Emotional Appreciation

Rachel weeps. She cannot be consoled. Actually she refuses to be. The prophet Jeremiah says so about our Matriarch who must watch her children wander into Exile (Jer. 31). A contemporary Rachel also weeps bitterly, refusing to be comforted. Hersh’s mom. Rachel Goldberg-Polin who visited us in Boston with her husband Jon earlier this Summer. Her important new book is raw emotion. Heart-numbing grief.

Dara Horn notes the parallel between the Rachels, reminding us that Hersh, in the end, was the only American citizen murdered in Hamas captivity. 

I once took a course in Art Appreciation. We’ve come to the time of the year, with our people’s saddest day the Fast of Tisha B’av this coming week, to devote a few minutes to emotional appreciation.  

Emotions hold weight. Harder feelings like fear, anger, and sadness get heavier the more they’re kept quiet. Holding them in doubles their density. When they’re given their due, a chance to breathe, when they’re shared with others we trust, they weigh less. 

A couple of Do’s and Don’ts. Do make time to feel and share them. Even better, put your history of surviving acute emotional arrest in service of others struggling with it now. As for the Don’ts, don’t use them as a crowbar to try and strongarm others. Personal therapy isn’t meant to make public policy. 

Jeremiah promises that, eventually, there will be a reward for Rachel’s weeping. Her labor will produce hope. 

How can Jeremiah be so sure? Perhaps it’s as simple as this: when you let your emotions be raw, their yield can ripen into something real. May unconsolable pain produce unfathomable promise. Am Yisrael Chai.