Parashat Ha'azinu/Yom Kippur: On Empathy

When a child is upset about something, say, a broken toy, how should we respond? According to many child psychology experts, we should not rush to fix the situation, or argue with our children about why they shouldn’t be upset. Instead, we should be with them emotionally, show that we understand their feelings: “That was your favorite toy, and you wanted to bring it to school tomorrow and now you can’t. You must be disappointed.” Once they feel heard and understood, they can solve the problem themselves. Most of the time, what children (and other humans) really want is a sympathetic ear.

God is our model for such a sympathetic ear. We call Him shome’a tefillah, “The One who Hears or Listens to Prayer.” Over Rosh Hashanah, when we called out to Him with our shofars, the emphasis was not on how God fixes our problems, but on how He listens to our broken cries. Mevin uma’azin, mabit umakshiv. “He understands and listens, sees and pays attention.” Throughout this season, we say again and again, shema koleinu, “Listen to our voices.” What we want is for God to hear us.

This week’s parsha begins with its own call to hearing -- Ha’azinu. The root of the word is ozen, “ear.” It is a call for heaven and earth to hear and bear witness to Moshe’s covenantal song, but it rings out during this season also as a call for us all to be, like God, attentive listeners, to open up our ears and hear each other.

God’s capacity as a listener extends so far that it turns into a kind of super-empathy. The tradition says that when the people of Israel went into exile, God went with them. Bekhol tzaratam lo tzar. “In all their troubles He [God] is troubled” (Isaiah 63:9). In Egypt, God “heard their moaning” (Exodus 2:24) and was with them in their distress; the midrash suggests that God chose to appear to Moshe as a burning bush full of thorns to show that, like the enslaved Israelites, He, too, was in pain. In the Yosef story, the Torah tells us in one verse that Yosef was taken into prison, and in the next, “The Lord was with Yosef” (Gen 39:21). As Psalm 91 puts it, Imo anokhi betzarah. “I [God] am with him in distress.”

We are made in God’s image, and are meant to imitate His ways, to strive toward this type of empathy. Perhaps that is what we are doing when we pray for the sick. People struggle with the question of God’s response to such prayers, but perhaps God’s response is beside the point. The point is how the prayer effects the one who is praying, the pray-er. After all, to daven, to pray, is lehitpallel, a reflexive form, an activity that has an impact on the actor. What is that impact? When we pray for the sick in our communities, we are doing two things. On the one hand, we are finding comfort in the sympathetic ear of God, the ultimate listener. On the other hand, we are turning ourselves into little ears of God, reminding ourselves of the pain and suffering being endured by others, teaching ourselves to be with others in their distress just as God is.

I remember as a child praying on Yom Kippur in a small shul and feeling the weight of everyone’s personal pain and woes filling the room. Each of us little humans with our own broken cries comes together on Yom Kippur to voice those cries to a listening, empathetic Ear. We don’t solve each others’ problems on that day, but we are, like God, with each other in distress. And perhaps that is the deepest kind of teshuva (repentance) of all. Gmar hatimah tovah.