The story of the creation of the world is the ultimate birth story— Bereshit takes us right into that Divine Delivery Room, as each day, God creates another awe inspiring aspect of this beautiful world.
Finally, creating human beings, we read:
וַיִּבְרָ֨א אֱלֹהִ֤ים ׀ אֶת־הָֽאָדָם֙ בְּצַלְמ֔וֹ בְּצֶ֥לֶם אֱלֹהִ֖ים בָּרָ֣א אֹת֑וֹ
God created human beings in the Divine Image; in the image of God, they were created.
God creates us in that divine image, hoping that we too will see our creative potential to give birth to new worlds. It is why we call today Yom Harat Olam- this day, when we sit in the Divine Delivery Room once more.
This morning we’ll hear the story of the Akedah; the infamous story of our patriarch, Abraham taking his beloved son, Isaac, up to Mt.Moriah to prove his fealty to God. It is a story that troubles us year over year, but this year, the silence of the two mothers whose presence looms over the story haunts me.
Where is Sarah?
Her husband takes the son for whom she prayed and laughed and grew within her own body on a mysterious journey, rising early in the morning to ascend to Mount Moriah.
Each year we encounter this story, and still, my heart freezes at verse 10:
וַיִּשְׁלַ֤ח אַבְרָהָם֙ אֶת־יָד֔וֹ וַיִּקַּ֖ח אֶת־הַֽמַּאֲכֶ֑לֶת לִשְׁחֹ֖ט אֶת־בְּנֽוֹ׃
And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son.
It is a moment in Torah that causes my blood to run cold. This is what we do with those children we prayed for?
As readers of the text, we anticipate the redemptive release of the next verses:
The angel of God cries out.
Abraham’s hand is stayed.
The ram appears.
God’s messenger speaks once more, offering blessing.
Abraham and Isaac and his servants come down from the mountain, and go home.
Isaac’s life is saved, though his soul is tarnished— never to speak to his father again.
The silence in Torah is deafening; God also never speaks directly Abraham again either.
And Sarah's voice is silent (or silenced) the entire time.
Just a few verses later in Torah we read of her death:
Chayei Sarah– the life of Sarah came to one hundred and twenty-seven years.
וַתָּ֣מׇת שָׂרָ֗ה
And Sarah died.
But Sarah’s is not the only missing voice.
What of Hagar?
Hagar, the other wife—
the mother of Abraham’s other child, who is already cast out, also looms large for me.
We can imagine Sarah’s anguish— the confusion and pain she must have felt.
We talk about Sarah all the time.
But what about Hagar?
What do we do knowing that it is Sarah who demanded that Hagar and Ishmael be cast out into the wilderness, with only a small flask of water?
Torah gives us some insight into her anguish.
We read:
Hagar wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water was gone from the skin, she left the child under one of the bushes and went and sat down at a distance, a bowshot away; for she thought, “Let me not look on as the child dies.” And sitting thus afar, she burst into tears. (Genesis 21:14–16)
Hagar, whose name means “the stranger” cries out— and her prayer is answered. God’s messenger offers her comfort, and reassurance, opening her eyes to a miraculous oasis before her. Her son is saved. We also never hear her voice again.
The stories of Abraham’s two sons and the pain of their mothers haunts me.
Hagar’s tears. Sarah’s silent anguish.
Sarah’s silence is hard to believe, so much so that voices across Jewish history have sought to reimagine it.
A midrash in Leviticus Rabbah depicts a mother-child reunion:
Isaac comes back to his mother and she says to him:
‘Where have you been, my son?’
He replies, ‘My father took me and led me up mountains and down hills,’
“My God,” she says “What kind of mother am I?
Had it not been for the angel you would be dead”
‘Yes,’ he says.
Sarah uttered six cries, corresponding to the six blasts of the shofar.
It has been said: She had scarcely finished speaking when she died.
It is not hard to imagine those cries shattering the heavy silence of her realization: she had almost lost him.
The metaphor of the anguished cries of a mother as the voice of the shofar is profound.
So much so, that it is the basis for another, much lesser known name for Rosh Hashanah:
Yom Yevava.
Torah calls Rosh Hashanah “Yom Teruah”, a day of teruah– of blasts; the loud noises of the shofar meant to rouse us to action. But, in an attempt in the Talmud to explain the guttural, piercing cries of “t’ruah”, t’ruah is transformed into yevava meaning sobbing or crying.
The explanation here is fascinating.
The sage Abaye taught that the verse in Torah which says "It is a day of sounding (teruah) the shofar to you”, rears differently when translated into Aramaic.
Not a “day of truah”, but rather “a day of yevava.”
A day of sobbing.
Why?
Because of the story of Sisera’s mother, told in the Book of Judges.
Sisera was the commander of the Canaanite army, unequivocally an enemy of the Jewish people. But in the Book of Judges, our tradition records the story of his mother, awaiting his return from battle, looking out the window and sobbing.
Sisera’s mother’s anguish registers so deeply that we hear her sobs year after year after year, every time we hear the shofar blast.
We should be moved by this teaching.
It is the cries of our enemies’ mothers that still pierce the silence.
In the broken sobs of the shofar, blasting out nine staccato cries,
we hear the anguish of a broken hearted parent.
This is a human experience that knows no borders.
Grief and anguish are not ours alone, certainly not at this moment.
What does it mean to weep with the mothers of our enemies?
Here, Talmud does not even mention our own losses— perhaps because ours are much easier to feel. In linking the cries of the shofar to the cries of our enemies’ mother, Talmud seems to remind us to feel all losses, not just our own, more keenly.
The grief of mothers should haunt us, and awaken in us a new and heightened urgency to respond to the central call of the shofar that it is still not too late to change.
We want more for our children than Sarah or Hagar receive— we want better than to imagine how easily they might be sacrificed upon the altar of war, hatred, bloodlust and politics. I think of the parents who each night for nearly a year have gone to bed with a singular prayer in their hearts: “bring them home. Keep them safe. Let them survive this.”
There are still so many Sarah's and Hagars in our world and we more easily know the Sarah's; the losses that feel like “ours” are often easier to feel. This very challenge is at the heart of the work that organizations like the Parents Circle, Bereaved Families Forum addresses. The work of this organization takes my breath away: bringing together bereaved Israeli and Palestinian parents to be in dialogue about loss, hope, and the unwavering belief in peace as the only solution. These are voices that we should attune our hearts to.
The prayers of these bereaved parents have their inverse as well— the voice of orphaned Israelis and Palestineans. The voices of people like Maoz Inon, whose parents, Bilha and Yakovi Inon, were murdered at their home in Netiv Ha’asara, Israel on October 7th who regularly speaks publicly with Aziz Abu Sarah, a Palestinian peace activist and civic leader whose brother was killed by Israeli security forces.
In a Rosh Hashanah message to the Reform Movement in Israel that was shared earlier this week, Maoz said the following:
“My father would always say that next year will be better and it's up to him to make it better. The future is where Israelis and Palestinian meet even though our stories are as far from each other as ever at the moment. But we meet in the future that is based on equality and dignity, shared acknowledgement and recognition, reconciliation and healing, security and safety. Iin order to build this future we must forgive for the past we must forgive for the present but we cannot and should not forgive for the future. I want to ask you not to ask for forgiveness but forgive; forgiving is the strongest tool there is so in order to be free in order to build the future I've decided to forgive those who killed my parents. I'm focusing only in the future and this future can come really soon but we need to work hard, we need to dream about peace we need to amplify the voices of peace”
I can only begin to imagine the prayer of gratitude that Maoz’s parents, Bilha and Yakovi might have uttered to hear the bravery and moral clarity in their son’s words.
There is one more mother whose voice we elevate today.
The voice of Hannah,in our haftarah this morning, who prays fervently for a son—praying out loud. not that she might sacrifice him to God, but that she might dedicate his life to God for all of the days of his life. Her prayers, said out loud and heard on high, are for a child to bring about a healing in the world.
Today, I want us to consider the voices of these mothers anew.
To listen not only to Sarah’s silence and Hagar’s cries, but to hear the prayer of Hannah.
There is one mother whose grief-lined face is seared in my mind. For the last year, the voice of Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s mother, crying out “Stay strong. Survive. We love you.” has been heard around the world, from the halls of the Vatican, to the United Nations, to the stage of the Democratic National Convention.
Rachel Goldberg Polin is a Hannah.
She spoke her dearest and singular prayer into the world, fervently, over and over again.
Her voice is a tikkun on Sarah's silence, as she screamed and sobbed and pleaded for her boy to come home.
These are the cries that have pierced our world for nearly a year now.
Rachel Goldberg Polin’s piercing cry of motherhood will never stop echoing in my head.
Truly, the wails of Rachel have reached all the way around the world, and more than halfway to the heavens. The cries of a mother are ancient; tears that are passed down from generation to generation.
I cannot help but think that this year, as God looks upon creation, God is crying too, like a broken hearted parent— looking down on her most precious creation, and seeing that we have forgotten to cry with both Sarah and Hagar.
So many of us have been taken by the fierce activism of Hersh’s mother— awed by her grace, inspired by her unrelenting efforts to bring home her only son, whom she described as a “child of light and love”.
But what I want to lift up for us this morning is that she is a model of a mother whose prayers extend to all humanity— who knows that her humanity is no different than the humanity of a parent in Gaza or Lebanon or anywhere else. A mother who knows that the only prayer is the one that keeps our children safe and protected.
I want to conclude this morning with that vision, beautifully rendered by a poem written by Rachel Goldberg Polin, which she delivered as part of a speech at the United Nations in Geneva this past December.
One Tiny Seed
There is a lullaby that says your mother will cry a thousand tears before you grow to be a man.
I have cried a million tears in the last 67 days.
And I know that way over therethere’s another womanwho looks just like me
because we are all so very similar
and she has also been crying.
All those tears, a sea of tears
they all taste the same.
Can we take them
gather them up,
remove the salt-
and pour them over our desert of despair and
plant one tiny seed.
A seed wrapped in fear,trauma, pain,war and hope and see what grows?
Could it be that this woman
so very like me that she and I could be sitting together in 50 years laughing
without teeth
because we have drunk so much sweet tea together and now we are so very old and our faces are creased like worn-out brown paper bags.
And our sons have their own grandchildren
and our sons have long lives and one of them is without an arm
But who needs two arms anyway?
Is it all a dream?A fantasy? A prophecy?
One tiny seed.
***
Today, we are right there, back in that Divine Delivery Room.
We want to call today Yom Harat Olam– the day the World is Born.
And the labor is hard. Rebirth is messy.
But we have to push through, if we want to give birth to a new world.
מלך חפץ בחיים
הרופא לשבורי לב ומחבש לעצבותם
שמע נא תפילת אמהות
God of Life
Who heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds
May it be your will to hear the prayer of mothers.
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