HANNAH
The haftorah that we read on the first day of Rosh Hashanah is the well known story of Hannah praying for a child. Hannah is the beloved wife of Elkanah, but she is barren and Elkanah’s second wife Peninah has children. She makes Hannah’s life perfectly miserable, lording it over her that she is fertile and Hannah is not. Hannah desperately wants a child. One year they go up on the annual pilgrimage to Shiloh which is apparently a time of feasting from the sacrifices they offer. Elkanah stupidly asks her “Hannah, why do you cry and why do you not eat? Why is your heart broken? Am I not better to you then ten children?” (1:8). Uh, no.
Hannah then prays wholeheartedly while continuously weeping. She promises YHVH that if she conceives and bears a son, she will dedicate him to the divine and not cut his hair. (1:10-11) She is praying so wholeheartedly that the presiding priest thinks she is drunk but she righteously corrects him. (1:12) She conceives, Samuel is born, and when she weans him, she brings him back to Shiloh to be dedicated to divine service. (1:24-28)
This is a well discussed story. What I have to offer is probably less off the beaten path than usual. I’m going to raise four themes.
o The holiness of Shiloh
o Understanding an annual pilgrimage as opposed to the three-pilgrimage rhythm that is otherwise present in the Hebrew Bible.
o The need to feel our pain and go into the depths if we want to achieve our heart’s desires
o The need for clarity about what we truly want and why we were born at this time in this place.
Shiloh was one of the main centers of Israelite worship from the time of Joshua and the emergence of the Hebrew people until David conquers Jerusalem and makes it both the political and religious capital of ancient Israel. The ark of the covenant stayed in Shiloh for 369 years according to the Talmud (Zevachim118B) until the ark was lost in a battle with the Philistines (1 Samuel Chapter 4). The city was destroyed at some point, an example that Jeremiah uses to warn the Israelites that the same fate could befall Jerusalem if they don’t repent. (Jeremiah 7:12–15; 26:5–9, 41:5)
We really are given nothing about what made the site holy or a suitable place for the residence of the ark. The only hint is that Elkanah and his family go up to Shiloh, using the same verb as when we ascend to Jerusalem (Samuel 1:3) I am a big believer in the experience that there are places that are touched by the sacred, however we might explain it. There’s something different about Jerusalem, Machu Pichu, the different sacred mountains of Japan and other traditional pilgrimage sites around the globe—there is something different about them than other places that don’t feel touched by the sacred.
We’ve deemphasized sacred space in Judaism since the destruction of the Temple. Instead, we’ve emphasized a kind of portable holiness of prayer, study and community along with a somewhat abstract longing for the holy land of Israel. That obviously has had great survival value in our wanderings. But I also wonder what we have missed by not being attuned to the sacrality of place and visiting it on at least an annual basis, as Elkanah, Hannah and Peninah did. I certainly miss this.
What’s your experience of sacred space? Where have you been that has felt different than ordinary space and how has it felt different? How would your life be different if you could dip into this well on a regular basis?
The pilgrimage to Shiloh is an annual pilgrimage as opposed to the threefold pilgrimage system to Jerusalem presented in the rest of the Hebrew Bible. This threefold pilgrimage system is based on the ecological/spiritual nexus of ancient Israel. Passover is prayerful action to have the rains cease so that the grain harvest may proceed without the rain ruining the harvest. Shavuot is the prayerful action of thanking the divine for grain harvest and eating the first of the wheat harvest. Sukkot is prayerful action that the rains might return, since water is life and our ancestors depended upon rains from heaven to grow their crops. It’s ironic that we read the story of Hannah on Rosh Hashanah, a holiday that isn’t connected to the agricultural cycle of ancient Israel and thus a much less important holiday in Biblical times than it is today.
It’s completely unclear what the occasion for the sacrifices that brought Elkanah, Hannah and Peninah to Shiloh. There’s speculation that this may be the same holiday as mentioned in Judges 21:19. The holiday in Judges relates to the reabsorption of the Benjamite tribe into the confederacy of Israelite tribes by giving them brides from other tribes after a civil war amongst the tribes. The holiday in Judges is possibly the predecessor of Tu B’av. We are told in Rabbinic writings (Mishna Ta’anit 4:8) that Tu B’av happened in Jerusalem not Shiloh, but also involved maidens finding husbands.
So why would the family go to Shiloh only once a year and when would that be? First, I think it is more likely than not that it is during the dry season simply because travel is a whole lot easier then. There’s the whole family, all the food and the bulls to sacrifice that have to be driven. That’s no fun in the rain. This need for dry roads also argues for something later in the year, with Nissan, the month during which Pesach occurs, as the start of the year. Lastly, the flour they bring as part of the offering argues for something like Shavuot as the earliest possible time. They also bring wine, but somehow I think that wine keeps better than flour. So maybe Shavuot or an early summer timeframe.
There’s also the question of whether this is a general holiday or one where pilgrims come kind of whenever it works for them. There’s no mention of anyone else present, so maybe this annual pilgrimage is a tradition of Elkanah’s family? No way to know.
There’s an ancient Jewish process for filling in the missing details of a story. It’s called midrash. In your imagination, is this annual pilgrimage part of a larger festival? If so when and what’s the occasion? If it is a family tradition of an annual pilgrimage not connected to a festival (1:3), make up a story about why this is a tradition for Elkanah and his family.
Hannah is a role model for prayer because of how deeply she goes into her pain. Our society absolutely thrives on finding ways for us to distract ourselves from our pain. We’re all given lessons about how to suppress our pain and get on with things. I’m not just talking about messages to boys about being heroes and not crying. The messages to not feel our bodies, to not feel our pain and our joy are present throughout our lives in every ad that tells us something is wrong with our bodies that can be cured by magic thing x or y, that we need to buy this or that in order to feel worthy, we can’t live without this latest gadget etc etc.
Another way we’re taught to not feel our pain is found in a religious emphasis on the light or on praise, without equally honoring the dark and our grief. Just as Jonah cannot rise to do the bidding of the divine until he has gone into the depths in another of the High Holiday Haftorot, so we cannot truly experience joy and we cannot truly praise the divine if we do not let ourselves experience our broken hearts. The Kotzker Rebbe, an early 19th Century Hasidic master says, there is nothing more whole than a broken heart. The intimate connection between grief and praise is eloquently explored in three different non Jewish sources I would recommend. One is Martin Prechtel’s The Smell of Rain on Dust, Francis Weller’s The Wild Edge of Sorrow and Joanna Macy’s Coming Back to Life, the Work that Reconnects. She argues there that it is absolutely essential to our ecological work to mourn the destruction that humans have already wrought. She argues that numbness gets in our way of taking effective action. She urges us, in effect, to be like Hannah.
Hannah is a counter cultural figure because she is willing to pour out her heart’s desires and not get distracted by Elkanah’s words. She’s not willing to say, well, I’ll just have to settle for the double portion Elkanah gives me since I can’t have the child I want.
Have you ever wailed like Hannah? Have you ever experienced ecstasy? Do you think that is just for the young and not for those of us who shoulder adult responsibilities?
Why are you born at this time and at this place? What’s your unique purpose on earth that you would weep and wail to accomplish this like Hannah weeps and wails for a child? Hannah knows that her unique purpose is to be a mother—but not just an ordinary mother of an ordinary child. We misread this story, I believe, if we only think of it as being about a woman who wants a child because she loves children, or having a child would stop Peninah’s tormenting of her or because women in those days were most highly valued for bearing sons. Being a father can be a unique purpose in the same way that being a mother can be.
It's compelling to me that Hannah is so deeply connected to her unique purpose of bearing a child that she is willing to give him away to be raised in divine service (1:28). And Samuel is not just any child. He is a uniquely powerful prophet who anoints both the first and second kings of a united Israel.
Why are you born at this time and at this place? What’s your unique purpose on earth that you would weep and wail to accomplish this like Hannah weeps and wails for a child?
QUESTIONS
What’s your experience of sacred space? Where have you been that has felt different than ordinary space and how has it felt different? How would your life be different if you could dip into this well on a regular basis?
There’s an ancient Jewish process for filling in the missing details of a story. That’s called midrash. In your imagination, is this annual pilgrimage part of a larger festival? If so when and what’s the occasion? If it is a family tradition of an annual pilgrimage not connected to a festival (1:3), make up a story about why this is a tradition for Elkanah and his family.
Have you ever wailed like Hannah? Have you ever experienced ecstasy? Do you think that is just for the young and not for those of us who shoulder adult responsibilities?
Why are you born at this time and at this place? What’s your unique purpose on earth that you would weep and wail to accomplish this like Hannah weeps and wails for a child?
