“Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Yose ben Ketzartah: There are six kinds of tears, three beneficial and three harmful. Those induced by smoke, by weeping and by [pain in] the privy are harmful; those induced by spices, laughter or plants [e.g. onions] are beneficial.” – Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat 151b-152a
With all due respect to Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Yose ben Ketzartah, the tears I cried from chopping onions last night didn’t feel particularly beneficial (though I do appreciate a good laughing-cry!). And I’m not not convinced that weeping-tears, whether from sorrow, pain or another strong emotion, have no benefit to the human being.
In parashat Vayiggash, Joseph weeps four times, and a further three times throughout the saga of his reunion with his brothers and his father. Joseph weeps for a variety of reasons throughout Parashat Vayiggash. He is moved by being brought back together with his family and by seeing how much his brothers have changed since they faked his death and sold him into slavery. Perhaps there are also tears of longing and grief, for the years with his family that he missed when he was in Egypt, as a slave, a prisoner and even second-in-command to Pharaoh. Maybe even tears of regret that he didn’t contact his family earlier, once he’d been liberated and had risen to power in Egypt. And maybe they are tears of trauma, triggered by seeing his brothers once again, brought him back to his time as a young boy, bullied, abused by his own siblings. He holds this trauma at the same time as being a powerful Egyptian official – how confusing and jarring to at once be so powerful and also submerged in memories of a time when that power was only the stuff of dreams. Joseph’s tears are an expression of the emotional complexity of his reunion with his family, and they are nothing if not cathartic. Without Joseph’s tears, all that emotion would have been stuffed inside of him, causing a blockage much more painful than any privy tears; his weeping gave his emotions somewhere to go, so they would not consume him. How could Rabbi Yochanan and Rabbi Yose ben Ketzartah even entertain the idea that these sorts of tears – the tears of weeping – are not beneficial?
Elsewhere in the Talmud, our tradition uplifts the power of tears (don’t you love multivocality?).
Rabbi Elazar taught: “From the day the Temple was destroyed, the gates of prayer were locked… But even though the gates of prayer were locked, the gates of tears were not locked.” – Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 32b
Tears generate access to the Divine, and in many cases (or if you believe Rabbi Elazar, all cases) is a more direct, effective pathway than prayer to that which is greater than ourselves. Joseph’s tears model this wisdom; as he allows himself to weep, he not only gives himself permission to heal, but through those tears deepens his relationship with God. Joseph’s dreams might have linked him to the Divine from childhood, but this link is a more intimate one, and it is one that is accessible to each of us, whether or not we can predict the future with our dreams. For those of us who lift up a prayer book and wonder what it has to offer us, for those of us for whom the gates of prayer feel locked and have always felt locked, we have access to our tears, which nourish our relationship with God beyond what can be expressed through language. Healing tears don’t just come from onions. They come from the deepest recesses of our hearts. And the gates of tears are always open.
Kohenet Yael Tischler, LBC rabbinical student
The views expressed in this D’var Torah do not necessarily reflect the position of Leo Baeck College.