Haftarah for Rosh Hashana I

This Haftarah opens the book of Shmuel, which begins in the closing years of the period of the Shoftim, before Israel had a king. There was as yet no Yerushalayim to which korbanot could be brought, so all offerings were carried to Shiloh, where the Mishkan stood and where Eli served as kohen together with his two sons, Hophni and Phinehas.

Into this setting comes Elkanah, a righteous man of Ramot in the hill country of Ephraim, who went up to Shiloh every year for the festival and would call many people along the way to accompany him. He had two wives, Peninah, who had children, and Hannah, who had none. From her anguish the prophet Shmuel will be born, and with him a new chapter in the life of Bnei Yisrael.

The Torah says that Elkanah went up "to worship and to offer sacrifice," placing bowing before slaughtering, and our sages learned from this word order that prayer stands in place of the korban and that bowing before God is even dearer to Him than an offering. When Elkanah distributed portions, he gave gifts to Peninah and her children and a fine portion to Hannah, hoping to lift her spirits. But Peninah tormented her, asking her husband in Hannah's hearing why he had not given a coat to the eldest boy or a shirt to the next — needling her precisely where she had nothing. Some sages say Peninah did this so that Hannah would take it to heart and pray for children.

Hannah wept and would not eat, and Elkanah said to her that he loved her as much as Peninah's ten children. After the meal she rose and prayed before Eli, who sat on his chair in the House of God. Calling out "Lord of Hosts," she argued before Him: You created hosts of angels above who have no children but never die, and hosts of people below who have children but do die — if I am like the angels, let me live forever; if I am one of the mortals, then let me have children. Her prayer was voiced in the heart, her lips moving without sound, and she vowed that a son given her would serve in God's house forever — not from the age of twenty, as the levi'im begin their service, but from the age of two.

Eli, seeing only her moving lips, took her for a drunkard and told her to sleep it off. Hannah answered that she was a woman of great trouble and pain, that she had drunk no wine, and that he should not take her for a worthless woman. Eli blessed her — "go in peace" — and she ate, and her sorrow lifted from her face. Only when Elkanah returned home to Ramot did he and Hannah conceive, and from this our sages learned that a guest should not be with his wife in another's house. A year later Shmuel was born, and she named him for what she had asked of God.

When the child was weaned Hannah brought him to Shiloh with oxen, flour and wine, and delivered him to Eli to be taught Torah. Already the boy ruled on halachah in his teacher's presence, telling Eli that any Israelite may slaughter a korban and no kohen need be summoned — a correct ruling, Eli conceded, yet one who rules before his teacher is liable to death. Hannah cried out that she had won this son through great suffering, and that having lent him to God, Eli had no power over him.

Then Hannah prayed. Her sad heart had become glad; the head she could not lift before Peninah was now raised; her mouth, once silent, could answer. There is no holy one like God and no creator besides Him: He breaks the bow of the mighty, sends the wealthy to hire themselves out for bread, and fills the hungry. "The infertile woman bears seven" — for as Hannah bore sons, Peninah's ten children died two by two, until Peninah fell before her and begged her to pray that the last two live; Hannah prayed, took them as her own, and so came to seven.

From Hannah's few silent words the sages drew the shape of Jewish prayer itself: one must pray with an earnest heart and not with lightheadedness, with intention directed to God, with lips that move and form the words, and with a voice that is not heard by others. Because Eli mistook her for a drunkard, they learned that a drunk must not pray at all. And because she answered him plainly, they learned that one suspected of wrongdoing may clear himself before others, and that one who wrongly suspects his fellow must make amends at once, as Eli did when he said "go in peace."

Her boldest argument is also her simplest. No limb was created in a person without purpose — eyes to see, ears to hear, the mouth to speak, the hands to work. Then for what were the breasts placed over the heart, if not for a child to nurse? Hannah's song answers her own question: the One who raises the poor from the dust and seats them among nobles is the same One who turns a barren woman into a mother of seven.