grief is fertile ground

I gathered this past week with the clergy from the other communities in Synagogues Rising to support one another, share ideas, study Torah and prepare for the year ahead. One of my colleagues taught us a very beautiful nigun that comes to us by way of the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidut. As we sat in a circle and sang this complicated tune, what emerged was a deep well of grief. And the longer we sang, the more sad I felt. Until the sadness started melting into the melody, like thawing ice into a river. It didn’t disappear but it did dissolve into something much greater. 

Grief is also very present in this week’s parsha Vayeshev. This week we begin the story of Joseph which consumes the rest of Genesis. As a reminder Jacob favors Joseph which makes his brothers jealous. He dreams that he will one day rule over them. Incensed they throw him into a pit and leave him to die. He is saved by a caravan of Ishmaelites and brought to Egypt. When Reuben returns to the pit, he sees he is missing and he rends his clothing in mourning. 

Literally, “ וַיִּקְרַ֖ע אֶת־בְּגָדָֽיו - And he tore his clothing” (Genesis 27:29). 
Rueben did the practice of kriya, which we still do to this day. 

Then he gathers his brothers to tell Jacob that his beloved son has died, and Jacob enters into mourning. 

וַיִּקְרַ֤ע יַעֲקֹב֙ שִׂמְלֹתָ֔יו וַיָּ֥שֶׂם שַׂ֖ק בְּמׇתְנָ֑יו וַיִּתְאַבֵּ֥ל עַל־בְּנ֖וֹ יָמִ֥ים רַבִּֽים׃

“Jacob rent his clothes, put sackcloth on his loins, and observed mourning for his son many days” (Genesis 37:34)

I learned a teaching about this moment in Torah transmitted by Rabbi Avi Strausberg. The Netivot Shalom, a 20th century Hasidic teacher, explains that the story of Joseph and his family’s grief always precedes the festival of Hanukkah because grief is fertile ground for redemption.

He taught, “the energy of redemption becomes possible for a person — or a people — when two conditions are present. First they have to truly feel their broken-heartedness at the situation in which they find themselves. And second, they have to refuse to accept that the status quo in which they are is the only way reality can be organized. Then, and only then, can the energetic light of redemption enable seeds that were already there to grow into new redemptive possibilities.

So it’s not that good follows the bad automatically, or that hitting some kind of low or bottom automatically creates the conditions in which something better emerges.

Rather, it depends on our capacity to fully feel how brokenhearted we actually are and to steadfastly refuse to accept that things must be this way. Both of which can be enormously hard to do. And both of which are made easier when not doing so alone."

This resonates deeply as a way to orient ourselves this Hanukkah season. We need to be willing to grieve fully and refuse to accept the way things are. The combination of our grief and our refusal creates the conditions in which change can happen. 

This wisdom was echoed in an email I received this morning. For the past 10 months I have been donating to a soup kitchen in North Gaza started by a desperate father, Hani Almadhoun. This morning, he wrote this:

“Every day, we see destruction and cruelty, but alongside it, there are moments of hope—moments made possible by people like you who refuse to give up. The Gaza Soup Kitchen began as a response to heartbreak, born from an inability to stand idly by. Since its launch earlier this year, we’ve been humbled by the scale of impact we’ve achieved together.”

This solstice Shabbat, and on the days of Hanukkah and Christmas ahead, may we light the candles with hearts full of grief and defiance. And may it seed or hadash, a new and needed light.