Chana's Tefillah in Shilo

Not a day passed that Chana was not confronted with her barrenness. She sat silently at the table, tears welling in her eyes, watching the lively tumult around her and the obvious pleasure Penina took in tending her children, and she could not eat. Elkana sensed her pain and served her the choicest portion, handing it to her lovingly, but it remained untouched.

Each year Elkana and his family traveled to Shilo. Along the way they stopped, and Chana and Elkana encouraged others to join them. Each year they took a different route, urging everyone they met to come along, until entire villages from all over Eretz Yisroel journeyed with them to bring korbanos and give thanks to Hashem in Shilo.

One autumn they were in Shilo again. Elkana called his family together to share the sacrifice, and as always the best portion went to Chana. She alone took no part in the joy of the celebration. Gently, Elkana said to her, "Chana, why do you cry? Why is your heart saddened today? Does not my love mean more to you than the love of ten children?"

But the days when his love could have contented her were long past. In her mind she saw only Penina, who made even the most ordinary parts of motherhood seem sublime. When everyone had finished eating, she went back to the House of Hashem, and standing before the Aron, she prayed. "Hashem, You created everything in this world for a reason. You gave me eyes to see, ears to hear, a mouth to speak. Why have You given me a womb, if not to carry a child? Look at all the hundreds of people I gathered to stand before You here. Shall I not have even one to call my own? Look at my despair, and give me a child like other children, a happy child, a healthy child. I ask no more for myself. But if it be Your will, send me a child who will be a great leader, a sage and a holy man, like Moshe and Aharon, and I will dedicate his life to You." For what seemed an eternity she stood before the wall, her body shaking and racked with tears, her lips moving but her voice hardly more than a whisper.

In those days tefillos were said aloud, and Eli the Kohen Gadol was suspicious of her behavior. "Woman, are you drunk?" he called. "Go away from here, for it is improper to stand before Hashem in a state of intoxication." "No," she answered. "I have drunk no wine today. It is my heart that I have poured out before Hashem in my anguish." "Then go in peace," Eli replied, "and may Hashem grant you your request." And they returned home.

That year Chana bore a son, and she named him Shmuel. When he was two, she brought him to Shilo and stood before Eli. "I am the woman who prayed to Hashem in my sorrow," she said. "Beside me is my son, the answer to that prayer. Now may he be given to the service of Hashem for the rest of his life." She sang a song of thanks to Hashem, and returned home, and Shmuel remained with Eli in the House of Hashem.

Though she visited him every year, from that day he was no longer only hers. She gave up her son to Hashem, as Avraham Avinu had done before her, not on an altar of stone but on the altar of her heart, and her sacrifice was forever. She had other children afterward, two more sons and two daughters, but we know her only as the mother of Shmuel HaNavi, the son she gave away.