Always for the Children (Rosh HaShannah)

It has always struck me that the Torah and Haftarah readings for Rosh HaShannah place the heroines of our biblical story at their center. Sarah, Hagar, and Hannah each confront the future through the vulnerability of motherhood: the longing to bring children into the world, and the deeper, enduring struggle to keep them safe within it.

Their stories are not identical. But each contains a cry that reaches beyond the limits of ordinary language. And perhaps that is one of Rosh HaShannah’s most urgent invitations: to learn again how to hear the cries that matter most, and to let them move our hands toward the work that must be done.

Consider Sarah, whose apparent absence from the Akedah (the Binding of Isaac) is one of its loudest features. Abraham rises early to carry out the impossible command to bind Isaac. But Sarah is not consulted. She is not given a voice in the text. How could she possibly have no voice in the fate of her own child?

Perhaps that is precisely the point. So many readers have imagined Abraham hurrying to leave before Sarah might see him, because if she had seen him – if she had understood what he was preparing to do – the story would have ended there. Her absence is not silence. It is a scream written into the blank space of the narrative.

Sarah’s imagined voice reminds us that a test of faith can never be permission to sacrifice our children. The deepest spiritual test is whether our commitments, our convictions, and our public lives are ultimately for their sake. A parent’s voice – mother or father, biological parent or loving guardian – must be raised for the flourishing and safety of the next generation.

Then there is Hagar, cast out into the wilderness with Ishmael and too little water. When she can no longer bear to watch her son suffer, she places him beneath a bush and turns away, saying, “Let me not see the death of the child.” She weeps. Ishmael cries. And heaven responds.

The Torah tells us that God hears the voice of the child. But it is impossible to imagine that Hagar’s sobbing did not reach him. Her grief becomes part of the cry that rises from the wilderness. I have learned from my wife, my teacher, Neshama a powerful framing about different kinds of prayer. There is the prayer of the farmer, who knows what is needed: rain, healthy animals, good soil, a fruitful harvest. And there is the prayer of the infant, who knows only that something is wrong. The infant has no words, only a primal cry.

That is the prayer God hears in the wilderness. And God’s response to Hagar is equally important: “Lift up the child and hold him by the hand.” Prayer is not an escape from human responsibility. It is a call into it. If we want a future worthy of our children – indeed, a future for our children – we must take them by the hand. We must use our own hands for their sake.

Finally, Hannah comes to the sanctuary carrying a grief so deep that words cannot contain it. Her lips move, but no sound emerges. Eli, the priest, mistakes her silent prayer for drunkenness. But Hannah answers, “I am pouring out my soul before God.” Her prayer will become the model for the Amidah: the central Jewish prayer, spoken quietly, from the depths of the heart.

There are moments when language is simply too small for what we carry. Hannah teaches us that silence can be prayer – not empty silence, but the sound of a heart refusing to give up on life, on possibility, on the future.

Sarah’s screaming absence. Hagar’s tears and Ishmael’s cry. Hannah’s silent prayer.

These are the prayers we need most right now. Not eloquence that leaves the world unchanged; not positions, platforms, reactions, and rejections that fail to protect the vulnerable. We need prayers that become commitments. We need tears that become tenderness. We need faith that becomes action.

Some among us have children; some do not. But every child is ours to protect, to nurture, and to bless. Your hands are capable. “Perhaps,” as Mordechai said to Esther, “it is for just such a moment that you have reached this place.”

The year behind us has been difficult, and there is no promise that the year ahead will ask less of us. But we can make a promise: that we will revise our expectations of what is possible. Through the work of our hands, and always for the sake of our children, it can be better.

Let us learn. Let us pray. Let us work. Let us take good care of ourselves, of each other, and of our world – always for the sake of our children.