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When Children Asked for Bread and Got Silence

Eikhah Rabbah faces the siege famine through children who remembered abundance, a stream that ran dry, and women who gave away their last loaf to a mourner.

Curated by Arthur · Told by Maggid ·
Table of Contents
  1. Five Loaves and Aged Wine
  2. The Stream Near the Shops
  3. The Women Who Still Practiced Mercy
  4. Water Sold and Wood Priced

Five Loaves and Aged Wine

The children asked their mothers where the grain and wine were. Rabbi Hanina said they meant five loaves and spiced wine. Rabbi Simon said fine loaves and aged wine. Both answers pointed to the same thing: these were children who remembered delicacy. They were not asking for survival rations. They were asking for what had always been there before the siege, the specific tastes and textures of an ordinary table in a city that had not yet learned what hunger meant in its full weight.

A woman gave her husband her jewelry. Go to the market, she said, find something for us to eat. He went. He searched. He found nothing. He writhed in the street and died. Their son went to look for the father and died beside him. The verse from Lamentations became literal: corpses in the city squares, souls poured into the bosoms of the mothers who had sent the men out with the jewelry that could not buy what no longer existed to buy.

The Stream Near the Shops

Rabbi Abba bar Kahana pointed to a stream of water that had flowed from the shops near the Temple Mount. The tormentors destroyed it and emptied it. A man leading his son to the water found nothing. The child's tongue stuck to his palate. The image was specific: a particular stream at a particular location that had been part of the daily life of the city, destroyed not as a side effect of battle but deliberately, because the people who controlled the city now controlled what the people inside it could drink.

Infants requested bread and no one broke it for them. Rabbi Yehuda said: if there is no one to give, who will comfort them? Rabbi Nechemya said: there is no one who will give them a satisfying portion. The rabbis disagreed about what the verse meant and both readings were true: no food existed, and if food had existed, no one was left with the capacity to give it properly, to sit with a child and break the loaf with the attention that feeding a child requires.

The Women Who Still Practiced Mercy

The merciful women cooked their children. That verse from Lamentations stood at the bottom of everything the midrash had been describing, the terminal point of famine when the most primal human bond became the final resource. The midrash did not read it as condemnation. Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yosei that God said: they did not allow me to extend my hand against my world.

How? In the context of famine so severe that the verse could name what it named, the midrash remembered something else. A woman had one loaf, enough for herself and her husband for one day. When her neighbor's child died, she took that loaf and brought it to the mourner's house for the first meal of consolation. The tradition held that the first meal a mourner eats after burial should come from others. Even in a famine, this woman maintained that tradition.

She could not stop the siege. She could not bring back the water from the destroyed stream. She could not answer the children who asked for aged wine. But she could give away her last food to a neighbor sitting shiva. That act, performed in the worst possible conditions, was what the midrash meant by the women who were still merciful. They had not stopped practicing the disciplines of ordinary life even when ordinary life had become impossible.

Water Sold and Wood Priced

Our water we drank for money; our wood comes at a price. The tormentors entered and took bread, wine, oil, and water. Having stripped the household, they turned around and sold the same goods back to the people they had taken them from. Water that had been in the family's vessels became a commodity available for purchase from the army that had stolen it.

The cruelty in the verse was not only hunger. It was the structure imposed on the hunger. The mechanism of price turned survival into a transaction that favored whoever held the supplies, which was the occupying force. The people of Jerusalem were not simply starving. They were being charged for the food and water that had been theirs before the siege began.

FamineChildrenMercyJerusalemEikhah Rabbah
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From the tradition

Sources

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The texts this telling draws on, in full. Open a card to read inline, or expand it for a wider, quieter read.

Eikhah Rabbah 2:16Eikhah Rabbah

“To their mothers they say: Where is grain and wine? While fainting like corpses in the city squares, while their souls are poured into their mothers' bosoms” (Lamentations 2:12).“To their mothers they say: Where is grain and wine?” Rabbi Ḥanina said: Five loaves and spiced wine. Rabbi Simon said: Fine loaves and aged wine.114They asked for fine foods, to which they had been accustomed. This fact caused them to suffer even more when even simple foods were no longer available. “While fainting like the wounded in the city squares,” there was a woman who said to her husband: ‘Take a bracelet or an earring and ascend to the marketplace so that if you find something we will eat.’ He went to the marketplace and looked but did not find anything, and he was writhing and he died. She said to her son: ‘See what your father is doing.’ He ascended to the marketplace and saw his father dead, and he was writhing, and he died alongside him. That is what is written: “While fainting like corpses in the city squares,” this is her husband and her eldest son. “While their souls are poured into their mothers' bosoms,” a young son would seek to suckle but would not find milk, and would writhe and die.

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Eikhah Rabbah 4:7Eikhah Rabbah

“The tongue of the suckling sticks to its palate from thirst; infants request bread, and no one breaks it with them” (Lamentations 4:4).“The tongue of the suckling sticks.” Rabbi Abba bar Kahana said: The stream of water that flowed from the shops,19These shops were located near the Temple Mount. the tormentors destroyed it and emptied it. A person was leading his son to the stream, but did not find water. His tongue would stick to his palate from thirst.“Infants request bread [and no one breaks it [pores] with them]” Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Neḥemya, and the Rabbis, Rabbi Yehuda said: If there is no one to give it to them, who will comfort them? Just as it says: “They will not break bread [yifresu] for them in mourning” (Jeremiah 16:7). Rabbi Neḥemya said: There is no one who will give them a slice of bread, just as it says: “Is it not to slice [paros] your bread for the hungry” (Isaiah 58:7). The Rabbis say: They have no one to stand in the line,20The customary lines of comforters between whom the mourner passes at the conclusion of the burial. just as it says: “Everything…that has split hooves [mafreset parsa]” (Leviticus 11:3).

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Eikhah Rabbah 4:13Eikhah Rabbah

“The hands of merciful women cooked their children; they were food for them in the disaster of the daughter of my people” (Lamentations 4:10).“The hands of merciful women cooked their children.” Rabbi Huna said in the name of Rabbi Yosei: The Holy One blessed be He said: ‘They did not allow Me to extend My hand against My world.’27They performed acts of charity that prevented God from punishing Israel fully for its sins. How so? If one of them had one loaf of bread that would have sufficed for her and her husband for one day, when her neighbor’s son died, she would take that loaf and comfort her with it.28The first meal a mourner eats after the burial of a relative is traditionally provided by the mourner’s friends or neighbors. This is known as havraa, similar to the term “for food [levarot]” in the verse. The verse ascribes to them as though they cooked their children as a mitzva.29Some translate this to mean as though they raised their children to perform mitzvot (commandments). The word for cooking [bishul] can also mean to ripen (see Midrash (rabbinic interpretive commentary) HaMevoar). That is what is written: That is what is written: “The hands of merciful women cooked their children.” Why to that extent? It is because “they were food [levarot] for them.”

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Eikhah Rabbah 5:4Eikhah Rabbah

The verse under discussion comes from the final chapter of Lamentations, where the survivors of Jerusalem’s destruction catalog their humiliations: “Our water we drank for money; our wood comes at a price” (Lamentations 5:4). On its plain level the line describes a conquered people forced to pay for the most basic necessities of life, water to drink and wood to burn, things that should belong freely to anyone living on their own land.

Eikhah Rabbah, the classic midrashic commentary on Lamentations, presses into the cruelty behind the words. The midrash imagines the tormentors, the occupying oppressors, entering Jewish homes and seizing everything: their bread, their wine, their oil, and even their water. Having stripped the household bare, the oppressors then turned around and sold these same goods back to the very people from whom they had taken them. The victims were compelled to buy back their own provisions at a price.

In that bitter moment, the people recognized that scripture was being fulfilled in their own lives. They cried out: “Woe to us that this verse has been realized in our regard,” quoting the very words “Our water we drank for money; our wood comes at a price.” The midrash thus reads the verse not as poetic exaggeration but as a literal record of dispossession, where even water, the freest of gifts, came only through coin, and the survivors saw their own suffering written into the sacred text of Lamentations.

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