{"id":56759,"date":"2019-06-03T22:25:25","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T19:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/?p=56759"},"modified":"2022-12-26T18:29:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-26T16:29:41","slug":"connection-of-anguish-and-despair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.929.org.il\/en\/connection-of-anguish-and-despair\/","title":{"rendered":"Connection Of Anguish And Despair"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[281],"tags":[394,882,437,627],"acf":{"old_id":"56759","type":"no","iframe":"","writer":56425,"related_cahpter":"233","type_929":"2","show_author_image":false,"old_create_date":"","old_url":"","post_main_content":{"description":"Why does Hannah\u2019s story resonate so deeply with many of us?","content":"

\u201cRav Hamnuna said: How many significant halakhot can be derived from these verses of the prayer of Hannah?\u201d (Berachot 31a).<\/span><\/p>\n

Why does Hannah\u2019s story resonate so deeply with many of us?<\/span><\/p>\n

Often, when we suffer we feel farthest from God, yet Hannah approaches God in the moment of her greatest despair. She takes those moments of pain and sorrow and uses them to connect to God. The connection is not joyful – it is full of anguish and anger, but it is a connection.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, the Talmud (Berachot 32b) depicts Hannah\u2019s bitter bargaining with God:<\/span><\/p>\n

“Rabbi Elazar said: Hannah said before the Holy One, Blessed be He: Master of the Universe, if You will look upon me now, fine, and if not, in any case You will see. What was Hannah threatening? She said: I will go and seclude myself with another man before Elkana, my husband. Since I secluded myself, they will force me to drink the \u2018sotah water\u2019 to determine whether or not I have committed adultery. I will be found innocent, and since You will not make Your Torah false I will bear children.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Rabbi Elazar understood that her prayer was angry and full of hurt and desperation. She was so desperate that she was willing to make herself a <\/span>Sotah<\/span><\/em> (suspected adulteress) in order to have a child. Yet, in that moment of intense anger Hannah does not turn away from God; rather, she is presented as forcing His hand to uphold His own judgement.<\/span><\/p>\n

“If You will indeed look upon the affliction of Your maidservant and remember me, and not forget Your maidservant and will give Your maidservant a male child, I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and there shall be no razor come upon his head\u201d (1:11).<\/span><\/p>\n

Hannah\u2019s dedication is remarkable: her longing for a child goes beyond the near-universal desire to parent; she wants a child in order to raise him to serve God. She dedicates the son that she provoked God to give her, to God, seeing her role as a mother to a boy whose life would be dedicated to God as a means by which to serve God herself.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is for these reasons that Hannah emotionally connects to so many of us. Her story reminds us that we can always talk and pray even if that prayer is full of anger and challenge, and that our goal is to lead a life where our actions are deliberately in service to God.<\/span><\/p>\n

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