Who Are Hannah and Sarah
Be fruitful and multiply. (Genesis 1:28)

It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? G-d has just fashioned man and woman in His image and the first thing they are commanded to do: get busy kids, it’s time to go populate the world. It’s the first commandment in the Torah so it must be pretty important. What’s a Jew to do who can’t fulfill G-d’s very first commandment? Where does infertility fit in this grand design?

Judaism is a religion whose lineage is defined by its Matriarchs. Typically, the Four Matriarchs are identified as Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah. Astonishingly, three of the four Matriarchs were infertile: Sarah, Rebecca, and Rachel.

Sarah is the First Matriarch. She knows of G-d’s prophecy told to Avraham that their descendants would outnumber the stars in the night sky. Despite this, Sarah could never bear children of her own. The years pass. Sarah is quite old when she overhears her husband Avraham conversing with G-d, who informs him that Sarah will bear a son. She laughs at this news, knowing that for years they had tried to have children and had never been able to produce a child. Her laugh, as many scholars have discussed, was both incredulity and perhaps shock that after all these years, her wish for a child would be fulfilled. Sarah goes on to bear Isaac, the father of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

While not one of the Four Matriarchs, Hannah is a prominent female figure in the Torah. She is barren and weeps before G-d, going to the Temple to pray for a child. She is bereft with grief and longing. In her prayers, she promises that if G-d were to answer her prayer and grant her a child, she would dedicate her child’s life in service to G-d. Miraculously, Hannah conceives and bears Samuel, who is entered into the priesthood once he is weaned and becomes a great prophet. (Read more about the Infertile Women of the Torah.)

Hannah wept.

Sarah laughed.

What two very different emotional ends of the infertility spectrum. There is much the Torah can teach us about infertility. In an ideal world, our prayers would be answered. But we all know that sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. And so while it might seem like a limited scope in which to view infertility as tears and laughter, I think these two dichotomous stories leave us with a more powerful message:

Hope.

May our prayers be answered, our hopes fulfilled,
our sadness replaced with laughter in time;
and may you find peace along your journeys,
wherever they may lead.

Sources.

 

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