Never Alone

For over 15 months, Hamas has subjected the hostages to brutal physical, sexual, and psychological torment. Dr. Itai Pessach, a doctor at Sheba Hospital who cared for the hostages released last November, recounted that “there have been some episodes where Hamas separated two family members, and then put them back together, then separated them, then put them back together.” Much of this was deliberately planned. The terrorists were constantly telling the hostages: “Nobody cares about you. You are here alone. You hear the bombs falling? They don’t care about you.” Isolation was used as a psychological weapon.

This technique isn’t new. The Nazis, among their many methods of psychological torment, would separate family members to heighten their sense of loneliness.  The KGB would tell refuseniks that their friends had turned on them and the world was ignoring them. A lonely prisoner is easily broken.

To suffer in isolation is unbearable. It can eat away at one’s self-image; the feeling that you are being singled out for an unusual torment makes you feel rejected and unworthy. The Jewish proverb “the suffering of many is half a consolation” recognizes this reality. When you suffer alone, your suffering transforms from a psychological challenge into an existential crisis. You feel cursed, the one person that God has abandoned.

Much like the biblical Job’s friends, who blame him for his own suffering, some religious thinkers see defeat as evidence of unworthiness. The Church Fathers argued that exile was proof that the Jews were rejected by God. John Calvin’s theology suggests that worldly success is proof that one is among the divine elect, while failure means that one is rejected by God.

Judaism takes a very different view. The Torah says that God “executes the judgment of widow and orphans.” The Talmud goes much further, and says “the Divine Presence is above the head of the sick person”; God sits at the bedside of someone ill, and the Talmud says we should act as though we are in a synagogue when we visit. God doesn’t reject the weak and broken; He stands with them.

God reveals himself to Moses in a burning thornbush. This baffles the Midrash, which asks the obvious question: Couldn’t God reveal himself to Moses in something more majestic? The spot of the burning bush is where the Jews will receive the Torah, Mount Sinai; and, as Ibn Ezra explains, Mount Sinai gets its name from the thornbushes (sneh) that cover its surface. And that intensifies the question; the grand divine revelation of the Ten Commandments is given against the backdrop of lowly thornbushes.

The Midrashim offer multiple answers to this question. One answer is that yes, God could have spoken to Moses from the heavens, “but He humbled Himself and spoke to Moses from within the bush.”  This is the God who will redeem the slaves. Unlike the Egyptian Gods, the Jewish God can descend to those who, like the thornbush, are on the lowest rungs of society.

Another Midrash which is quoted by Rashi focuses on the thorns in the thornbush. It explains that even though it is (metaphorically) painful for God to inhabit the prickly thornbush, yet God does so anyway, because God shares in the slaves’ pain. The Midrash finds support for this idea in the verse (Psalm 91:15) “I am with him in distress.” God feels the pain of those who need redemption.

This dramatic idea becomes a foundation of Jewish philosophy. In the times of the Talmud, fast days would be declared during a severe drought. The people would go to pray in the street, and bring the Ark with the Torah scrolls with them. And, inspired by this verse in Psalms, they would place ashes on top of the ark, to indicate that God too was grieving with the community. The Talmud relates that “Rabbi Zeira said: At first when I saw the Sages place burnt ashes upon the ark, my entire body trembled.” It is shocking to imagine the Almighty suffering alongside man; but this is the Jewish view.

During the Holocaust, this idea gave support and comfort to many religious Jews. Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, was the Rebbe of Piaseczno; after the Nazis invaded, he was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto.  A widower when the war began, he lost during the German invasion his only son, his daughter-in law, his mother, and his sister-in-law. Even so, he redoubled his efforts to care for his followers and did so until he was murdered by the Nazis. His sermons from the Warsaw Ghetto were hidden and recovered after the war, and printed under the title Aish Kodesh, “The Holy Fire.”

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman uses this idea to offer hope amidst the horrors of the Holocaust. In one sermon given on July 11, 1942, he tells his followers:

And how can we slightly lift ourselves, at least a little, from the terrible old and new reports that shatter our bones and melt our hearts? By knowing that we are not alone in our suffering, but He, blessed be He, so to speak, suffers with us. “I am with him in distress.”

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman is enduring unbearable suffering himself. Even so, he gives comfort to others, and finds comfort himself, in God’s presence. And he teaches his students that one is never alone, because God is always at their side; and the same God who appeared to Moses in the thornbush knows our pain and suffering too.

Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman is making a powerful declaration of faith. It is exceptional because many others during the Holocaust drew the opposite conclusion; they looked everywhere for God, and only saw an ugly void filled with darkness. But faith speaks its own language; and the words “I am with him in distress” inspired those who, like Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman, held tight to their beliefs no matter what.

I am frankly unsure if I have within me this type of heroic faith. But generations of Jews certainly did. They endured, lonely and abused, certain that God was crying alongside them. Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein once related that “a woman asked my neighbor Leib Rochman, a Holocaust survivor, “Where was God during the Holocaust?” He replied, “He was with us.”

One is never alone, even in the most difficult of times. God is with you.

But for those like me with less than extraordinary faith, there is another lesson to be learned; we must seek to emulate God. If He descends to the thornbush to share in the pain of our brothers and sisters, we must do the same. “I am with them in distress” is our responsibility too. We must make sure they are never alone.

This weekend, the first set of hostages is due to be released by Hamas. It is a time of mixed emotions in Israel. There are fierce debates over whether the deal should be done, and whether this will cause greater suffering in the future. There is also the disappointment of those hoping for their relative’s release, only to find that they have to continue to wait. And in the background is the tragedy of the 1,200 people murdered on October 7th, and the over 400 young soldiers who have died in battle since then.

Yet there is joy for those who are released, no matter how small the group. Each human is an entire world, like Adam in the Garden of Eden; each child is a potential redeemer, like baby Moses. And if our hearts are with those who are in distress, they are also with those who rejoice.

In the next few days, there will be those who cry in pain, and others who will laugh in joy. And we will be with them, with all of them.

Just as God always is.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.