DVAR TORAH
Learning to Cry
W
hen we were babies, no one taught us to cry. It was our primal instinct to scream out when in pain or discomfort. Crying is a sign of life, and when we were infants, crying was our primary mode of communication. But as we grew older, many of learned how not to cry; we hardened ourselves to insults and offenses. As we tried to stand tall in the face of adversity, we heard “hold the drama” or “man up” or some other dismissive phrase that suggested implicitly that it was time to outgrow tears. Such a “manly” point of view cannot be true for the religious personality, especially on momentous days when our prayers and our texts are filled with reasons to weep. Who can read U’netaneh Tokef and remain dry-eyed? My daughters joke that our row in shul during the Yamim Noraim is the splash zone.
The tears of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a form of spiritual catharsis for us, a recognition of the brokenness of our world. There are tears for the concern of what the year may bring, for the sad moments of the year past, for those no longer at the yom tov table. And there is emotional liberation in those tears, in giving oneself permission to cry. In Rabbi Israel Meir Lau’s remarkable autobiography, Out of the Depths, Lau mentions a young survivor after liberation who had lost his parents and who heard an older survivor address several hundred orphans in France. The young listener thanked the speaker for a gift: the ability to cry again. “When they took my father and mother, my eyes were dry. When they beat me mercilessly with their clubs, I bit my lips, but I didn’t cry. I haven’t cried for years, nor have I laughed.