Rabbi Gleason Divrei Torah

I have a teacher at JTS who, when asked why God doesn’t answer our prayers, said, to a very earnest student, “God answers every prayer. And sometimes the answer is no.”

Though I think that this was as much for the comedic effect as a genuine expression of theology, it comes to mind now because what I want to explore today is what happens when the answer to our prayers is no. Or at least, when the answer to our prayer is -  not yet. Or not in the way that you think. What happens - and what tools does our tradition offer us - when we are faced with bitter disappointment, and when loss leaves us inconsolable. When the deepest desires of our heart, are simply not met. When those who we love most in this world, are taken from us.

On Rosh HaShana, we read stories from the Torah of heroes in our tradition who cried out to God and who were answered. We sing in our selichot leading up to these holidays - God answered, God answered, God answered. Sarah, Hagar, and Chana - their prayers - for a child, for salvation - were all answered. And we, in turn, were given hope that our prayers too might be answered. And certainly, I believe that the power of prayer is to allow the truest and most worthy desires of our heart to come into focus, that we might act in such a way that will bring them about. 

But for every Chana, there is a person who deeply wants a child, who is never able to to have one. And for every Hagar, there is a migrant who is trapped in fear and suffering, and ultimately dies in pain. 

These are the unbearable facts which our tradition asks us to actually take a look at on this day. That, sometimes, our prayers will not be answered. Not in the way that we think they will.

You may be thinking - this is an incredibly depressing sermon. And so far, it may be. But I’m not going to stop here. What I want to explore is what lies on the other side of facing the unbearable. What freedom, what wisdom, what joy and even what pleasure lies on the other side of truly facing instead of hiding from the unbearable truths of our lives?

Today we are given a glimpse of what can happen when we let go of our expectations and acknowledge our frailty. To say, as we do in Kol Nidre, all the things I think I am going to do, I may not be able to do, try as I may. For various reasons. 

A new book came out a few weeks ago by the Jewish theologian Julia Watts Belser, called Loving Our Own Bones: Disability Wisdom and the Spiritual Subversiveness of Knowing Ourselves Whole. She has a chapter on the end of Moses’s life, the place where we are currently in our regular Torah reading cycle as we come to the very end of the book of Deuteronomy, the very end of the Torah. 

Belser looks upon the episode in which Moshe is told he will not enter the promised land. It’s a bit mysterious what exactly he did - other than striking a rock - that deserved this harsh punishment from God. And perhaps, argues Belser, that is part of the point. Perhaps there is no discernible reason for why Moshe is barred from the Promised Land - and we could exhaust ourselves trying to pick one out, and the rabbis do, and there is some value to that - or we can simply accept the deep unfairness of life at times. 

Reflecting on our urge to find a reason, Belser writes about the outrage of the questions that she faces as someone who uses a wheelchair: what happened to you? How long have you been like this? And the even more infuriating theological curiosity that her very existence evokes for people: WHY did this happen to you? Did your parents do something wrong while your mother was pregnant with you? Because if I can find a reason, then I can surely protect myself from the same fate, or find comfort in knowing that you did something to deserve it. A reason provides a resting place for our questioning minds to settle into - much easier than confronting the truth of randomness in this world, the inexplicability of what happens to us. 

What if there was no real reason comprehensible why Moshe couldn’t enter the promised land? And what if, at the end of the Torah, that is the reality that we are asked to sit with? What happens when we sit with it? How does it change our lives? 

We are about to go into the Yizkor prayer. We memorialize - on this holiest day of the year - those so dear to us who we’ve lost. Tragically. Some well before their time. This is an incredibly challenging time for many of us. For myself, as I recite Yizkor for my mother, I feel as though her death may as well have been yesterday, though many years have passed. The grief of losing someone so close to you feels like an in-human experience - like such pain shouldn’t be possible for a human being. And yet, billions of people have felt it. It’s hard to wrap my mind around that fact as well. Surely, not everyone can really have felt this pain of loss. But we have. 

Many of us are familiar with the stages of grief, authored by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, or the non-linear model of grieving. We know that grief pops up in the most unexpected times and places. Not always during Yizkor or at a funeral, but sometimes in taking out the trash, or at a particular restaurant, or looking at a stranger’s so-familiar hands. 

Dr. Lois Tonkin has another model of grief which states that grief does not necessarily ever shrink, but rather - once you experience loss, and ensuing grief, your life needs to grow bigger and bigger in order to accommodate the size of the grief. 

What I didn’t realize until many years after the loss that impacted me most was that I can’t wait for the grief to subside, or shrink. Because, truly, if it hasn’t happened after decades, it may never happen. Instead, we must expand our lives to accommodate the size of something so massive. Which means, we who have experienced loss, which is to say, most if not all of us, need to live big BIG lives. We must grow immensely. 

We say in our Psalms - min hametzar Karati Yah - from the narrowness, I called to God. V’anani b’merchav Yah - God answered me from the expanse. God’s voice lives in the expanse, it is what is going to call us there. The more that we ourselves can expand - take up space in this world, expand our way of thinking, expand beyond the narrowness of the habits of mind and spirit and body that we have developed to protect ourselves and calcified into - the more we will encounter God there. 

So what happens when we face the unbearable? Instead of being jealous, perhaps, of those people around us who still have their spouses, their parents, or their children, we accept that God has a different answer to our prayer. We may see the grief in our lives for its real size. For its enormity. And we cannot configure our lives to fit snugly around it, shapeshifting our mental habits to avoid collisions with this massive entity. Because we will always crash. Instead, we must grow and grow until our spirits are large enough that grief doesn’t take up all the space. 

What lies on the other side of the unbearable is not perfect, sunshiney, absolute freedom. Just as the promised land that the Israelites cross into is also full of war and conflict at the same moment that it flows with milk and honey. But it is expansive, and it is sweet.

There is midrash in Deuteronomy Rabbah that recounts Moses pleading before God, 515 times. He tries every trick in the book to reason with God, to guilt God, to flatter God, to bargain - to be able to enter the land. Moses says to God: “If you will not let me enter 

the land, then let me be like the cattle of the field, who eat grasses and drink water and live and see the land - make me one of them.” And God says no. He goes on: “If not, then let me be like the birds who fly on the four winds of the world, who go forth to gather their food each day and who return by night to their nests -- make me one of them.” 

It’s easy to identify with this deep, deep yearning. The 515 pleas. And yet, ultimately, although Moshe does not enter the land in body, his spirit expands. The end of his life is twinged with a largesse of acceptance, with his eyes bright, the Torah says they were undimmed.

Belser, in her conclusion to this chapter, identifies with Moses too, writing “Disability has sheared away the assumption I was trained to, that wilderness is a summit to be surmounted. My pace is slower now, the distance I can close more minute than before. There are some things I have lost, some rivers I will never cross. But there are also doorways that have opened, other paths I would have missed before. Drawn into distance through the prism of the gaze, I keep company with wild places. I allow the land to take up residence within my bones. To behold is to invite in” (112). 

Whether we are currently disabled or temporarily able-bodied, Belser’s beautiful incantation of expansiveness is powerful for any person who has ever felt their prayer not answered in the way that they want. Their prayer for their loved one to live. Their prayer to have a child, or a partner. Their prayer for their own health. And for all of us who find ourselves in this position, let us behold. As Moses sat on the banks of the Jordan which he could not cross - let us be where we are, allowing that land to take up residence in our bones. Let us behold. Let us grow large in spirit. Let us have the courage to face what we do not want to face, and see what new doorways will open for us, that we may have missed before. And they certainly will. Many, many doorways will open. As we remember those who we’ve lost, let their memories fill us so full that we must expand, we must make our lives bigger. Let us call to God from our place of narrowness, and let us greet the voice that responds from the expanse, and grow to meet it.