Nothing Left but Tears
In May of 2021, before the last Israeli elections, before October 7th, before this war-
There was another Gaza crisis - 15 days long, rockets and bombings and stones and rubber bullets
During that time, the American-Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post, titled,
Israelis and Palestinians can’t go on like this. Weep for us.
He begged us to cry.
Weep, damn it, weep for us. Weep for this place in the season of wildflowers when it should be beautiful, weep for the dead and the living, weep for God who can’t get us to stop, weep for humanity.
Somehow this will stop. May it happen now, as you read this. We will see each other’s faces, each other’s pain. We will realize this cannot go on. We will find each other. It is what can come after anger and grief, what must come. I have to believe.
These words are what I have left after all the explanations and counterfeit certainties. I have tears for two peoples, tangled together, and hope that we’ll finally see that this can’t go on. We can’t let it.
I did weep. I wept then. And I still do.
What does it mean? Did my, did our tears do anything?
Too often, these days - I have no words. And as I reach for language, what I find is water -
I find myself weeping once again.
Weeping for the children still held captive by Hamas.
Weeping for the children afraid in their beds.
Weeping for the children who have learned to sleep through the sound of sirens and bombs.
I have nothing left but tears.
Poet and liturgist Alden Solovy captures this in a poem written just a few days after October 7th
“I must be made of water.
I have nothing left but tears.”
Our tears - however, are not tears of resignation
Jewish tradition has long held that our tears do something
Our weeping has a purpose
Tears are what connected Jacob and his long-lost son, Joseph
Jacob cries while in mourning for Joseph, after being told he has died
He refuses to be comforted
And Joseph, too, cries -
When he sees his brothers again for the first time,
And sees how they’ve changed
Sees their humanity once again -
He weeps.
First, he weeps privately -
And this crying opens something into him
And he decides to forgive his brothers.
And when he sees them again, he still can not contain his tears.
Our Torah portion this week reads: Joseph could no longer control himself before all his attendants, and he cried out, “Have everyone withdraw from me!” So there was no one else about when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. His sobs were so loud that the Egyptians could hear, and so the news reached Pharaoh’s palace.
And it is his tears that create the space for his brothers to feel safe to embrace him, “He kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; only then were his brothers able to talk to him.”
And when he finally sees his father, he is able to return his father’s tears.
He weeps - tears of catharsis, mourning missed years, and yes, tears of pained joy at returning to his father’s arms.
Joseph’s crying had a purpose.
It opened his heart back up, and reconnected him -
Maybe ours can do the same.
Tears, Judaism teach, can have cosmic power -
The Rabbinic tradition teaches that when the Holy One, Blessed be He, remembers His children who are suffering among the nations of the world, He sheds two tears into the great sea. The sound of their reverberation is heard from one end of the earth to the other. And that is an earthquake.
God will weep for us. Will weep with us.
Are we open to bewailing the suffering that God sees?
Perhaps if we can cry like God, those tears will as loud as an earthquake -
As powerful as a sea.
Perhaps the sea will let us, like our ancestors, start anew
Perhaps what the Psalmist wrote will come true.
That those who sow in tears will reap with joy
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The Psalmist imagined that Gd collects tears -
אָתָּה שִׂימָה דִמְעָתִי בְנֹאדֶךָ
You place my tears into Your flask
And there is a beautiful, heartbreaking idea that only when that bottle is full -
Only then will the world be redeemed.
I believe it is our tears that lead to our redemption
Not only the tears from pain and bloodshed
But also the tears from connection, of one soul recognizing the pain of the other
When we cry for our sisters and brothers and children and for neighbors and strangers
When we learn to to open ourselves up to the pain of the world and the pain of each other
Tears -
They mark us as human.
They, in Solovy’s words, are “Not just water. These tears, they feed me.
My bones are iron. My people need me.”
We need to cry. To cry together.
And to let our tears do something.
We are taught that the gates of tears are never closed -
We have to weep and imagine what is on the other side -
What doors we might open, if only we can cry.
If only we can let these tears do something.
I must be made of water -
I have nothing left but tears.
But maybe our tears will be enough.