Hannah, Me and Infertility
When I was interviewing for my first rabbinic position, I had a disturbing encounter with a colleague. Applying to be an assistant rabbi, I asked the senior rabbi about how he thought his congregation would take to a woman in this role. I was particularly concerned because I was aware that the congregation had previous experience with a female cantor that was rumored to have ended badly. In addressing this situation, my colleague said, “well, she had every right to have a baby—but how can a cantor have a baby in September, with the high holidays. That is not responsible planning.”
Flash forward seven years, and I found myself in that very situation. Except, instead of being told that my services were no longer needed or that I had planned poorly, I was met with “b’shaah tova,” may it happen at a good hour. I did not receive one complaint or criticism for the timing of the birth of my second child.
Maya’s due date was actually Rosh Hashanah of last year. Luckily she came early enough to give me the privilege of sitting among the congregation for the high holidays.
I walked into the synagogue on the first day of Rosh Hashanah last year, two week old baby in hand, and I heard the beautiful chanting of the haftarah—the story of Hannah.
Hannah’s story serves as an introduction to the Book of Samuel. It tells of a woman saddened by her inability to conceive. Her pain is exacerbated by the fact that her husband’s other wife is able to have children, and taunts her mercilessly. Hannah prays fervently for a child.
Her prayer is answered, she conceives and gives birth to Samuel, who, as promised, she dedicates to a life a service to the Temple.
Adonai Tzvaot—Lord of Hosts, Look upon the suffering of your maidservant—remember me…grant me a child.
And in hearing these words last year I realized. I was no longer angry with God.
I struggled for many years with infertility. My story is not way unique. I spent years in clinics, on medications and with procedures. Like so many other women, I suffered silently through treatment after treatment, disappointment after disappointment.
There was real, physical pain, but that is not what stayed with me. It was the emotions of the prolonged experience that truly took a toll. Even the most mundane of social interactions felt stifled.
There’s a short exchange in the film the Big Chill, where one character says to another, “So how’s your life.” She responds, much as we’d expect, “Oh great, how’s yours.” He says, “not so great,” to which she responds, “Ohhh, we’re telling the truth.” I held this interaction close to me during my long struggle with infertility. I didn’t want to go around unburdening myself to every person who expressed the common courtesy of asking a simple, “how are you,” but it was draining to constantly muster the energy to smile and say “fine.”
Like Hannah, I desperately wanted a child. Like Hannah, I engaged with God with heartfelt, passionate prayer. Yet these prayers were not answered. At the same time, I had to go about my daily life. I was not “sick,” yet I longed to be “healed.”
Our traditional stories give God power over a woman’s fertility. Our relationship with matriarchs and women in the Bible is largely tied up with their fertility story. Yesterday we read a familiar story, in which the long suffering Sarah is finally granted a child. “va’adonai pakad et Sarah…” “God took note of Sarah…Sarah conceived and bore a son.”
The story of Isaac’s birth is formative in developing Jewish identity. Sarah was childless, now “too old” to have children. Yet God intervened. And it happens again and again. Isaac’s wife, Rebecca, also struggles to conceive, as does Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife. Incidentally, regarding Isaac and Rebecca, it is he who prays for a child. Unlike Hannah’s husband, Elkanah, who made no space for her longing, Isaac seemed to appreciate his wife’s desires and to share them. Perhaps in its time and place this was simply Isaac’s wish to perpetuate his line. But, as contemporary people it necessarily reminds us that the stress of infertility and the longing for family is shared by women and men alike.
For some, the narratives surrounding infertility offer comfort by providing the knowledge that others had encountered this and prevailed. From my perspective—being in the middle of things, not knowing what my “ending” would look like—it was simply too much. I agonized over encountering these stories in our annual Torah cycle. And no reading caused me greater pain than the story of Hannah. Along with the Torah reading, it was chosen for the prime role of Rosh Hashanah because of its messages faith, potential and new beginnings. But for some, encountering these texts necessarily bring about complex emotion and reaction.
I had once loved the story of Hannah. We have only a precious few female protagonists in our text. Hannah’s story is reasonably well developed. She was commended by the ancient rabbis for her commitment to prayer, which remains for us a model of the art of spontaneous prayer. But while in the throes of my own infertility struggle I felt that hearing Hannah’s story hit too close to home. What is more, I found myself angry at Hannah. She longed for a child, yet she gave her longed-for first born to Temple service, separating herself from him at age three?
I also felt abandoned by Hannah. Upon Samuel’s birth she offers a lengthy prayer, “My heart exults in the Lord…God guards the step of the faithful.” From my vantage point, this once beloved prayer became abhorrent. While the rational side of me could separate my theological lens from that of the time of Hannah, I was furious with Hannah for gloating about her faithfulness and ultimate reward.
Our liturgy too finds ways to highlight God’s role in conception, on holidays we joyfully proclaim in the Hallel prayer—“moshivi akeret habayit em habanim smekha!” “God settles a barren woman in her home, a mother happy with children.”
Indeed, our contemporary recitation of the Amidah includes a reminder of Sarah’s barrenness three times each day. When our movement added the imahot, the matriarchs, to the introduction of the prayer, they sought authenticity by choosing a text from the Torah to parallel magen Abraham, shield of Abraham. They chose the aforementioned pakad Sarah—took note of Sarah. This decision was liturgically sound, highlighting that Sarah, not just Abraham, had a special relationship with God and is worthy for mention in our prayer. But for me, longing for a child, each time I recited the Amidah was like rubbing salt in a wound.
Our sacred texts offer a wealth of resources for seeking comfort. I have, on countless occasions, turned to the text for solace. I am endlessly amazed by the wisdom possessed in such ancient writings. The understanding of the human condition is astonishing.
But sometimes our encounters with the text offer us not insight or consolation, but rather pain. It may have stood to reason that I would have felt a kinship with our matriarchs and Biblical heroines while I was struggling with infertility. But the opposite was true. I felt abandoned by them.
And that is when I remembered Devorah.
Vatamat D’vorah mayneket rivka vateekaver meetachat l’veit el tachat ha’alon. Deborah, Rebekah’s nurse, died and was buried under the oak below Bethel.
This is not the well-known Devorah that we meet in the Book of Judges.
This Devorah receives only this one mention in the Torah—the Biblical equivalent to a footnote really. That’s it, one line. But, I find Devorah to be a most fascinating person in our sacred text.
The mere mention of Devorah is noteworthy because, simply put, women are not often talked about in the Torah. Their names are generally not included in lineages. Their identities are typically described in terms of the men in their lives—husbands, fathers and sons. Think about it for a moment. If I asked you, “who was Abraham?” I would expect you to respond that he was the first “Jew.” If I asked you “who was Sarah?” you would likely respond, “Abraham’s wife.”
Not so with Devorah. Not only do we learn that Devorah had an occupation of her own, that of nurse, but the only relationship that is mentioned is that of Rebecca, another woman. Devorah’s role in the Torah is not contingent upon a male relation.
Devorah’s place in history is unknown, and that is another reason that I love her. Because she merits having her name recorded in the Torah we are lead to believe that her story was well-known in the ancient world. But we are left to imagine the details of her life, to ponder who she truly was, beyond Rebecca’s nurse. Devorah invites midrash and I relish in the fact that our tradition embraces exegesis and explication that allows us to delve beyond the words on the page. But Devorah does not receive much attention in traditional midrashim or commentaries. Her presence is used to further understand Rebecca, our sages believed that it indicated that our matriarch came from a family of wealth.
Rashi suggests that she was a confidante to Rebecca, that Rebecca sent her to fetch her son Jacob from the home of Laban. An alternative midrash explains that Devorah was not Rebecca’s nurse, rather she was Jacob’s nurse, writing a male character into her existence.
In her book, “The Red Tent,” Anita Diamant expands on the Biblical text and the midrashic tradition. Devorah is a character in this novel. Diamant imagines her as the anonymous servant, or, more accurately, servants, of Rebecca. That is to say, Devorah becomes the generic name used for the women who help Rebecca, an anonymity akin to the term “Shirley” coined by Herman Wouk in Marjorie Morningstar to define the 1930’s housewives of West Chester.
If Diamant is responsible for perpetuating Devorah’s anonymity and limiting her potential role, I am guilty of the opposite. I imagine that Devorah could have been anyone…done anything. I want to know more about the women in the Bible, and I paradoxically cling to Devorah, about whom we know the least. Because with Devorah, the possibilities are endless.
When the well-known stories of our tradition felt uncomfortable to me I was fortunate to encounter a minor verse in the text that spoke to me. Through Devorah I was able to stay connected.
During my years of longing and trying to conceive I could not imagine that I would ever find a connection with the major women in the Bible again. Their stories would forever be a reminder of a time too difficult. Their “choseness” would forever be a reminder of my own feelings of God’s abandonment. Those feelings remain part of who I am, even after conceiving and giving birth to healthy, wonderful children. There are those who say that everything happens for a reason, who can look back at a difficult time and proclaim that it was meant to be that way in order to ensure a brighter future. I cannot subscribe to this perspective. That said, I have learned to acknowledge this difficult experience and incorporate it into the wholeness of my being.
To my understanding, our individual relationships with God reflect the sum total of our experience—our views from the past through our hopes for the future. But the tapestry of experience can, at times, be overshadowed by the reality of the present. Sometimes we are, by no real fault of our own, subjected to a form of tunnel vision that narrows our focus.
Sometimes we get stuck.
I cannot tell you how to get unstuck. There is no all-encompassing formula to address the breadth of life moments and the variety of individuals. I can, however, acknowledge that many of us—I’ll go so far as to say most of us—have felt this way. In fact, some of us are feeling stuck right now. We need to sit with that—to recognize it in ourselves and offer space to allow others to navigate it.
And, when the time is right, we need to recognize teshuva.
We’ve inherited a tradition of translating this term as repentance. This interpretation does us a disservice by limiting the scope of the concept. At its root, teshuva means return. At this time of year we seek to return, to find our equilibrium. As is highlighted throughout these high holy days, teshuva is a process. But sometimes, when our minds are clear and open, or maybe when we’re least expecting it, we might stumble upon teshuva. That’s where I found myself last Rosh Hashanah. Upon hearing the words of Hannah, I realized I had returned.
As I embrace our matriarchs and Biblical heroines, I also seek to hear the voices of wisdom in our own day. To that, I end with the prayer of my colleague Rabbi Naomi Levy.
Teach me always to believe in my power to return to life, to hope, and to You, God, no matter what pains I have endured, no matter how far I have strayed from You. Give me the strength to resurrect my weary spirit. Revive me, God, so I can embrace life once more in joy, in passion, in peace. Amen