But should we wean ourselves from crying forever, as we are weaned from our mother’s milk? If, as we learn to stop crying before we sleep, we decide to stop ourselves from crying altogether, then we must beware. We must beware lest we train our very souls to go to sleep without a sob. We must beware, as we don our mature armor of tearless silence, lest we swaddle ourselves in a straitjacket of solitude.

So let us return to the story of the Akedah, the story that made little Abraham Joshua burst out crying. It is a story about a father and a mother who, long after they had given up hope for a child, were blessed with a son. They called him Yitzhaq – he will laugh! But then the father is called to give his son up to God. “And they walked along, together.” All hopes are dashed. The prophecy is a lie. He – will not live to laugh. It is a story that could make a young child cry. But this is a very grownup story, and grownups don’t cry.

They walk forward together, father and son. It is a grim time. No one speaks; no one cries. Abraham cannot cry. After all, he knows – or so he thinks – that God will not hear his weeping, for it is God Who has commanded this act. He cannot cry knowing that no one will come. And Isaac cannot cry. He knows that his father will not turn back, and his mother is far, far away.

The crying of a child can shatter one’s heart. But here is a paradox, for, in a deep way, it is also the expression of hope. The cry pours forth in the hope that it will bring relief and salvation, that it will be heard. To cry is to despair, but it is also to hope. The danger is that when we learn to stop crying, we may learn also to control and to minimize our hope. Neither Abraham nor Isaac have hope. Therefore they do not cry.

The readers of old, like the young Abraham Joshua Heschel, could not stand it. They could not let the story remain in so hopeless a state, without a tear. So the midrash adds copious tears. And the medieval poet, Ephraim of Bonn, follows suit. He writes a liturgical poem about the Binding of Isaac after the First Crusades, and has the angels cry to God:

We beg of Thee, have pity on him!
In his father’s house we were given hospitality.
[So] Isaac was swept away by the flood of celestial tears Into Eden, the Garden of God.

Thus, the story is redeemed with tears, to make up for the tears missing from the text. But the tears of angels cannot truly effect the redemption we human beings so sorely need. Those very tears, says the midrash, fell from the open heavens and dropped into Isaac’s own eyes, the eyes that were not crying. The tears of the angels blinded him for life.

But wait! There are other tears, human tears, in this story. Only they are not where we have been looking for them. They are first found in the earlier part of the story, the part that is read on the First Day of Rosh Ha-Shanah, the part we read today. It is here that we find for the first time that anyone cries in the Torah. It is not a child who cries. It is a grownup. But it is not Abraham. She is Hagar, mother of Ishmael. An adult, not a child.

In this part of the story Abraham sacrifices his first son, Ishmael, at the insistence of Sarah, who is determined to protect her own son, Yitzhaq, from the threat that Ishmael poses. Though Abraham does not want to send his son away, God supports Sarah and commands Abraham to follow her every instruction. So he dutifully obeys and sends Hagar and Ishmael out of his camp.

“And she walked and got lost in the desert of Beer Sheva. And the water from the canteen gave out. So she threw the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat herself down across the way, as far as a bowshot, for she said, ‘I cannot look at the death of the child.’ So she sat across and raised her voice and cried.” (Gen. 21:14-16)

Why did she cry? It is a silly question, of course. Or is it? Abraham does not cry. Neither does Isaac. But Hagar does. In all the Torah, she is the first person whose crying is noticed. Is she crying for help, the way a young child cries for a parent, for a bottle, for a toy, a playdate, or a glass of water? Did she expect to get anything by crying? Did she think her son would be saved by her crying? But she knows that God has authorized this tragedy.

I said before that to cry is to express some primitive form of hope. Yet, here, on the contrary, Hagar weeps out of complete despair. She has no hope, no expectation. And she cries. What happens when a person cries out of utter despair? The deep link between our bodies and our emotions becomes manifest. We cannot control our emotions and we cannot control our bodies. We heave and tremble; we grimace, squeal, moan, scream or groan, and our body melts and lets go a flow of tears.

Yet, as we lose control, we also, in some fundamental way, become liberated. We become free to feel and free to release those feelings.

What does Hagar’s weeping accomplish? A miracle occurs and God responds. Even though Hagar has no hope in God’s deliverance, her weeping moves God to answer. But we should notice how the Torah sees the chain of events. After Hagar breaks down crying – “And she raised her voice and cried” – the next verse reads: “And God heard…” Certainly we are meant to expect to read that God heard the anguised cry of this distraught mother. But that is not how the verse continues: And God heard – the voice of the lad.” (Gen. 21:17)

Only now do we discover that the young Ishmael had been crying, too. This is remarkable! It is Hagar’s unanswered weeping that makes her child, Ishmael’s weeping audible – to us and to God. Why is Ishmael crying? Is he not crying for his mother? But his mother has given up hope. She has cast him far away, because she cannot bear her own inability to save her son. But if his mother cannot answer him, will no one answer him? God cannot allow that to happen! God is forced to respond. She does not know, understand or hope for this, yet it is precisely Hagar’s powerless cries that unlock the gates of Heaven so that her boy’s tears can reach the Heavenly Throne.

Hagar’s tears flow from an act of pure crying – she cannot think that anyone will hear her; she cannot hope that God will answer her. Hagar, the maidservant, becomes free through this pure release of her emotions. And as she frees herself she binds God to the responsibility to act, to intervene. Because of her flowing tears God must help her to find the well from which she will draw the flowing waters that will save her son.

We can never predict the effects of our tears. Our tradition teaches us that even when all the Heavenly gates are locked, the Gates of Tears always remain open. Only we can close the gates of tears.

We have a wonderful new mahzor. It strives to open our hearts and minds so that we may stand before God on these Days of Awe, fully present. It has many excellent commentaries and additional readings and prayers. But, unfortunately, in my opinion, the editors have omitted a prayer from the Neilah service, at the very conclusion of Yom Kippur, that I have always found very meaningful.

That prayer says, in part:

I draw my strength from God’s 13 Attributes of Mercy, And the Gates of Tears, which are never closed …

May it be Your Will, You Who hear the sound of weeping
That You will collect all our tears in Your heavenly urn for safe-keeping

For we look only to You.

We can never predict the effects of our tears. We can never predict ahead of time how our tears will affect ourselves or others. This is one of the messages of Rosh Ha-Shanah. The very sound of the shofar is meant to evoke the wails and sobs of a distraught mother.

As the New Year begins we read the story of Hagar’s tears, the first tears of the Torah. When it comes to crying, those of us who are not so sure about God may be luckier than those of us who feel God before us. Abraham and Isaac were certain of God. And they could not cry. But Hagar gave up on God. Those tears, so pure in their defiant despair, had the power to unlock the weeping of others.

Her tears open the way for the weeping of Rachel and of Hannah, as told to us in the prophetic readings for both days of Rosh Ha-Shanah. Her tears open our eyes and ears to see and hear that weeping, to feel the moisture of those tears course down our cheeks. And her Godless tears awaken God, so that, in the haftarah for the Second Day, God promises to turn our tears of sadness into tears of joy.

So I pray for us that at Shomrei we may learn to cry, that we may learn to allow ourselves to cry, to let go of the false worries of embarrassment or convention that function as barriers and obstacles on our way, that prevent us from hearing and seeing and feeling as fully as we might.

The prophet Jeremiah calls out –

Pour your heart out like water in the Presence of the Face of God (Lam. 2:19)

I think he means to say that one way we might hope to experience God’s Presence is if we just let ourselves cry. Then, perhaps, as our tears run down our cheeks, they may also trickle down upon the Face of God.

Shanah Tovah U-M’tuqah!