|
This week's Parasha is sponsored by
Harriet Train in memory of Libby Shorsher
Please consider sponsoring a weekly Parasha and support Kolel ($72), click here.
Even in tragedy and loss, God is looking for us with compassion and hope.
Lessons for Today
How can I bear unaided the trouble of you! (Deut. 1:12)
|
How does the city sit solitary (Lamentations 1:1). Three uttered prophecies using the word eichah, viz. Moses, Isaiah, and Jeremiah. Moses said, How can I bear unaided the trouble of you! (Deut. I, 12). Isaiah said, How is the faithful city become a harlot! (Isa. I, 21). Jeremiah said, How does the city sit solitary!
R. Levi said: It may be likened to a matron who had had three groomsmen: one beheld her in her happiness, a second beheld her in her infidelity, and the third beheld her in her disgrace. Similarly, Moses beheld Israel in their glory and happiness and exclaimed, ’How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance!’ Isaiah beheld them in their infidelity and exclaimed, ’How is the faithful city become a harlot! ’ Jeremiah beheld them in their disgrace and exclaimed, How does the city sit solitary!
Midrash Rabbah — Lamentations I:1
|
|
R. Abbahu opened his discourse with the text, "But they like men [Adam] have transgressed the covenant (Hos. VI, 7). This alludes to the first man, of whom the Holy Blessed One, said, ‘I brought him into the Garden of Eden and imposed a command upon him, but he transgressed it; so I punished him by driving him out and sending him forth, and lamented over him,... as it is said, Therefore Adonai God sent him forth, and ' lamented over him, Eichah’, as it is said, Where art thou?--ayyekah), [the two Hebrew words appear identical in the non-vocalized text]
Similarly with his descendants. I brought them into the land of Israel, ... I gave them commandments, ... They transgressed My ordinances, ... So I punished them by driving them out, and by sending them forth, and I lamented over them, ’How sitteth solitary.. (Lam. 1:1).
Lamentations Rabbah prologue 4
|
Parshat Devarim opens the fifth and final book of the Torah. It differs from the first four books- as the bulk of the book is narrated in the first person by Moses. Because it is Moses' review of the history of the Jewish people with moral instruction and last minute advice it also has the name: Mishneh Torah, the repetition of the Torah, which is the equivalent of the English/Greek name: Deuteronomy (Deutero- second, Nomos- law). The book retells much of the material we are already familiar with, but note that in the retelling, sometimes the details are different or the emphasis changed. (Even the Ten Commandments appear in two slightly different forms). One could even consider Deuteronomy to be a 'midrash' on the prior three books. However, do not be misled. Much of Deuteronomy's content is new; over half the laws enumerated do not appear elsewhere. As Moses prepares the people to enter the land, there is an emphasis on how to live in the settled land of Israel.
The book's Hebrew title Devarim, is derived, as always from the first important word(s): "Ve'eileh hadevarim... Now these are the words..." There is delicious poetic irony here. Remember Moses introduces himself to God (at the burning bush) as 'lo ish devarim anokhi, I am not a man of words' and ends up reciting an entire book! As Tevye exasperatedly says (after being corrected twice for misquoting the 'Good Book'), "Well, for a man who stuttered, he sure talked alot!"
This Shabbat, Parshat Devarim is also called Shabbat Hazon, taken from the first word of the Haftarah (Isaiah 1). Jewish time operates on two levels. The first is the Jewish calendar. Each month has its own holiday(s) and every day has its own place within the month. The Torah has its own cycle and rhythm. Each week has its own Torah portion. In fact, instead of a calendar date, one can date something by using that week's assigned parasha. Since each parasha is further divided into seven 'aliyot' (readings), each day of the week has a corresponding Torah reading (sort of like those 'word of the day' calendars). Occasionally the Jewish calendar requires that the two cycles be synchronized, so before certain holidays, for example, a Torah portion is read out of sequence. But most of the time, the two cycles operate independently so, for example, we read of the Exodus from Egypt in the narrative cycle when it appears in Exodus, even though we are months away from Passover (and read it again at Passover time, too, of course). Normally, then, any connections between the calendar and the Torah portion are poetic and midrashic. This week's parasha of Devarim, while in our regular Torah sequence, always coincides with the week of Tisha B'av, the ninth of the Hebrew month of Av.
According to tradition, in the month of Av, joy decreases. This Shabbat is considered the holiest Shabbat of the year! One reason is that just like the light of a candle is more appreciated in the dark than in the light, so Shabbat, a day of joy, is particularly welcome this week of sadness. Tisha B'av also always falls on the same day of the week as the first day of Pesach, so there is a certain symmetry: Passover which began our redemption, and Tisha B'av which marks the end of that period of history when the Temples were destroyed. At first glance, there is little in the parasha that relates to the national tragedy of Tisha B'av. But there is at least one connection. There is one (relatively rare) word found in the parasha which resonates with this holiday that commemorates the destruction of the Temples and the dispersion of the Jewish people. Moses complains of the burden: "How can I bear unaided the trouble of you..." (Deut. 1:27). The Hebrew word 'eichah' is the first word of Lamentations, the dirge read on Tisha B'av. Some congregations even read this Torah verse in a special 'trop' - melody that is used for the book of Lamentations.
The midrash names three individuals who used the word 'eichah': Moses, Isaiah and Jeremiah (traditionally the author of Lamentations). Professor Sherry Israel points out that the word has three different meanings. It can simply mean 'how' in a pragmatic sense. In our parasha, the answer to Moses' question (How can I bear the burden) follows immediately in the next verse: "Pick from each of your tribes, men who are wise, discerning, and experienced..." (Deut. 1:13). The word can also be used rhetorically: "How could you let yourself, Zion, turn to other gods, to immorality" (Is. 1:2). Although an answer is not called for, the word is still being used to prompt a change in behaviour; the prophet hopes that his rebuke of Israel will effect a change. The third, the 'eichah' of wailing is used with a sense of 'how awful,' 'how hopeless': "Alas, how solitary the city sits that was full of people?" (Lam. 1:1).
If you look up 'eichah' in a traditional concordance (a biblical dictionary organized by word roots) you will find all sixteen instances of the word: five in Deuteronomy, four in Lamentations, and the other seven scattered in the Prophets and Writings. But if you do a computer search for the word, you will find one other instance of the letters: aleph-yod-kuf-hey, a completely different, unrelated word. This time, the identically spelled word (Gen. 3:9) is vocalized 'ayekah', (remember the biblical text has no vowels). This is the word God uses to address Adam, "Where are you." The midrash connects the two words and asks us to imagine, that when God asks 'where are you' God is also saying, 'Alas.' The midrash also connects the expulsion from Eden with the destruction of the Temple. God grieves the expulsion of humanity from the Garden of Eden, just as God cares for the Jewish people even though the Temple was destroyed and the people exiled from the land.
Lessons for Today
The word 'eichah' with its three meanings is a effective mnemonic for how to deal with personal or national tragedy. First we can try to fix the problem by asking: How should we respond? Or if we can't fix the problem, we might at least learn a lesson from it by asking the rhetorical question "How could be we have been so stupid (and make a note to not make the a same mistake). Sometimes however, the response to tragedy can only be an expression of grief: "How awful, Alas." And there is the fourth reading: ayekah. Even in tragedy and loss, God is looking for us with compassion and hope.
Shabbat Shalom
|
