Yom Kippur 5783: The Scream

Yitzchak Sprung
6 min readOct 7, 2022

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Edvard Munch: The Scream

בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֔ם חָלָ֥ה חִזְקִיָּ֖הוּ לָמ֑וּת וַיָּבֹ֣א אֵ֠לָיו יְשַׁעְיָ֨הוּ בֶן־אָמ֜וֹץ הַנָּבִ֗יא וַיֹּ֨אמֶר אֵלָ֜יו כֹּֽה־אָמַ֤ר ה׳ צַ֣ו לְבֵיתֶ֔ךָ כִּ֛י מֵ֥ת אַתָּ֖ה וְלֹ֥א תִֽחְיֶֽה׃

In those days Hezekiah fell dangerously ill. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz came and said to him, “Thus said the LORD: Set your affairs in order, for you are going to die; you will not get well.” (Melakhim 2:20:1)

The Talmud in Berakhot suggests that Chizkiyahu was being punished for his sins and what is more, that Yeshayahu told him that the decree was irrevocable. There was no way out. He faced death.

אֲמַר לֵיהּ: כְּבָר נִגְזְרָה עָלֶיךָ גְּזֵירָה. אֲמַר לֵיהּ: בֶּן אָמוֹץ, כַּלֵּה נְבוּאָתְךָ וָצֵא!

He said to him: The decree has already been decreed against you!

Chizkiyahu respond, “ Son of Amotz, finish your prophecy and leave.

כָּךְ מְקּוּבְּלַנִי מִבֵּית אֲבִי אַבָּא, אֲפִילּוּ חֶרֶב חַדָּה מוּנַּחַת עַל צַוָּארוֹ שֶׁל אָדָם, אַל יִמְנַע עַצְמוֹ מִן הָרַחֲמִים.

I have received a tradition from the house of my father’s father, (from King David): Even if a sharp sword rests upon a person’s neck, he should not prevent himself from praying for mercy.

וַיַּסֵּ֥ב אֶת־פָּנָ֖יו אֶל־הַקִּ֑יר וַיִּ֨תְפַּלֵּ֔ל אֶל־ה׳ לֵאמֹֽר׃

אָנָּ֣ה ה׳ זְכָר־נָ֞א אֵ֣ת אֲשֶׁ֧ר הִתְהַלַּ֣כְתִּי לְפָנֶ֗יךָ בֶּֽאֱמֶת֙ וּבְלֵבָ֣ב שָׁלֵ֔ם וְהַטּ֥וֹב בְּעֵינֶ֖יךָ עָשִׂ֑יתִי וַיֵּ֥בְךְּ חִזְקִיָּ֖הוּ בְּכִ֥י גָדֽוֹל׃

Thereupon Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD. He said,

“Please, O LORD, remember how I have walked before You sincerely and wholeheartedly, and have done what is pleasing to You.” And Hezekiah wept profusely.

God responded to his prayers, and Hezekiah was given 15 more years of life on this earth. No, it is never too late. This is a truism.

But it is worth reminding ourselves of the power of even statements which are somewhat obvious.

One of my favorite paintings is The Scream by Edvard Munch. I do not know when I saw it the first time. But, whenever I did- perhaps in High School, perhaps somewhat later, I understood exactly what it meant.

For those unfamiliar with this painting, let me briefly describe it to you. When you look at the painting, there is a man, hollow, gray, terrified, looking back at you. The sky above him is an alarming array of oranges and reds, he stands on a road at the edge, just at the edge of a cliff, overlooking some valleys and hills. His friends, two friends, are in the background, and while his own figure is twisted and bent his friends walk, backs upright; they walk away from him without a care in the in the world. They have no idea what the subject of this portrait- it is, presumably, the artist himself- is going through. And the man, the hollow, bent, gray man, has bulging, rounded, terrified eyes and a wide open mouth. The first several times I saw this painting, I thought that he was screaming but, if you pay attention, he has his hands clamped down tightly over his ears. He is trying to drown out a sound that is emitted from nature.

Munch came up with this painting to express his own sheer angst and terror one day when he was coming back with some friends from a visit with his sister. His sister was in an asylum, recovering from some sort of mental break. His father had only recently died and his mother and his other sister died when he was still small. His father said it was because of their sins as a family. And this was all too much.

He was alone. Society made him feel- as it often makes many of us feel- as though we are totally irrelevant, a not even a cog in the great machine that moves on and cares for us not. We cannot give voice to our concerns and our angst, we cannot always put out finger on what is wrong. Is it us? Why am I alone? Why do I feel alone when I am with people? Why do I feel that nothing is quite right, nothing is as it should be? I feel trapped!

And thus nature emits a scream, painful and loud.

And now return to the rather plain seeming idea that we must never give up, lose hope, or simply cover our ears and try and block out the sounds. Now we see that Chizkiyahu is a man of courage, that we must be people of courage at times if we are to find the strength to recapture our sense of selves and meaning. And this is the remarkable nature of teshuva. ש

The Rambam tells us in his Laws of Repentance (7:2):

הל׳ תשו׳ ז:ב

גְּדוֹלָה תְּשׁוּבָה שֶׁמְּקָרֶבֶת אֶת הָאָדָם לַשְּׁכִינָה שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (הושע יד ב) “שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ”…כְּלוֹמַר אִם תַּחֲזֹר בִּתְשׁוּבָה בִּי תִּדְבַּק. הַתְּשׁוּבָה מְקָרֶבֶת אֶת הָרְחוֹקִים. אֶמֶשׁ הָיָה זֶה שָׂנאוּי לִפְנֵי הַמָּקוֹם מְשֻׁקָּץ וּמְרֻחָק וְתוֹעֵבָה. וְהַיּוֹם הוּא אָהוּב וְנֶחְמָד קָרוֹב וְיָדִיד…

Great is teshuva, repentance, in that it brings a person near to God, as (the prophet Hoshea said) “Return, Israel, to God your Lord”… That is to say, if you come back in repentance, it is to Me (says God) that you will cling.

Repentance brings close those who are far.

Yesterday this was a man who was hated before God; revolting, kept at bay, abominable. And today he is loved, pleasant, close and a friend.

This is an amazing thing. On Monday, we could be kept at bay, keeping ourselves at bay. But now there is no need for that. Now we experience closeness. Perhaps a semblance of meaning, that things are right and make sense. More than that, we may, if we are very lucky, overcome loneliness itself, and feel that God is with us.

Rabbi Soloveitchik once shared in a teshuva drasha- it is something I think on often, and I have shared it with you in the past- that he himself experienced incredible loneliness and a sense of staggering loss when, in the span of six months, he lost his little brother, his mother, and his wife. This must have been a time of unfathomable pain. People who tethered him in this world, who balanced him, comforted him, raised him, grew up with him, and were supposed to grow old with him, were very suddenly gone.

Some two or three years after those staggering losses, Rabbi Soloveitchik spoke to a room an auditorium packed with hundreds or thousands of students and visitors to the Yeshiva:

“Believe me when I tell you that I myself could never have endured the past years had I not felt the close proximity of God. I am not a Kabbalist nor a mystic, so when I speak of the nearness of God, it is something I feel when opening the pages of the Talmud in order to study. When I am thus immersed in study, I feel as if the Almighty is there standing behind me, putting His hand on my should, looking with me at the text lying on the table and asking me about it. THis is not something I imagine. For me this is a true-to-life experience. (On Repentance p. 303)

We may wonder how we have come through certain periods of our lives. There are things that we simply carry with us, packs we cannot unburden, cavities we cannot fill, losses we cannot make up. As we say during this time of year, in Psalm 27, l’David,

כִּי־אָבִ֣י וְאִמִּ֣י עֲזָב֑וּנִי וַֽה׳ יַֽאַסְפֵֽנִי׃

Though my father and mother leave me, God will yet take me in.

We must do something rather amazing now. We will say a yizkor, asking that God remember and care for our loved ones that we still remember and care for.

In order to do this and in order to do much else that we must today, we need to have resolve. We need to make an inner commitment, just within ourselves, to begin the teshuva process. We must not feel alienated, we must not feel wrong, we must not look away from the task at hand. We need to gather our strength, draw close to one another and then approach God.

Gemar Chatima Tova

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