Jihad of Tears

Edward Miller, Esq.

Posted Oct 11, 2005      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
Bookmark and Share

Jihad of Tears

By: Edward Miller, Esq.

During our holy months, Ramadan and Tishre (which fall at precisely the same time this year), as the trappings of the physical world fall aside and the power of the holy month takes grip, we feel the distance between what we have done with our lives and what we could have done.

And when we see it and see it clearly, the image of the person God wanted us to be, the father, the son, the friend, the man of faith,..and we look at who we are and how we have fallen short, there is an overwhelming remorse, the knife cutting sorrow of opportunities forever lost.  During these holy days I stand face to face with those missed opportunities and mourn the loss of who I could have been.  I stand before God and weep.

  It is the Jihad al-Akbar, the greatest struggle, the inner struggle.  These are days where we can no longer deflect outwards, pointing to the failures of others.  It is time to look inwards with fear at what we find,Ņ.. but with faith that God will heal.  For it is the beauty of our season of repentance that at the moment we reach the full pain of facing our own spiritual failure, ..GodŒs love envelopes us, infusing us with hope.

On the first day of Rosh Hashana in our Synagogues we read the Torah portion that includes the story of how as Hagar and Ishmael faced death in the desert with no water, they wept to God.  It is then that God opened the eyes of Hagar to the wellӔ and promised that from Ishmael will come a great nationӔ (according to the sources cited in the Art Scroll ChumashӔ at Genesis 17:20, this refers to the rise of Islam). Genesis 21:17-19. 

On Rosh HaShana we Jews publicly read the story of the birth of the Islamic Ummah from the tears of the mother and son in the desert, because it is the story of turning to God in despair and emerging with hope.

When we cry to God over our failures, the Creator whispers back to his creations that perfection is found only in the force that fashioned all, from the largest planets and the smallest vessels of a human heart,..that it is alright,Ņ..we were not intended to be perfect but only to try and as we stand in fasting and prayer and sincere remorse,..we are trying - each in his own way - and that is what God asks of us.

The holy fearsome month draws us to the pain of introspection, then bathes our souls in forgiveness, and finally, sends us off to a new beginning with renewed hope and energy.

Ramadan and Tishre, falling at the exact same time this year, Ņ..perhaps it is the will of God that Jew and Muslim should together wage the great Jihad, in which the enemy is our own human failings and the weapons are honesty and tears.

Permalink