Parashat Devarim: “Please respond in the form of a question”
United Synagogue of Hoboken, Conservative
When Rabbi Harold Kushner died in 2023, many of his obituaries noted that people tended to misremember the title of his best known book. They would remember it with every possible permutation of the words “things” and “people” and “good” and “bad,” and many would be sure that his book was called “Why Bad Things Happen to Good People.”
Rabbi Kushner noted that he consciously did not label the book with the word “why.” His book did present his own theological understanding of why tragedy strikes so many in our world, including him and his family, but he emphasized that the “why” was not the core of his book, which he deliberately titled “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” Much less important than knowing how to answer the question of why a terrible tragedy has taken place is knowing how to behave toward someone who has experienced such a tragedy, including knowing how to reach out, how to be present, how to be supportive. The “when” is ultimately more important than the “why.” And when people in the throes of a traumatic event ask with anguish why such a thing happened, often they are not truly looking for an explanation. What looks like a theological question often is, in fact, a lament in the form of a question.
The Shabbat preceding the fast day of Tisha B’Av is known as Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat of the Vision (drawn from the first word of the special haftarah for this week from the Book of Isaiah). The Torah and haftarah readings for this Shabbat both include the
word “Eicha.” Eicha is the Hebrew name for the book of Lamentations, read on Tisha B’Av. The word “Eicha” is sometimes translated as “alas” (which is how the New Jewish Publication Society translation renders it), but most literally, this word is a somewhat poetic form of the Hebrew word “Eich,” meaning “how.”
The Torah portion of Devarim, read each year on the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, includes a verse beginning with the word “Eicha,” traditionally read in the Eicha cantillation melody in order to highlight this connection. In this verse, Moses expresses his frustration with the people: “How can I carry by myself all your trouble, your burden and your bickering?” (Deuteronomy 1:12). The special haftarah for this Shabbat also includes the word “Eicha” in an expression of sad surprise: “How has this faithful city [Jerusalem] become like a harlot?” (Isaiah 1:21).
The word “Eicha” makes several additional appearances as the Book of Eicha is read on Tisha B’Av itself. This brief biblical book includes tragic alphabetical dirges describing the abject suffering at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonian Empire in 586 BCE. Three of the five chapters of the book begin with this word, as they pose rhetorical questions about how this tragedy came to be: “How did this once-populous city come to sit alone?” (Lamentations 1:1). “How did God, in God’s anger, shame Fair Zion?” (2:1). “How did the finest gold become dulled and debased?” (4:1).
All these uses of the word “Eicha” ostensibly are questions, but I doubt they are questions in search of answers or explanations. They may be best described as laments phrased in the form of a question. And the best responses to a lament are not answers or explanations, but gestures of support and words of consolation and empathy.
A teaching in the midrashic collection Eicha Rabbah points out that the word “Eicha,” rendered without vowels as it is in biblical scrolls, is spelled identically to the word “Ayeka,” “Where are you?” — the question that God asks to Adam when he hides in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:9). The midrash’s lesson from this correspondence is that there is a parallel between Adam’s sin and exile from the Garden and the Israelites’ sins and exile from Jerusalem. There may, however, be other ways to interpret the relationship between these words. At a time of tragedy, when we hear someone call out “Eicha” — “how” or “why” has this tragedy befallen me — we can understand that this is probably not a question in search of an answer, but rather a lament in the form of a question. And maybe, behind each “Eicha” lament, we each ought to hear an unstated “Ayeka” summons: where are you, and how can you support someone in pain?