She is no longer alone. She has walked down to the chuppah. Become an eizer kenegdo. She shops cooks cleans and folds her laundry to perfection. She hosts a beautiful Shabbos meal for many grateful guests with her candles burning brightly. Yet does anyone recognize that she lit those two candles with a broken heart — a heart torn with longing?
Our first encounter in Tanach with tefillah as a silent supplication is that of Chanah — a childless woman. Her intense emotional outpouring to the Ribono shel Olam was mistakenly interpreted by the Kohein Gadol as drunkenness. Besides classic intoxication being drunk can also be defined as an emotion driven by intense feeling. Such as the raw emotional pain of infertility.
Last Chanukah I was a speaker at an event for single women. The worthy cause of the gathering was to benefit ATIME – A Torah Infertility Medium of Exchange. While every nisayon hachayim is unique in its challenges I described a clear parallel between singleness and infertility. “Imagine the pain of almost getting engaged every single month.” While every married woman must be grateful for the lack of a single’s loneliness the roller coaster of infertility creates a constantly renewed and raw wound in the life of a woman.
From the time a little girl begins to observe life her favorite role-playing is often that of “Mommy.” As a girl grows older she becomes tangibly aware that her unique potential in life is to be a mother. When the Torah recounts Chavah’s creation Rashi quotes the Midrash describing a woman’s build as a “storehouse.” According to the Midrash in Chanah’s aforementioned tefillah to Hashem she cried out “But why was I created this way if not to bring children into the world!”
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