Ve'Ethchanan: The days after

Every week, I review the parsha, the chapter of the Torah we will read on the ensuing Shabbath.  I take a few minutes each day, mostly during the repetition parts of the prayer service, and generally finish by Thursday evening, so I can write something on Friday morning (now). This week's parsha is especially rich and going over it is especially difficult.  It is the parsha that is always read on the Shabbath after Tisha Ba'Av, called Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Consolation. 

Tisha Ba'av, the ninth day of the month of Av, is the worst day of the year.  It is the anniversary of the destruction of the Temples: the first Temple Built Circa 966–959 BCE by King Solomon.Destroyed 586 BCE by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II; and the second:  Construction began circa 538 BCE after the return from Babylonian exile and Destroyed 70 CE by the Roman army led by Titus.  It is also the day the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492. The day becomes the repository for memorializing tragedies including the Crusades, the Holocaust, etc.  It is a day of deep mourning, a fast day, the only day of the year on which it is customary not to study Torah.  That adds to my personal difficulty in going over the parsha, but I generally overcome this problem. 

My mother told me that she fasted  on the Tisha Ba'av 1944.  I think she was telling me that somehow that fast (in the midst of ongoing near-starvation  while living in a pit in the forest) helped turn the tide that led to her liberation. Gd was finally convinced! Perhaps it was not my mother's fast, by itself, that started the redemption, but the fast was her vote, her individual contribution. 

For me, that is a foundational story. My mother invested, through her fast, in her identity as a Jew. She saw that: even in the most dire and difficult circumstance, a person can have faith in a better, more normal, future. The story gives me a perspective in why Ve'Ethchanan is studied during the week leading up to Tish BA'Av and publicly  read on the Shabbath after it. 

On Tisha Ba'Av, the Orthodox service  is dominated by a body of Hebrew poetry called Kinoth: elegies about the various destructions , especially the destructions of the Temples. They are elaborate, stylized poems that are somewhat difficult for me to understand in the original Hebrew. But I understand enough of the Hebrew to appreciate that a great deal is lost (and misinterpreted) in the translation. From the combination of Hebrew and English, I can appreciate that some  these elegies can be interpreted as the poet questioning Gd's absence in allowing the tragedies to occur. Usually, the existence of Gd, despite the catastrophe, is justified by blaming the horrors on the sins of the Jewish people that "forces" Gd to punish the people based upon the principle of consistency.  Gd must do what Gd said Gd would do. This is an aspect of Unity ( Hear Isreael...Gd s One). But the poets, even Eleazar beRabbi Qallir (c. 570 – c. 640), the author of most of the Kinoth, has moments of questioning the severity and consequences of the punishments. The answer is in the fact that we recite the poems and fast. 

Irony is a core principle in the Judaism that I know. I see it in Ve'ethchanan. The parsha opens with Moses praying ( the usual translation of ethchanan) that he be allowed to enter the Promised Land. Request denied! Moshe goes on to remind  the Israelites of their perpetual contract, the ten commandments; and writes a "pledge of allegiance", the Shema.  Moses concentrates on all the tomorrows of the people who will have tomorrows: the Israelites that Joshua ( not Moshe) will lead into the land, and all of their future generations. On the week of Tisha Ba'Av we read about unanswered prayers... and the response to that disappointed state. What a resilient religion. 

Look with hope to tomorrow.  Do what needs to be done today.