Tears to Life!

Photo credit: Este Abramowitz, May 2024.

My friend Rachel shared with me how her kids are very embarrassed when she gets emotional in front of them. Sometimes her husband shares a moving story at the Shabbos table that’s a tear jerker for her, and her nine children cringe at the sight of any deep-seated emotions spilling forth in her eyes. She feels badly to embarrass them, but then again, she shared that when she cries—whether from a story she hears or during a prayer—she figuratively collects those tears, which aren’t for naught, into a cup. Rachel said that for each child she has a cup, and she fills up all the cups with her tefillos and hopes for each one.

Tears don’t go to waste! The Gemara in Bava Metzia states that שערי דמעה לא ננעלו. Shira Melamed, a wonderful Israeli speaker, shared a great question from the commentaries on this expression: “The gates of tears are never locked.” Our prayers always go through. So why is there a lock or gate to begin with? Why not just an arch or entryway through which our tearful prayers can pass?

She answered that there are different kinds of tears—those that are constructive that go places and those that come from a place of misery and inactivity and do nothing. When everything becomes a problem in our lives, that’s not a good sign. When we distinguish between problems  that are merely “a pebble in the shoe” and the big struggles, while feeling the pain there, then our prayers soar through all the gates in Heaven.

In Chapter 23 of Tehillim, where Dovid HaMelech hauntingly recounts his walk through “the valley of death,” he ends the perek with the following verse: אך טוב וחסד ירדפוני כל ימי חיי ושבתי בבית ה, which is simply translated as “May good and kindness chase after me all the days of my life…” What I love about chassidishe explanations is that they always offer drush—not just an alternative way of looking at a pasuk, but something perhaps more revolutionary and meaningful. I forget which particular Rebbe said this, but a Rebbe once said, No, no—read it this way: אך טוב וחסד ירדפוני, what’s good and kind in our lives? All those redifos, all those persecutions—those people and circumstances that are running after me. Why? Because at the end of the day, they bring me to a holier place, ושבתי בבית ה׳ לאורך ימים. These difficult moments in our lives make us into better people and closer to HaShem’s ways.

I would even add that when we go through pain, not only does this make us better people, but the crying enables our salvation. Our tears go straight, uninhibited, to the Kisei HaKavod. My emotional friend said that she knows that all her tears go somewhere, that there is a purpose in feeling pain. And one day, all those cups fill to the brim with all the pain and anguish she’s gone through for them, and all the hopes she has for them, and these cups suddenly tip over and nurture a beautiful, flowering tree.

Dovid HaMelech writes in Psalm 23, תערוך לפני שולחן נגד צוררי, HaShem sets a royal table for him before his enemies… כוסי רויה, his cup overflows. Generally this phrase is understood in the context of HaShem’s overwhelming blessings in our lives and our unending praise to Gd. But I’d like to suggest that כוסי רויה can also refer to those times when we feel we can’t handle anymore—our tipping point—where HaShem cashes in our tears for tremendous miracles.

May we see the honest fruits of our labor, the growth from all our tears, as we head towards the celebration of Lag Ba’Omer, when the deaths and mourning of Rabbi Akiva’s students ended and the rejoicing began.

At the end of Maseches Makkos in the Daf Yomi cycle, men recited the Gemara in which Rabbi Akiva laughs upon seeing the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash because he knew that meant Klal Yisroel’s redemption would also come. In the seventy years that ensued, Klal Yisroel greatly mourned the absence of HaShem’s close presence, cried over their distance from HaShem and brought themselves closer through self-improvement to eventually celebrate the completion of the Second Mikdash, a miracle and climax in its own right.

The tears of the Jewish people, along with their hard work, always effect great change above to bring down tremendous blessing below. May we see our cups overflow on Lag Ba’Omer, a time when the sadness ceases and the celebrations begin! May we see an abundance of blessings from all our heartfelt prayers very soon.