A giant hand inside my chest
Stretches out and takes
My heart within its' mighty grasp
And squeezes until it breaks.

A gentle hand inside my chest.
With mending tape and glue,
Patches up my heart until
It's almost good as new.

I ought to know by now that
Broken hearts will heal again.
But while I wait for glue and tape,
The pain!
The pain!
The pain!

This children's poem, by Judith Viorst, is a poignant and amusing description of a broken heart--something we have all experienced, in one way or another. The second sound of the shofar call is shevarim, a word which means “broken”. It notes remind us of the aches and agonies bound with living. Broken hearts occur not only from lost loves, but for many other reasons as well. Divorce, death, loss of a job . . . yes, we have all experienced such pain in our lives.

Less than ten years ago, my parents separated. I remember, vividly, this development. My mother called me, as I was happily living in Boston, and told me that she was moving out. She needed some space-some time to think.

I remember that it was pretty easy to ignore the obvious-that my parents were headed for divorce-because while my mother moved, she moved only 45 minutes away to our summer cabin. So, technically, she hadn't really moved out. Therefore, on that legality, I continued to live a normal life, unaffected by my parents’ turmoils.

After I moved to Jerusalem to begin my rabbinic studies, my parents sold the house I grew up in. My mother rented an apartment, and my father moved to the summer cabin. This situation could no longer be ignored. I attempted to escape from the feelings and sadness by taking rambling walks around Jerusalem, and burying myself in work and Danielle Steele books. After all, everything works out in those romance novels.

I experienced a strange kinship with a popular nursery rhyme:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldn't put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

During that winter, my sister came to visit. At one point in her visit, it hit us: we were going to be a statistic. Children of divorced parents. The Beaver Cleaver era was over.

Beginning to deal with our pain, we cried, clinging to each other and sobbing. We screamed at each other, at our parents, at God. We ate a lot of chocolate and drank too much coffee. And then, we looked up. We looked at each other's tear-splotched faces. And we started to giggle. Our giggles led to stomach clutching, breathless hoots of laughter. Gathering enough breath, my sister asked me: "Do you know why we are laughing?" Breathing back, "No," we collapsed onto the floor in a new bout of hysterics.

Six years later, I know why we laughed. By laughing, we realized that we were going to triumph- we were going to be ok. Laughing and crying with my sister, I began to believe that I could begin to put Humpty Dumpty back together. I could begin to be whole again, even in the shadow of my parents’ divorce.

We have all suffered from hardship, from sadness, from loneliness, frustrations, or experiences of some kind that leave us feeling broken. Not complete. We must, this Yom Kippur, begin to reach for wholeness.

We turn to our Torah for understanding of wholeness. Let us consider our patriarch Jacob. We all remember the story of his stealing the birthright from his older brother Esau, and how Esau sought to kill him. Jacob is forced to flee, and now we re-enter the story after many years, as Jacob returns from his homeland, to meet his brother again. The night before the long anticipated confrontation, Jacob finds himself alone on the banks of the river. During the night, a man wrestled with him until daybreak. Jacob emerges victorious, but his opponent has wrenched his inner thigh, and Jacob walks away with a limp. Jacob demands a blessing from his vanquished foe, who renames him “Yisrael”, which means: one who struggles with God.

Immediately, Jacob reunites with Esau. Their meeting is friendly. They reconcile their many years of hate and jealousy, allowing their broken family to find peace once again. Jacob and Esau continue on their separate journeys, but the healing between the brothers is undeniable.

After his encounter with Esau, Jacob continues on to Shechem. The text describing his arrival in Shechem reads, " Vayavo Yaakov Shaleim Ir Shechem. . ." “And Jacob came in peace to Shechem.” (Genesis 33:18) .

The Hebrew word for “peace”, shalom, or in this verse shalem, means wholeness or completeness. These two experiences-- both the wrestling with the angel, and the meeting with Esau --have enabled Jacob to travel to this place in peace, and in wholeness. The culmination of his experience-of rebuilding his life --permit him to reach wholeness, even for a brief moment. From Jacob, we learn that wholeness comes with struggle, and through that struggle comes transformation. Both Jacob's body and soul are affected as he struggles with God. He begins to experience God, and himself, in a new way. Jacob reaches a new level of wholeness as he encounters his wrestling partner.

Like Jacob, we are all struggling with God, and with ourselves, on our journey towards wholeness. Yes, we too have been blessed with the name “Yisrael”.

As we face sadness within our family lives, hardships at work, disappointments in ourselves, we contemplate the fractured nature of our lives. We can look to Jacob's transformation for strength.

And yet, there is a confusing piece to this story: how can Jacob, injured by his wrestling match, become more whole, as a result of his wound? Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, a recognized physician, internist, and writer, in her book Kitchen Table Wisdom, offers the following insight: "It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal." (Remen, 217) What she is saying, I believe, is truly a paradox: Jacob’s very lameness is the force that makes him whole.

From suffering, from pain, we become stronger. Sadnesses may lead to new insights about ourselves. For example, as I opened my heart to my sister, allowing myself to feel the pain I had so long avoided, I began to heal. Over time, I was able to use the strength, stemming from my pain, to put the pieces back together again-to reach towards wholeness. It was clear that my life was not going to be the same again. However, I was able to picture a different life by using these experiences. I was able to put Humpty Dumpty back up on the wall, piece by piece. The lines where the tape and glue were used are visible-but he is strongly, and proudly, back on the wall.

Achieving wholeness is a journey, not a destination. Jacob waffles back and forth between his old self and his new self, rarely being addressed as Yisrael.

Jacob has seen glimpses of completeness, but he continues to reach for it.

We, too, continue to be like Jacob-catching flashes of our potential wholeness.

Jacob understands, intuitively, that his reaching must continue. By choosing to live his life embedded within the struggle, he continues to reach for shalom, for wholeness, on his life's journey.

We, too, continue to be like Jacob, striving to capture glimpses of shalom, wholeness, on our lifes’ journey, often stumbling along the path. Ernest Hemingway once penned this truth: “The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places.”

Not all of us can survive the struggle, however. Yet, often it can be filled with moments of healing, and wholeness, even when death is imminent. I am reminded of a woman with whom I became particularly close while serving a small congregation in South Dakota. This was Pams’ third round with cancer; this time the breast cancer had metastasized in her bones, and in her brain. Treatments would only prolong the inevitable: the cancer was going to win. She was 39. Her oldest child was 17, her youngest six. She didn’t want to leave them. She was distraught, guilt-ridden, and pain-filled, as the cancer continued its murderous spread. Pam found two simple ways to come to terms with her premature death, to find peace and wholeness. She made each of her children a baby size quilt, using their old t-shirts. The stitching was poor, the seams weren’t straight—but her hands had been able to do something, to be useful, and to leave her children a memory of her favorite past-time. And, she wrote letters to everyone she loved, telling them what they meant to her, and what her hopes and dreams were for them. In these two simple ways, Pam was able to find closure, and find some peace with her impending death.

Pam is one of my heroes, for she has taught me, under the most tragic of circumstances, that we can find shalom, wholeness.

The paradox is underlined: through our pain we find insights for living. Robert Browning Hamilton captures this idea beautifully when he wrote:

I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne’er a word said she,
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me.

Surely, Pam took many a walk with Sorrow. So, too, do we sometimes walk with Sorrow. May our broken places grow strong, so that we may pursue the journey towards shalom, and strive for wholeness.

Amen.

Home