Grieving With God (Yom Kippur, Yizkor, 5785)

Grieving With God
Rabbi Sivan Rotholz, Yom Kippur, Yizkor 5785

In the wake of October 7th, I was inconsolable. My connection to Israel is deeply-rooted in the past and stretches forward into the future. My daughter is the third-generation of my family to be born in Israel, the great-great grandchild of idealistic Zionists who immigrated to Palestine in the Second Aliyah. Who worked to build the country with their own hands. I have more family in Israel than I do here. And just as many friends. As the days passed and I Iearned of the violent barbarism carried out in a place I consider home, against people I consider family, I asked myself: How could God let this happen?

This is a question that I imagine many of you have wrestled with over the past year. As you learned of the horrors of October 7th. As you counted the days the hostages remained—and remain—in captivity. As the war raged on and bomb after bomb, rocket after rocket, and missile after missile reduced Gaza to rubble and sent Israelis into bomb shelters, fearing daily for their lives, for the safety of their children, for the future of their homeland, I imagine many of you have asked: How could God let this happen? As you sit here today remembering those you have loved and lost in your own life, you may have asked: How could God let this happen?

Yizkor—the name of this Yom Kippur afternoon service—means “remembrance,” and we are invited at this hour to find comfort as we remember those we have lost. In this spirit, I want to offer you what brought me comfort in the wake of October 7th and over this past, unbearable, year. I stopped asking the question “How could God let this happen,” and instead, I started grieving with God.

In Jewish tradition, God’s feminine aspect, the Shechinah, mourns alongside us. She was exiled from her rightful place alongside the masculine aspect of God when the Second Temple was destroyed, and she will remain with us in exile until the End of Days. This aspect of divinity, introduced to us by the Rabbis, comes from the Hebrew root ש–כ–נ, meaning “indwelling.” It is directly connected to the Hebrew words shachen—neighbor—and mishkan—the earthly dwelling place of God. When God is here, among us in the earthly realm, this is the Shechinah.

And what the Shechinah is known for is weeping. She grieves with us and for us. Throughout history, the Shechinah has suffered alongside us through our darkest depths. When we were enslaved in Egypt. When we were exiled in Babylon. During the horrors of the Holocaust. In the Jewish mystical tradition, she is associated with our foremother Rachel, who weeps for her children. The Shechinah is our divine mother, here among us to accompany us in our suffering.

The great Jewish philosopher Hillel Zeitlin, who was murdered in the Warsaw Ghetto, taught that the Shechinah is:

the mother of all of creation… the mother of all the children of Israel,

the mother of every individual, a loving, compassionate, comforting mother… And we… children of unprecedented suffering, children of misfortunes of a magnitude that even a people all too familiar with pain has never previously known, firebrands salvaged from slaughters and pogroms, we who thirst and yearn for redemption … we… seek and search for the mother, for Rachel weeping for her children, for the [one who] beseeches on our behalf and on behalf of the entire world, [seeking] redemption [for] all those who are oppressed.

Last year, when I was overwhelmed with the news from Israel, the magnitude of October 7th crashing over me in waves, I met with my spiritual director – a kind of spiritual therapist. I asked her the question that I had been asking myself over and over: How could God let this happen? And in response she asked me what I thought God was feeling at that moment. Imagine creating all of these remarkable, magical creatures, only to have them commit such horrific acts against one another. I stopped thinking of God as some divine puppet master, pulling the strings of human behavior, capable of either a presence or an absence that would allow such violent terrorism to happen to my people, and instead, I remembered God as the Shechinah. I remembered our divine mother, here among us bearing witness to our pain and tragedy, incapable of intervention but very much present, weeping for her children, as horrified that such an atrocity could be committed as I was. And in this way, I found compassion for God. I remembered the Shechinah and I knew that she was in as much pain as I was. Even more so, because she is the mother who has suffered her own children destroying one another.

Once I remembered the Shechinah, I stopped questioning how God could let this happen. Instead, I started grieving with God. Letting Her know I see Her pain. Finding some comfort in comforting Her.

While the Shechinah grieves alongside us, while she is known for her weeping, she does not leave us without hope. Our rabbinic and Jewish mystical texts imagine that the Shechinah is in exile alongside us, separated from the heavenly, masculine aspect of God. But they also imagine that God and the Shechinah are reunited each week during Shabbat. When we sing Lecha Dodi each Friday night, when we rise to greet the Sabbath Bride, this is the Shechinah! Each week she enters our holy spaces, coming as a bride to greet her groom. Each week they are reunited for 25 blessed hours, their Shabbat union offering us a glimpse of better days ahead.

Yizkor is a time to grieve, and to seek comfort. Even as we enter a new year, there is much to weep over. And. We not only weep alongside the Shechinah, we greet her in joy each Shabbat. Because we are a people that holds fast to the hope of better days ahead.

Many of us are at this service today remembering someone we’ve lost. All of us are carrying the weight of the hardest year the Jewish people have suffered in our lifetime. When we face loss, whether it is personal or communal, we may wonder how God could let this happen. But perhaps, as I have this past year, you might find some comfort in knowing that there is an aspect of God that feels our pain and our losses as much as we do, and that needs our love and comfort as much as we need to offer such grace to ourselves.