A prayer for the future: Rachel weeps for her children - opinion

‘Thus said God: A cry is heard in Ramah – wailing, bitter weeping – Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, who are gone… there is hope for your future, declares God: Your children shall return to their country” (Jeremiah 31). 

Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, delegations of religious leaders have been coming to Israel to express their solidarity with the Jewish people during these dark times.  I was present when Rachel Goldberg-Polin addressed a group of African Christian leaders in Jerusalem. She poignantly recounted the brutal abduction of her son Hersh by Hamas on October 7. Tears filled her eyes, and her story evoked a powerful biblical passage for me.

I turned to the group and said, “You surely all know the biblical image of matriarch Rachel weeping for her children who are gone? This isn’t about the past; this is happening right now before your eyes!” I then sang in Hebrew the haunting verses from Jeremiah. The leaders, moved to tears along with Rachel, swore to take her story and everything they witnessed during their mission to Israel back to their communities.

They then shared a remarkable insight. “We often ask ourselves, why is there so much antisemitism in the world, coming from so many different directions? We believe that behind the hatred of Jews, there is a subliminal hatred for God. Hatred for God is manifested is through hatred of His people.”

Last Saturday night, in the context of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s trip to Washington, my dear friend and neighbor, Tzvi Zussman, father of Ben Zussman of blessed memory, who fell in battle in Gaza, led a prayer vigil for the hostages. Along with him were other bereaved families, and also Jon, Rachel’s husband, who was also on his way to Washington with Rachel, for their cry to be heard.

Tzvi prefaced the prayer with words of hope that recalled the closing verse of the biblical scene of Rachel crying for her son: “There is hope for your future, declares God: Your children shall return to their country.” 

This is the supplication that he and many others have been raising this week, hoping for the breakthrough for which we have been praying: “A prayer for the government of Israel. May it be Your will, O Lord our God, and God of our ancestors, to guide the leaders of Israel with Your light and truth, and to help them with Your good counsel. 

“Enlighten them that they might accede to the responsible offers set before them in order to bring about the liberation of our captives and hostages. Our father, our king, help us release our captives from darkness and the shadow of death, back to life, and may we all be crowned in triumph and life, and let us say, Amen.”

The writer, a rabbi, is the director of Ohr Torah Stone’s Blickle Institute for Interfaith Dialogue.