"The Still Small Voice of Tears”

 "The Still Small Voice of Tears”

This week we begin Sefer Devarim, the Book of Words (Deuteronomy.)

Moses stands before the people, offering his final speech.

And he begins by retelling the moment that broke a generation:

the story of the spies who went into the Promised Land and

returned with an account that instilled fear and hysteria in the camp.

On hearing the report, the people cried.

“That night, the people wept.”

Tears of fear, confusion, disappointment.

Tears that came from believing they were abandoned, unloved,

even hated by God.

Those tears, our sages teach, became the tears of Tisha B’Av (this Sunday),

the night of national sorrow for generations to come.

Tears are never meaningless.

They are the soul sweating, flowing in response to the depth of what we feel.

They rise from a deep place within us

from a place of longing, of grief, of joy, of truth.

We cry in pain.

We cry in awe.

Sometimes we don’t even know why we cry.

To be fully alive is to embrace the full spectrum of emotions.

We are capable of feeling sadness and joy,

of profound loss and overwhelming gratitude.

Our tears remind us that we are human.

And they remind us that we care.

On Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, we are asked to see and

even have a dream

.We are invited to look inwards,to look backwards,and

finally look forward envisioning something better.

Our tears help us focus on that vision.

They cleanse us, they release us, they soften us and

they open us to healing.

Just as Moses tried to help the people find their courage,

we, too, are invited to find ours.

The courage to feel fully and deeply.

As Jews, we do not run away from the pain of history,

or the pain in our own lives.

We are enjoined to meet it with full and sometimes broken hearts.

May our tears lead us not to despair, but to healing.

Not to hopelessness, but to wholeness.

And may this Shabbat Chazon bring us a vision of a world where tears no longer come from destruction and disconnection but from love, awe, and peace.

Shabbat Shalom

Elissa