My Three Hannahs

I delivered these remarks at Beth El Synagogue in Durham, North Carolina, on Rosh Hashanah 5780, September 30, 2019.

Hannah Arendt was born in 1906 to a distinguished Jewish family from Königsberg. She read Kant by 14 and founded a circle devoted to ancient Greek literature. As an established scholar, she achieved renown for her analysis of totalitarianism — and courted controversy for her affair with the sometime-Nazi Martin Heidegger, and her coverage of the Eichmann trial.

Rabbi Greyber asked me to introduce this morning’s haftarah which tells the story of the biblical Hannah. So why do I begin my commentary with a German-Jewish philosopher dead over 40 years?

I was trained in the field of German intellectual history and for many years that “Hannah” was my guiding light for navigating the core texts of the European tradition. But Arendt reached the pantheon of great thinkers despite her Jewishness and womanhood. In the Human Condition, written in exile from Nazi Germany, Arendt wrote of the necessity of overcoming the private — which included female biology — to make a public name for oneself.

Hannah Arendt is the first of three Hannah’s I’ll speak about this morning who have been crucial to my identities as a scholar, a Jew, and a mother, and I’ll share some thoughts about my journey to explore the endless possibilities of these roles and the humility in accepting their limitations.

Arendt’s critique — rooted in the ancient tradition — resonates in my reading of the second Hannah- the biblical Hannah today. That Hannah, we are told twice, is barren, for “the Lord had shut up her womb.” The story from Samuel emphasizes the importance of childbirth by opening with a long lineage. In that context infertility meant obsolescence, that you served no purpose, that you didn’t matter.

It was a condition not assuaged by the love of Elkanah, her sweet husband nor by the double portion that he gave her from the sacrifice. Hannah’s shame was magnified by her rival Peninah, Elkanah’s second wife, who taunted her mercilessly. It was not enough to feel the anguish that she couldn’t participate in the story of her people but she has to be reminded of this whenever they went on the annual pilgrimage, or whenever she saw Peninah hosting gender reveal parties or posting filtered photos of her babies on Instagram. For example. (We’re still talking about Hannah and Peninah of course.)

Facing her limitations in contributing either biologically or as a leader herself Hannah does the only thing available to her: she prays. And boy does she pray. The midrash offers an endless array of commentary on the nature of her prayer. In one account she appealed to her need to fulfill her biological purpose. She said: “You did not create anything for naught….These breasts that You placed on my heart — what for?…Give me a son and I will nurse with them!” (BT Berakhot 31b). In another we see a hint of her ambition asking, or even prophesizing, for a prominent baby boy or zera anashim (literally, seed of men).

Hannah so pines for a child that she bargains with God for help getting pregnant in exchange for committing her unborn child to the priesthood. So moving is her prayer that we are told that the Lord remembers her and she calls him Samuel “because I have asked him of the Lord.” By birthing a future prophet she becomes a handmaiden to God and to her people.

Biblical Hannah recedes from the story after giving birth to Samuel — in one way confirming Arendt’s critique of a society in which women contribute only through reproduction. Today women can be part of the public realm without giving birth to prophets or warriors or kings. Of course there is more work to be done but the public realm has expanded to include more women. Yet despite the gains women have made, contributing biologically is still seen as a Jewish woman’s moral responsibility to her people.

The problem is that having children is not available for everyone, as it wasn’t to me for many years.

Hannah’s lament was my way into the world of prayer. Previously self-conscious about prayer — my Hebrew wasn’t good enough, I didn’t daven fast enough — never have I felt closer to prayer than when I stood before the ark in this synagogue on Yom Kippur five years ago and prayed for strength and assistance in having a child. After years of challenges, we named our daughter Hannah Leah in Hebrew — my Third Hannah — in part because of the resonance of this experience.

But a baby is not at the end of every prayer for a child.

If the Divine is that which is outside of our control, the image of God as the Opener and Closer of wombs should bring us all, women and men, closer to Rosh Hashanah’s themes of acceptance and humility. That infertility stands in for that universal message can either be a painful reminder of falling short or an opportunity for greater inclusivity.

When I was single or struggling to have a child synagogues were not as comforting places as they should have been. I identified with Hannah Arendt, who wanted to be recognized for contributions beyond the biological. I empathized with biblical Hannah who was not welcomed into the Temple and was by ashamed by her female rival Peninah.

In one way the biblical Hannah has the last word. She transcended the particularity of her womanhood and is credited as the model for all Jewish prayer including that we pray standing, from our hearts, and with silent words.

We honor Hannah on Rosh Hashanah and each time we pray, our lips moving inaudibly to all but the Creator of all life. But our prayer is also quite literally interrupted by the blast of the shofar, which the scholar Aviva Zornberg has suggested recalls the cry of a woman who wants — but cannot have — a child.

Today I’m truly blessed to fulfill my professional dream as a scholar and to have two children, my beloved son Jasper Hirsch and our new daughter Florence Lily, Hannah Leah, as well as the love of my devoted Elkanah, Matthew.

May this year be a year of embracing our human limitations with the dignity of the biblical Hannah, striving for the greatness of Hannah Arendt, and hope for a future with the pure potential of baby Hannah Leah.

May the Shofar this year help us recognize the many Hannahs all around us and all they bring to our communities.