JUNE 16 • 2022 | 43

long I flood my bed with weeping 
and drench my couch with tears. — Ps. 6:6

How long, Lord? Will You forget me forever? 
How long will You hide Your face from me? — 
Ps. 13:1-2

My God, my God, why have You forsaken 
me? 
 Why are You so far from saving me so far 
from my cries of anguish? — Ps. 22:2

Out of the depths I cry to You, Lord… — 
Ps. 130:1

And there are many more psalms in a 
similar vein.
Something similar can be traced in 
modern times. Rav Kook, when he 
arrived in Israel, wrote, “There is no one, 
young or old, with whom I can share my 
thoughts, who is able to comprehend my 
viewpoint, and this wearies me greatly.” 
Even more candid was the late 
Rabbi Joseph Dov Soloveitchik. Near 
the beginning of his famous essay The 
Lonely Man of Faith, he writes, starkly: “I 
am lonely.” He continues, “I am lonely 
because at times I feel rejected and thrust 
away by everybody, not excluding my 
most intimate friends, and the words of 
the psalmist, ‘My father and my mother 
have forsaken me,’ ring quite often in 
my ears like the plaintive cooing of 
the turtledove.” This is extraordinary 
language.

GETTING SOLACE
At times of loneliness, I have found great 
solace in these passages. They told me 
I was not alone in feeling alone. Other 
people had been here before me.
Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, Jonah and 
King David were among the greatest 
spiritual leaders who ever lived. Such, 
though, is the psychological realism of 
Tanach that we are given a glimpse into 
their souls. 
They were outstanding individuals, but 
they were still human, not superhuman. 
Judaism consistently avoided one of the 
greatest temptations of religion: to blur 
the boundary between heaven and earth, 
turning heroes into gods or demigods. 

The most remarkable figures of Judaism’s 
early history did not find their tasks easy. 
They never lost faith, but sometimes 
it was strained almost to the breaking 
point. It is the uncompromising honesty 
of Tanach that makes it so compelling.
The psychological crises they 
experienced were understandable. They 
were undertaking almost impossible 
tasks. Moses was trying to turn a 
generation forged in slavery into a free 
and responsible people. Elijah was one 
of the first Prophets to criticize kings. 
Jeremiah had to tell the people what 
they did not want to hear. Jonah had 
to face the fact that Divine forgiveness 
extends even to Israel’s enemies and can 
overturn prophecies of doom. David had 
to wrestle with political, military and 
spiritual challenges as well as an unruly 
personal life.
By telling us of their strife of the 
spirit, Tanach is conveying something of 
immense consequence. In their isolation, 
loneliness and deep despair, these figures 
cried out to God “from the depths,” and 
God answered them. He did not make 
their lives easier. But He did help them 
feel they were not alone.
Their very loneliness brought them 
into an unparalleled closeness to God. 
In our parshah, in the next chapter, God 
Himself defended Moses’ honor against 
the slights of Miriam and Aaron. After 
wishing to die, Elijah encountered God 
on Mount Horeb in a “still, small voice.” 
Jeremiah found the strength to continue 
to prophesy, and Jonah was given a 
lesson in compassion by God Himself. 
Separated from their contemporaries, 
they were united with God. They 
discovered the deep spirituality of 
solitude.

ISOLATION IN OUR TIME
I write these words while most of the 
world is still in a state of almost complete 
lockdown because of the coronavirus 
pandemic. People are unable to gather. 
Children cannot go to school. Weddings, 
bar and bat mitzvahs and funerals are 
deprived of the crowds that would 
normally attend them. Synagogues are 
closed. Mourners are unable to say 

Kaddish. These are unprecedented times.
Many are feeling lonely, anxious, 
isolated, deprived of company. To 
help, Natan Sharansky put out a video 
describing how he endured his years 
of loneliness in the Soviet Gulag as a 
prisoner of the KGB. From dozens of 
reports from those who endured it, 
including the late John McCain, solitary 
confinement is the most terrifying 
punishment of all. In the Torah, the first 
time the words “not good” appear are in 
the sentence “It is not good for man to be 
alone” (Gen. 2:18).
But there are uses of adversity, and 
consolation in loneliness. When we feel 
alone, we are not alone, because the great 
heroes of the human spirit felt this way at 
times — Moses, David, Elijah and Jonah. 
So did modern masters like Rav Kook 
and Rabbi Soloveitchik. It was precisely 
their loneliness that allowed them to 
develop a deeper relationship with God. 
Plumbing the depths, they reached the 
heights. They met God in the silence of 
the soul and felt themselves embraced.
This is not to minimize the shock 
of the coronavirus pandemic and its 
consequences. Yet we can gain courage 
from the many individuals, from Biblical 
times through to more modern ones, 
who felt their isolation deeply but who 
reached out to God and found God 
reaching out to them.
I believe that isolation contains, within 
it, spiritual possibilities. We can use it 
to deepen our spirituality. We can read 
the book of Psalms, re-engaging with 
some of the greatest religious poetry 
the world has ever known. We can pray 
more deeply from the heart. And we 
can find solace in the stories of Moses 
and others who had moments of despair 
but who came through them, their faith 
strengthened by their intense encounter 
with the Divine. It is when we feel most 
alone that we discover that we are not 
alone, “for You are with me.” 

The late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks served as the 

chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of 

the Commonwealth, 1991-2013. His teachings have 

been made available to all at rabbisacks.org. This 

essay was written in 2020.

