Parashat Ki Teitzei Deuteronomy 21:10-25:19
Sing, O barren one, you who bore no child!
Shout aloud for joy, you who did not travail!
For the children of the wife forlorn
shall outnumber those of the espoused
—said Adonai.
(Isaiah 54:1)
These opening verses from the fifth haftarah of consolation (Isaiah 54:1-10) may hit close to home for all those who wanted but didn’t have children, who felt and were abandoned or rejected by a person they loved, who saw their ex-spouse start the family they had longed for.
It is painful to sit in the pews when what is supposed to be uplifting or comforting brings sadness. When the discrepancy between biblical potential and human reality becomes personal. When what is shown as an ideal to aspire to does not come true, despite one doing everything “right” – being a good person, being kind and fair.
It is in such moments that the rhetoric of reward and punishment, of blessings and curses, so essential especially to the Book for Deuteronomy and foundational for many religions, becomes disheartening, alienating. When it can lead to frustrations with the Divine, with a demanding God that requests obedience but doesn’t always follow through on promises made and leaves people feeling inadequate: I haven’t done enough, I have not repented, not prayed, not been generous enough.
For some, such experience of inadequacy can cause self-doubt, anger, or defiance. What am I doing wrong? Why am I not being “remembered” by God, like God remembered Sarah, and, for that matter, Abraham? If there is a plan, I don’t like that plan, it is not the one I had in mind for myself. How can I consider anything else as more than second-best?
I for one have known such moments. When I felt forgotten by the universe. When the simplicity of the biblical imagery – sad childless woman turned happy mother – annoyed and offended me. It is particularly difficult around Rosh Hashana, with its focus on creation and birth. Frankly, there are still moments when I feel pangs of sadness, and they may never dissipate entirely. But they don’t grip me with the same strength as they used to. They don’t define me as they used to. What my younger self would have called second-best, now are good moments in time, potentially best moments. And that shift in mindset helped me open to the Divine and consider myself included in whatever plan there might be, from day to day.
For the mountains may move
And the hills be shaken,
But my loyalty shall never move from you,
Nor My covenant of friendship be shaken
—said Adonai, who takes you back in love.
(Isaiah 54:10)
Shabbat Shalom!
Rabbi Julia Knobloch
rabbiknobloch@bethelsp.org
