“Remember Me” and the Days of Awe

For Jews around the globe, including myself, we exist now in a perilous time of year known as Yamim Noraim – the Days of Awe. The ten days in between the start of Rosh HaShanah, the Jewish New Year, and the end of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, constitute the holiest days of the year for us.

We are in a precarious state: G-d opens the Book of Life on Rosh HaShanah and closes it at sunset at the end of Yom Kippur. In it, G-d writes who shall be born and who shall die, who by fire, who by flood… the traditional Unetaneh Tokef prayer goes into more detail about just what gets written down each year. With repentance, charity and prayer, the prayer decrees, we might yet change our fates.

(A few years ago, “who by fire” took on a whole different meaning for us.)

It’s remarkable then, that during the holiest days of the year for Jews, the holidays are flanked with stories of infertility. For those of you that have been reading this blog since the VERY early days, you’ll recognize those stories and Biblical matriarchs: Hannah wept, Sarah laughed.

I’ve written before how infertility is not eschewed in the Torah; infertility is given prominence time and time again. Whether you believe the Torah is written by men or G-d, one thing holds true: infertility mattered, even in Biblical Judaism. If it didn’t, you wouldn’t have as many stories of it as you do within the pages of the Torah and Talmud.

I have always resonated with the story of Hannah, the barren woman who pleads the Lord for a child. Her wicked sister wife, Penninah, who mocks her barrenness. Her compassionate husband Elkanah who asks her: “Hannah, why do you weep? And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”

The Bible is full of artistic and dramatic embellishment, let’s be honest. Chariots of fire, angels ascending ladders into heaven, the seas parted by human hand – many pages of the Old Testament read like a Michael Bay “film.”

But the Book of Hannah? It’s some of the most painfully true writing in the entire Bible, Old or New Testaments combined.

To this day – almost six thousand years later – there are portions of the Book of Hannah that resonate so deeply with my own experience with infertility.

It’s two words that stick with me, that speak to a understood wisdom of whoever wrote this passage:

Remember me.

Hannah prays at the temple and vows before G-d if he will remember her – remember me – she’ll offer her son to a life of service in the Lord as a priest.

“Remember me” is the Biblical equivalent of “When will it be our turn?”

Even as I write this, the pain of that question, the question etched in Hannah’s faith – it moves me. Because I remember how palpable that pain once was. To watch the baby-dust fall on every other couple but us. To read another pregnancy announcement on Facebook. To force smiles through another baby shower – only to weep (as Hannah wept) on the jealous, bitter car ride home.

“When will we be remembered?” was not an unfamiliar prayer to me.

Whoever wrote that in the Torah truly understood the emotional devastation of infertility when they wrote it. In some ways, that’s the kind of understanding that really only comes with the experience of that kind of deep longing.

* * *

Two years ago, my IVF cycle felt right in the middle of the Days of Awe. “Who shall be born” – as I waited for beta – took on a whole new meaning. As I sat listening to the story of Hannah, I wondered:

Will I be remembered this year?

* * *

On Yom Kippur, before the Book of Life is closed, we hear the Akedah – the binding of Isaac. This is the curious tale of blind faith: G-d calls on Abraham to offer his only son (born after a lifetime of infertility) as a sacrifice to G-d. You probably know the tale: before Abraham can plunge the knife into his son, G-d intervenes and tells him that the sacrifice isn’t necessary and sends him a ram for the sacrifice instead.

I’ve often wondered about the significance of these two tales of infertility bookending the High Holidays. The story of Hannah is obvious, especially at the New Year: if you pray hard enough, your prayers will be answered. Faith is test of patience.

But at the other end of the Days of Awe, infertility seems tangential. The binding of Isaac at face-value seems a demonstration of faith as sacrifice, but it’s more than that, in my interpretation. All their lives, Abraham and Sarah had prayed and longed for a child. Only was Sarah was an old woman did G-d remember her. (And she laughed at the news; Isaac – Yitzak – is the same Hebrew root as the word for “laughter.”) This same G-d, the miracle giver, then turns to them and says, “Now you must sacrifice him to me – the child you longer for more than anything – he is mine to reclaim.”

I think the lesson beyond devout faith is the precarious fragility of life, of how so little we have in control of our lives, even after we might conquer infertility. Poised at the closing of the Book of Life (“Who shall be born, who shall die…”) on Yom Kippur, this deeper meaning is far more solemn.

As Yom Kippur concludes, the Neilah (literally, closing the gates) service reaches a peak fervor in reciting prayers declaring G-d’s glory and then – “Next year in Jerusalem!”

After all this, the emotional upheaval of beginnings, endings, repentance and reflection – such a thing so intrinsic to the infertility experience remains:

Hope.

May you have an easy fast. Gmar Chatimah Tova: May you be Inscribed and Sealed for a good year.