There may be no biblical expression more painful than the cry, “eicha!” Literally translated as “how!” this term conveys a sense of utter despair. This word most famously begins the biblical book also known as “Eicha” or “Lamentations,” which constitutes a prolonged eulogy for the destroyed Jerusalem. We will read this book next week, on the holiday of Tisha B’av, which commemorates the two destructions of the Temple in Jerusalem, as well as a host of other painful events in the life of the Jewish people.
The word “eicha” appears also in parshat D’varim, which is always read on the Shabbat preceding Tisha B’av. In this case, Moses uses this word in an expression of his frustration with the Jewish people.
At first glance, these two uses of the word “eicha” have little in common, beyond the desperation that each use conveys. The book of Eicha describes the pain of a city bereft of its people; Moses complains about the pain of bearing responsibility for too many kvetchy and fickle people.
With a second glance, however, we notice another similarity between the two verses. The book of Eicha begins, “eicha yash’va b’dad” “how does [the city] sit alone.” (Lamentations 1:1) Moses cries out, “eicha esa l’vadi torhakhem umasa’akhem, v’riv’khem?!?” “How can I, alone, bear your weight and your burden and your strife?!?” (Deut. 1:12) In both cases, the pain of the situation is compounded by a feeling of loneliness. The loss of the most important physical manifestation of God’s presence is tragic; more tragic is the divorce, as it were, between the Jewish people and Jerusalem (and, by extension, God). For Moses, what is most difficult is carrying the burden of the people alone. Though surrounded by his people, Moses feels profoundly alone in his leadership role.
The association between the word “eicha” and loneliness becomes even stronger when we notice that the Hebrew letters that form this word (aleph-yud-kaf-heh) also spell the word “ayeka?” “where are you?” which God calls out to Adam, who hides from God out of the embarrassment of having defied a divine command. God’s question to Adam is, presumably, not a physical one, but rather a lament about the loss of a relationship. “Where is the person I thought I knew?” God asks, pained by the separation from the closest divine partner. Similarly, in this week’s haftarah, Isaiah imagines God crying to Jerusalem, “eicha hay’ta l’zonah” “How have you become like a harlot” (1:21), meaning “How could you, with whom I had an intense and trusting relationship become disloyal to the point that I no longer know you?”
The loneliness that pervades the book of Lamentations becomes even more pronounced in the midrashim on the book collected in Eicha Rabbah. In one particularly poignant midrash there, God asks the angels how human beings mourn, and then adopts these human mourning practices for Godself. Though mourning for the same event, God and the Jewish people have become so separated from one another that they cannot even connect in their shared pain, and that God can no longer even access human knowledge and practice.
In a sermon delivered in the midst of the Holocaust, Rabbi Kalonymous Shapiro (the Esh Kodesh), the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto commented that a person who suffers feels that s/he is alone in the world and that God does not hear the pain of human beings. Rather, Shapiro argues, the problem is not that God is not crying, but that human beings have become unable to hear God’s tears. The task of redemption, he says, is to acquire the key to God’s chambers and to reveal the sound of God crying. (Parshat Mishpatim, 1942)
A central problem of injustice is that it generates a sense of loneliness. Oppressed individuals and groups often turn inward, rather than reach out to others who may share similar experiences of suffering. This inward turn only compounds the sense of loneliness, and therefore intensifies the experience of suffering.
If God and the Jewish people had been able to rediscover one another and to share in each other’s mourning over the destruction of Jerusalem, the divine-human partnership may have provided some comfort to each, and may also have resulted in a speedier rebuilding. To extend the point of the Esh Kodesh, if human beings were able to hear not only God’s tears, but also the tears of others, we might move one step closer to redemption.