Infertile Women of the Torah: Resourceful Hannah

The Infertile Women of the Torah is an occasional series here at Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed that examines the role of infertility in the Torah (Old Testament).

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Engraving by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld (1851).

In my last post, I introduced the idea that infertility is of cultural and religious importance within Judaism. I asked folks to read the story of Hannah, perhaps one of the most prominent stories of infertility in the Torah as Hannah's emotions are depicted with such heartbreak and longing. I asked folks to reflect on her story, as so many parts of it speak to our own infertility journeys thousands of years later.

Like many of us, she is devastated after years and years of trying to produce a child with her husband Elkinah, but to no avail. She is bereft with grief and depression: "...she wept and would not eat (Samuel I 1:7)." Weeping and not eating? Sounds like classic signs of depression to me, don't you think?
 
Reader Gail agrees:

Hannah is depicted as a strong woman who is depressed. She cries and is "bitter in spirit" and she is haunted by her rival, her husband's other wife, who has been able to have children and makes her feel bad. In that way, I can totally relate (expect that my husband does not have 2 wives - only me). I see other women with babies and am jealous and angry and depressed.

Judaism has taught me that there's more than one side to any given story and that we must question all sides. Cue: the Talmud. In a nutshell, the Talmud is a body of complementary interpretation of the Torah. It's kind of like an ancient VH1 Behind the Music but written by ancient scholars and sages. Male scholars and sages, obviously - but this is important, especially when writing and commenting about prominent female figures in the Torah.

In the Torah, the basic story is this: Hannah's super sad she can't have children, she prays like a fiend, BAM! miracle baby - a nice, neat Bible story package with a little bow on it. The Talmud, however, drills down pretty deeply into Hannah's story and I'm amazed that ancient (male) sages spoke so acutely of Hannah's resourcefulness.

So in Samuel I 1:15, Eli the temple priest confronts her in her sorrowful prayer and calls her a drunk, telling her to leave the temple. She pleads with him saying that she is not drunk, but so consumed with prayer for her heart's greatest desire - she never mentions what that desire is. The Talmud explores this much further, and draws on some nifty, lesser known Jewish mysticism in the process. The Talmud asserts that she doesn't just plead with Eli, but lashes out at him and questions the very authority of his priesthood.

The Vilna Gaon, an ancient rabbinic scholar, asserts that Eli didn't properly read his Urim V'Turim, whereas Hannah correctly interpreted it. What's this Urim V'Turim thingie? This is where it gets... mystical. Eli wore a breastplate of 12 jewel stones, each representing a tribe of Israel. To communicate with G-d, Eli would ask his question and G-d would answer by lighting up the stones to form Hebrew characters, spelling out the answer. (Think of the Urim V'Turim like a Divine Lite-Brite.)

Still with me? Good. I know it got weird for a minute there.

When Eli asks G-d, "Hey, Adonai? Who's this crazy lady here praying silently but whose lips are moving?" his breastplate lights up and spells out four characters: shin (ש), resh (ר), kaf (כ), hei (ה). Spelled thusly, they spell out shikorah - meaning drunken woman.

Hannah saw Eli's breastplate light up and recognized the characters for what they truly spelled, when arranged in the following order - כשרה. Read in this order, they spell out k'Sarah: Hebrew for "like Sarah."

Sarah, the original Barren Mother. Chills, right?

Hannah decries Eli's priesthood by saying, "Look putz, I'm prayin' my heart out to G-d over here, and you can't even read the messages G-d is sending you right now! How dare you cast me out of my temple as a drunkard! It is my right to be here and to pray for my heart's deepest desire!"*

*I'm paraphrasing from the Talmud here.

Another example of Hannah's resourcefulness and wisdom: the Talmud asserts that she tried to force G-d's hand that in her silent prayers, she told G-d that she would make G-d answer her prayers. She threatened to go into a private room with a man who was not her husband and confess this act to her husband, Elkinah. Now, Hannah didn't plan on actually doing anything with this man, but the implication as she tells her husband is that she's slept with another man. Elkinah would then take her to the temple so she must drink sotah waters as her punishment/confession of her "sin" (remember, she doesn't actually sleep with the dude, but since they were in a private room together, there's no way to Elkinah to know for sure.)

The sotah waters were a heinous concoction of ashes and water (and who knows what else) that suspected adulterous women were forced to drink. The ashes were from a sheet of paper wherein the accused woman writes her confession and is then burned and mixed into the water. If a woman strayed, the sotah waters would make her violently ill or even kill her; thus, her adultery was proven. The deck is not exactly stacked in the woman's favor here. However, if she was virtuous, then the sotah waters would not make her sick...

The woman would conceive instead.

It's almost like a modern anecdote: a woman can't conceive naturally on her own, so she forces G-d's hand by using another of G-d's creations to aid in her conception. What a resourceful woman she was, that Hannah! It's almost like the idea of using modern science to assist our own reproductive efforts. When we can't make a miracle, we turn to science. But if you believe in the ever-present creative power of G-d, then you have to admit that G-d made that science possible too.

Still, we circle back to the key overaching theme of Hannah's story: if you pray hard enough, a baby will come. Some of you took issue with this as well.

Justine writes:

But the story also sort of raises false hope; "the Lord had shut up her womb," and yet she goes on to conceive? What of the women who can't, who don't ever? Do they simply not pray hard enough?

Elana expands on this with this interpretation:

I used to think that my prayers weren't being listened to, even though I was praying with my whole heart. Now I know that G-d was answering me but saying "Not yet" rather than "No."

For me, I found the most powerful comment to again come from Gail:

Last night, we had our organizational planning meeting and I found out that the last night of VBS is centered on the story of Hannah. And, the moral of the story that the kids are supposed to learn is that "God gives you what you ask for." I just don't know how I'm going to teach this to a bunch of kids when I don't believe it myself.

There is no easy answer or explanation for this. We're working with ancient texts and in a simpler time, simpler answers sufficed. No baby? Pray to G-d. Tada! Baby. Another simpler explanation in that simpler time would also have been, "Well, if there's no baby, then you're being punished."

This is a modern myth that many women still struggle with in their own faith. It was the first time I'd ever truly experienced a crisis of faith when I was diagnosed. I asked myself - and G-d - "Why am I being punished? What have I done?" while simultaneously praying: "And what must I do to regain Your Favor?"

So this is what I would say to Gail - teach whatever your curriculum imposes you must teach your VBS kids. But in your heart, it's okay to know that sometimes G-d doesn't answer our prayers. We have been given the free will to decide how we live our lives in the wake of unanswered prayers.

Look, I know it's not that simple of an answer, and I'm trying to boil down vast amounts of theological philosophy into a conveniently bite-sized blog post. It's this thought, however, that pulled me out of my own crisis of faith. If G-d doesn't answer my prayers, that doesn't mean that G-d isn't in my life; I pray for the strength to make the best decisions to live the best life I know how.

These posts always get so heavy! But they give me a chance to really think about the ways in which my spiritual path has been affected by my infertility.

I would love to hear how these two areas meet for you too. How has infertility affected your relationship with G-d? How do you reconcile the two? Remember, looking for all perspectives, not just Judeo-Christian. I'd also love to hear from the areligious too. Sound off in the comments!