SHAVUOT YIZKOR 5785

What Do You Do When You're Mad At Gd?

What do you do when you’re mad at Gd? What do you do when you’re bitter and angry, sick and tired of living because of the blows that life has dealt you?

For those of you who feel or have felt this way, let’s take a glance at Naomi from the book of Ruth to see if we can figure out how she got over her anger at Gd and what helped her to recover from her grief and begin to heal and live again. I’d like us to look at her life through the eyes of a woman rabbi—Patricia Karlin-Newman—because I think what she wrote is brilliant, and because it probably takes a woman to have this insight.

Naomi’s life is such a sad story! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! In the 1^st 5 verses she’s hit 8 times by catastrophe—each one would be enough to knock anyone off their feet. 1^st comes the famine. One of the great theologians of our time, Sophie Tucker, said it best, “I’ve been rich, and I’ve been poor, rich is better.” She went on to say, “Even worse than being poor is to have been rich and then become poor, that’s the worst!” That’s what happened to Naomi!

Then came her exile. In search of food, she and her immediate family left home, friends, community—life as they knew it. Those of you who were born in another country have some idea of how hard that is. And then, no sooner had she gotten there, her husband suddenly died. Some of you have gone through the experience of losing a mate—whether by death or divorce—so you know how much of a blow that is. It’s like losing a part of yourself—an amputation! That was the 3^rd blow.

Then came the curse of having to raise her children by herself in a foreign land whose customs and culture were so different. It’s not unsimilar to the many thousands of Jewish families who came to America fleeing the ravages of 20^th century European oppression. That was the 4^th blow.

#5 and #6 were the intermarriage of both her children. Some of you have gone through this. I wonder how she felt on the day they got married. Did she dance at their weddings? Or did she go off in a corner and cry? Or did she do both?

#7 was the death of one of her children—lo aleynu, it should never happen to us. But, before she had a chance to recover from that, #8, the death of her 2^nd child came. Can there be a worse blow for a mother than losing both her children?

Rabbi Newman makes the astute observation that the English language has a word for someone who loses a spouse—a widow or widower—or a parent—an orphan. But there’s no word for a person who loses a child because it’s so painful that we can’t bring ourselves to coin a word for it!

Naomi experienced famine, exile, the death of her husband, the task of raising her children by herself, their intermarriages and then their deaths. Could you live through 8 such catastrophes? No wonder Naomi is nearly destroyed.

The Book of Ruth (1:5) says of Naomi after these 8 blows: vatisha-eyr ha-isha (the woman was left alone). It doesn’t call her Naomi, just “the woman” because, at this point, she’s lost her sense of self. She’s surely not fit to be called Naomi, which means “sweetness,” for she feels anything but sweet and who can blame her because she’s so lonely and sick at heart.  

5 times in a row in the 1^st chapter, she blames Gd. “Gd has struck at me…Gd has been bitter to me …Gd has brought me back empty…Gd has testified against me…Gd has dealt harshly with me.” Naomi is angry with Gd. She’s disgusted with life and wishes she were dead. Can you blame her? Have you ever felt this way? I have. 

Interestingly, Gd doesn’t appear once in the Book of Ruth—at least not directly. Gd doesn’t speak to Naomi just as Gd doesn’t speak to us in our time of pain and anguish—at least not directly. But if you read the story carefully, you’ll see that Gd does not abandon Naomi. He sends Naomi 3 angels in disguise, and they do Gd’s work to heal her.

The 1^st is Ruth. When Naomi feels utterly alone, Gd sends her Ruth, who cleaves to her. At 1^st Naomi is so self-absorbed in her tzores that she doesn’t pay attention to Ruth. She tells her, “Go away! Go back to your people! Leave me alone!” When she arrives back home in Bethlehem with Ruth she tells the people there, “I went away with a family, and I come back alone.” Alone? What do you mean “alone”? Ruth is standing right there. Is she chopped liver?

But Naomi feels so alone, so abandoned, so self-absorbed, that she scarcely notices Ruth standing by her side. Yet Ruth says, “I don’t care if you want me or not. You need me and therefore, I’m going to stay with you.” And then she says those eternal famous words (1:16): “For wherever you go, I will go; wherever you lodge, I will lodge; your people are my people; and your Gd is my Gd.” Gd sends Ruth to comfort and lift Naomi out of her depression. Gradually Naomi responds to Ruth. She crawls out of her melancholy and helps manage Ruth’s life becoming her matchmaker. This is when Naomi begins to heal.

The 2^nd angel of Gd in the story is Boaz. Boaz redeems Ruth, and Naomi, too, by being kind to them, by providing for them—1^st with food, and then with protecting care, and finally with love. Boaz enables Naomi to begin to trust and have faith again. Rabbi Newman points out that the word ga-al (redeem), appears 21 times—always from the mouth of Boaz. Ga-al is a word that’s almost always said about Gd—like Gd redeeming the Jews from Egypt. But here it’s Boaz that redeems—as if to say Gd’s work on earth is done by Boaz.

Naomi senses that. And so when she hears Ruth has gone into the fields of Boaz to glean and been treated kindly there, she says (2:20), Baruch Hashem, “Blessed is Gd, who has shown such kindness to the living and the dead.” This is the 1^st time in the story that Naomi praises Gd instead of cursing Him, because now she realizes that the way in which Gd works is not always obvious.

The 3^rd angel of Gd in the story is Oveyd, the grandchild born to Ruth and Boaz, and who is also raised by Naomi. Oveyd becomes the light of her life. He’s described in the text (4:15) as meyshiv nefesh (as the one who restores new life), new spirit and new hope to Naomi. Meyshiv Nefesh is a term usually said about Gd, but here it describes the newborn baby. The birth of a grandchild brings new life, and new spirit to Naomi, because now she has a task and a purpose—to raise, to teach and love this child. She can no longer afford to waste time in self-pity, because this child needs her.

 As many of us know, grandchildren are much better than children for several reasons. One is because, when you get tired of playing with them, you can give them back to their parents. Grandparents and grandchildren get along so well because they have a common enemy—the parents. But the main reason is because they’re meyshivey nefesh—they restore our spirits and revive our lives and make us want to live. These 3—Ruth, Boaz, and Oveyd—take Naomi by the hand and bring her back to life. They are unmistakenly Gd’s angels.

 What about those of us holding on tightly to self-pity, feeling lonely and isolated—unable to make peace with Gd? How will Gd heal us? Most likely, it will be the very same way that He healed Naomi—not overtly, but by sending us people. Perhaps it will be a Ruth, who will be our friend, and who will put up with us, and stick with us even when we say that we don’t want them. Or perhaps it will be a Boaz, who will be a new mate, and who will redeem us from our sense of total worthlessness and give us hope. Or perhaps it’ll be the birth of a grandchild who’ll lead us away from the brink of despair.

My friends, my prayer on this Yizkor morning, for you, for me, for all those we love, and above all, for all of the broken souls in our midst, my prayer is that just as Gd healed Naomi, so may Gd heal us, by means of our loved ones, our friends, our Shaarei Shamayim family. And as we heal, may we, as did Naomi, praise Gd for sending us His angels, who do His holy work on earth. And may we also do for others what others have done for us and become Gd’s angels on earth. Amen!