Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects offers the Jewish perspective on the consolation of God after the wilderness years of the Exile.
The seven weeks between the ninth of Av (the Fast of Av) and Rosh Hashana (Jewish New Year) span two Hebrew months, Av and Elul. Elul acts as a contemplative, but increasingly joyful prelude to Rosh Hashana, the beginning of the New Year, which brings latest beginnings within the month of Tishrei.
Currently, we’re within the second half of the month of Av, after we read the primary three of seven Haftorot of Consolation, all taken from the last a part of the prophetic book of Isaiah. These are chosen to accompany the last book of the Humash (Pentateuch), known in Hebrew as Devarim (Deuteronomy). This is the book where Moses, knowing that he’s about to die on the opposite side of the Promised Land, recaps the story of the Jewish people, reiterates their goals for now, and guarantees the blessings they’ll accrue on the opposite side of the Jordan in the event that they follow G-d’s directions.
The first Haftorah of Consolation sets the scene with its call: ‘Nechamu nechamu’ (Isaiah 40:1-26). ‘My people’, G-d says, ‘Comfort yourselves’.
This Haftorah accompanies the Torah reading of Va-Etchanan (Deuteronomy 3:23 – 7:11). These words are read on the Shabbat following the Fast of Av i.e. following the time after we mourn the Destruction of the Temple, because the people were led into Exile.
But now, on Shabbat Nechamu, Isaiah tells the those that the time of Exile has been fulfilled; the people will return to the Land; and the ‘nothingness’ and ’emptiness’ of the nations will turn into irrelevant (v 17). In fact the word used is ‘tohu’, from Genesis 1, through which the world before creation was designated as ‘formless and void’ (tohu ve-bohu). As Israel shall be recreated from the ashes of nothingness, so the remainder of the world and its huge power shall be as nought.
In the accompanying Torah reading from Deuteronomy, Moses repeats the ten commandments and recites the Shema, crucial prayer within the Jewish liturgy, ‘Hear oh Israel, the Lord is One ….’ This recitation reminds the people of their past within the Wilderness, and likewise acts as a guide for his or her future, without Moses, within the Promised Land. Physical freedom along with spiritual rebirth. But the name of the Torah reading (Va-Etchanan) demonstrates that Moses continues to be leading the people – they’re removed from independent: ‘And I implored the Lord at the moment …’.
However, entreaties from their leader, Moses, have to be supplemented by the people themselves – each individual. Therefore, the next Haftorah known as Ekev. This second Torah reading (Deuteronomy 7:12-11:12) starts with a word related to the name ‘Jacob’.
Jacob had a really hard life, during which he clung to the ‘heel’ of his brother Esau and at all times tried to ‘supplant’ him. Jacob cheated Esau and was in turn cheated by his father-in-law. Jacob struggled with the angel of Esau before being renamed ‘Israel’, ‘he who wrestles with G-d’. As a result, Jacob’s thigh was dislocated, and since then the Jewish people at all times work with a ‘limp’ that they’ve to just accept and yet try to beat.
In the context of our Torah reading, ‘ekev’ is, nevertheless, translated here as ‘reward’ by quite a few outstanding rabbinic scholars, including Onkelos and ibn Ezra. ‘If you take heed to these ordinances, and observe them and practise them’, you shall be rewarded ….’
What is a heel? It is the lower a part of the foot which tramples. Thus, a link is made between ‘ekev’ and the variety of injunctions described on this passage. These are the less obvious commandments, the little things that are likely to be despised, ignored, left unattended, and even ‘trampled on’.
Similarly, the Haftorah reading for the day (Isaiah 49:14 – 51:3) signals that Israel looks like a ‘heel’, an ‘ekev’. Like the laws she has abandoned, she herself has also been abandoned by G-d: ‘And Zion said: “The Lord has abandoned me, and my Lord has forgotten me.”‘
G-d’s response to Israel is amazing: ‘Can a lady forget the newborn she is breast-feeding? Can she really withdraw compassion for the kid of her womb? And even were these to forget, yet I [G-d] will always remember you.’
Here, within the eighth century BCE, the male prophet, Isaiah, compares G-d to a breast-feeding mother who’s inextricably sure to the newborn she is feeding, and by doing so, keeping the newborn alive. This image is really potent. Not only has G-d ‘created’ the Jewish people – so to talk – but, just like the everlasting mother, He goes on caring for them. The Jewish people will eternally remain G-d’s children, and the bond won’t ever be broken.
Though there are occasions of strife, quarrel, and even punishment, just as in human families, G-d will at all times remember His total bonding with Israel. And the image used is one in every of a mother along with her new-born baby. The implication is that, now that the Exile is at an end, Israel will truly be reborn, and once more feel herself to be first created after which nurtured eternally by G-d.
The last words of this Haftorah consist of G-d telling the Jewish people to ‘Listen to Me’ (Isaiah 51:1), as if He were chatting with a small child. However, the hearing aspect of G-d is transmuted into ‘seeing’ after we reach the third Haftorah of ‘Re-eh (Isaiah 54:11 – 55:1).
In Deuteronomy (11:13 – 16:17), G-d starts off with the words: ‘See I [G-d] … offer you today a blessing and a curse …’ How has ‘hearing’ now turn into ‘seeing’? In Jewish thought, hearing is tied up with obedience. To ‘obey’ utilizes the identical Hebrew word, shema, as to ‘hear’. So G-d continues to be in charge, just as through the first Haftorah of Consolation of Nechamu.
The individuals are drawing ever closer to G-d. First they experienced unconditional love – ‘be comforted’. Next, they listened, obeyed and were not Jacob, the ‘heel’, but had morphed into ‘Israel’, eternally fed and nurtured by G-d. But now, these outside sources have turn into so ‘present’ to the Jewish people, that G-d can tell them to ‘see’, fairly than to ‘listen’. The Divine becomes because it were ‘adjoining’ to the people. And then, Isaiah continues, the Jewish people will act as ‘a witness to regimes, a prince and a commander to the regimes’ (Isaiah 55:4), and much more: ‘Behold, you [Israel] will [even] summon a nation that you just didn’t know, and a nation that didn’t know you’ll 1755290100 run to you’ (Isaiah 55:5).
How can we account for this three-fold rise of the ‘afflicted, storm-tossed’ exiled Jewish people right into a much-admired, sought-after, re-created ‘start-up’ nation? It all began at all-time low, with the ninth of Av (the Fast of Av), when the Temples were destroyed, the Land devastated and the people led into Exile. Could they get any lower – despised, tortured and killed by the world?
The means of re-creation starts with Moses ‘entreating’ G-d on behalf of the Jewish people. Having been comforted by Moses and by Isaiah 40, the people begin to listen and heed G-d’s words. They start with the little things, the on a regular basis things, even the things that individuals don’t notice. In listening to the little things, they begin to regain some idea of self-worth.
At this stage, they progressively turn into increasingly more aware of G-d’s presence in their very own lives and in the encompassing world. This is the state often called ‘seeing’, which is the primary lesson of Parshat Re-eh, accompanied by Isaiah (54:11 – 55:1). No longer are the Jewish people a bedraggled mass of broken and despised individuals. They will turn into nation, proud to serve G-d and the entire of humanity.
This is Isaiah’s great vision for the month of Av, which this yr finishes on August 25, the beginning of the month of Elul, heralding the Haftorah of Shoftim (Isaiah 51:12 – 52:12). ‘It is I, I’m He Who comforts you’ (Isaiah 51:12). ‘Wake up, get up …’ (Isaiah 52:1). Thus, with the arrival of Elul, a latest spirit arises within the people’s perception, which we see expanding within the three remaining of the seven Haftorot of Consolation.
The Talmudic rabbis stated of the olive, a staple food in Israel, that: ‘Just because the olive only produces oil after being crushed, so too, Israel finds its purpose through suffering.’ So too, many great modern rabbis, including Rav Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Israel, was amongst those that saw the re-creation of Israel as ‘the start of the flowering of our redemption’, because it was envisioned by the Prophet Isaiah in our current Haftorot of Consolation.
Speaking as a Jew from a Jewish perspective, Jews consider that being ‘chosen’ by G-d also signifies that no other people or nation on earth is singled out for such opprobrium just like the Jews. However, we interpret this as being just liked the crushed olive – the Jewish people have at all times someway sprung back. The many miracles experienced by the Jewish individuals are on account of the indisputable fact that they proceed to perceive the hand of G-d in their very own lives, in addition to in world affairs.
The Jewish people stand able to do their duty, to defend their people, their Torah and their Land; to ‘select life’ (Deuteronomy 30:19) fairly than death; to stay fertile and completely happy.
 Jewish academic and Hebrew scholar Irene Lancaster reflects offers the Jewish perspective on the consolation of God after the wilderness years of the...){kind=link}