I have always loved reciting Hallel, but when I had my first child I suddenly felt the words more deeply, on a visceral level. Singing these psalms in the NICU soon after my baby was born, I thought of Hannah’s vow when she so desperately wanted a child; and then, when her healthy child was born, she recited a song of praise strikingly similar to the beginning of our Hallel, which we sing to God “who makes a barren woman into a joyful mother” (Psalms 113: 9).

Many scholars think Hallel was liturgy meant to accompany a person bringing a sacrifice in the Temple. I imagine Hannah, a mother coming to the sanctuary with her “offering” and wanting to belt out her joy and gratitude to the world:

“I will sacrifice a thanksgiving offering to You and call out the name of God.
I will pay my vows to God in the presence of all God’s people” (116: 17-18). 

This year, I felt keenly, sickeningly aware of the inversion of this scene.

On the eve of Rosh Hodesh Elul, at the funeral of Hersh Goldberg-Polin on Sept. 2, a mother publicly mourned her child, livestreamed for the entire world to see. Instead of parents singing out in joy in the midst of Jerusalem, parents wept and mourned in the midst of Jerusalem.

Forcing myself to say Hallel through tears the next day, lines that had never made sense were suddenly oversaturated with a new, haunting meaning. 

“The death of the pious is grievous in God’s eyes” (15).

What might seem like a random interruption in a song of gratitude, this line suddenly leapt off the page and out my heart. So many innocent people have died in these past 18 months. God does not take it lightly. We cannot take it lightly.

And then this:

Please God, for I am your servant son of your maidservant — you released my bonds” (16).

I could only hear these words refracted through Rachel Goldberg’s words of agony lingering in my ears: “Finally, my sweet sweet boy, finally, finally, finally, finally you are free!” 

Again a terrible inversion, the opposite of how the Psalmist imagines captivity will end: a freedom in death rather than liberation and life.

But what I found most profound — the very fragile thing I am trying to hold onto in every moment and this year on Yom HaAtzmaut in particular — is how on earth a mother who had just suffered in the most dramatic of ways could possibly put gratitude at the front and center of her message. 

“I am so grateful to G-d,” Goldberg-Polin said, “and I want to do hakarat hatov and thank G-d right now for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh.” Somehow, in the midst this horrible inversion/perversion of the salvation Hallel hopes for, she nonetheless insisted on offering a public declaration of gratitude in front of the whole world, a fulfillment of the words of Hallel:“How can I repay God for all of God’s gifts to me? …
I will pay my vows to God in the presence of all God’s people” (12, 14).

If she could center gratitude in the wake of such loss, we too must take up the charge.

Public recitation of Hallel was instituted on Yom HaAtzmaut because of an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for the gift of the possibility for Jewish self-determination and dignity. With potent awareness of so many innocent lives lost, our declaration of gratitude for Israel is intertwined with crying out from the heaviness of terrible deaths. 

Our declaration of gratitude must also be an expression of responsibility and commitment to an Israel that uplifts the preciousness and dignity of every single human life.

Rabbi Aviva Richman is the rosh yeshiva of the Hadar Institute.