Dvar Ki Teitze

Returning from Europe and prepping for the semester and the holidays, I haven't had time for a new dvar -- here's an abridged/adapted version of one I gave two years ago at Shir Hamaalot in Brooklyn.

It is almost full moon Elul, we are on the last stretch to Rosh Hashanah.

In the Torah, on the parsha level, we’re reliving journeys and reviewing laws, we’re saying goodbye to our former leaders, and the promised land is in reach. Things seem organized and calm, concerned with justice and fairness, while on the haftara level, things have been quite intense and pretty much out of control over the past couple months.

During the ten weeks before Rosh Hashanah we read a special series of haftarot that are less related to the weekly parasha than is generally the case. Rather, they follow their independent narrative of warning, consolation and redemption.

Three haftarot of admonition lead up to Tisha B’Av and precede the seven haftarot of consolation that unfold over the course of 49 days -- just like the time span of the Omer.

Step by step, these seven haftarot build up from the grief over the destruction of the Temple toward the idea of better times to come in a restored Jerusalem. They do it slowly, like one should console a mourner. You can’t tell someone in the immediate aftermath of a loss that things will be fine, or that it all happened for a reason, or “I told you so” -- you need to let them sit with their sadness.

To illustrate this slow build-up of comfort, I want to quote the opening lines of the seven haftarot, all taken from the Book of Isaiah.

The first haftarah, on the Shabbat right after Tisha b’Av, pleads: “Nachamu, nachamu, ami” – “Comfort, comfort My people” (Isaiah 40:1),

One week later, Zion “says the Lord has forsaken me” (Isaiah 49:14), and in week 3, Zion is “unhappy, storm-tossed, uncomforted” (Isaiah 54:11).

Week 4 marks a shift toward the possibility of consolation, when G-d, and not the prophet, addresses the people directly: “I am He who comforts you, what ails you that you fear man who must die, mortals who fare like grass?” (Isaiah 51:12)

This Shabbat we’ll hear: “Sing, o barren one” (Isaiah 54:1), and then things will become even more optimistic with “Arise and shine, for your light has dawned” (Isaiah 60:1) before they finally culminate in the seventh haftara right before Rosh Hashanah, which opens with: “I greatly rejoice in the Lord, my whole being exults in my G-d, for He has clothed me with garments of salvation” (Isaiah 61:10) and closes with “In His love and pity, He Himself redeemed them, raised them, and exalted them, all the days of old” (Isaiah 63:9).

In this week, week 5, the destruction of the Temple is still palpable. Zion is broken and empty but the prophet encourages her to vocalize – to sing - her pain and sorrow, and offers promises of the possibility of redemption. (Isaiah 54:1)

רָנִּ֥י עֲקָרָ֖ה לֹ֣א יָלָ֑דָה פִּצְחִ֨י רִנָּ֚ה וְצַֽהֲלִי֙ לֹא־חָ֔לָה כִּֽי־רַבִּ֧ים בְּֽנֵי־שֽׁוֹמֵמָ֛ה מִבְּנֵ֥י בְעוּלָ֖ה אָמַ֥ר יְהֹוָֽה:
"Sing you barren woman who has not borne; burst out into song and jubilate, you who have not experienced birth pangs, for the children of the desolate one are more than the children of the married woman," says the Lord.”

Something that amazes me is that the word עֲקָרָ֖ה, “barren,” turns into “precious, dear” when you change just the first letter, instead of an ayin you put a yud: יְקָרָה

That’s also what the haftara promises as it continues, when it says that the barren one will "spread out to the right and to the left" (Isaiah 54:3), and that her offspring shall people desolate towns, and that "the Lord has called you back as a wife forlorn and forsaken" (Isaiah 54:6).

From a religious, spiritual, or poetic perspective, there’s solace and confidence to be found in these images, in this dialectic of rebuke and acceptance, destruction and restoration, separation and return that leads us forward to the days of old, to a reunion with God like to a reunion with a lost husband or a lost friend.

But in real life, we don’t go from destruction to restoration, from barren to blooming just like that, on a prescribed timeline. The stories of our lives are not neatly curated according to the sages’ intentions. That’s because we are the curators and far from being sages, and things don’t return with the predictability of a three-year reading cycle. We don’t know in what parsha or prophecy we’ll find our lives represented tomorrow, in two weeks, next year. And sometimes, people, connections, opportunities are irreversibly lost, and no green desert or garments of salvation await us after 49 days.

The Temple was destroyed and Jerusalem deserted because of collective failures. We don’t have to go to such extremes as baseless hatred. Taking a connection – to a friend, to a home/the Temple, to God - for granted, not being careful with one another’s sensitivities, not paying attention to little signs, not defining intentions … all this can be more than enough to destroy temples – temples of intimacy, honesty, openness.

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are times when we reflect on both individual and communal responsibilities, failures, “sins” – and on ways of how we can improve both as individuals and as a community. How we can try to rebuild what is broken and bring more goodness into our lives and into the world. How we might be able to return to our own private Jerusalem.

How can we begin to do this? Maybe for one, by believing in the possibility of continuity. The Torah reading cycle does not end on Rosh Hoshanah (as one could ingeniously expect) – but stretches well into the first month of the new calendar year. In that way, the Torah links the old and the new – the spiral that it is often compared to also functions as a thread of continuation that reaches past the threshold of 1 Tishrei.

There is no true new beginning without being mindful of the past. When we own up to our shortcomings and mistakes and assume and honor that others do the same, we express our respect for the potential that lies in teshuva -- on whatever level this concept of “returning” speaks to each of us.
I believe in the possibilities that the seven haftarot of consolation outline – and in the promise of the last verse of this week’s prophecy: "But My loyalty shall never move from you, nor My covenant of friendship be shaken..." (Isaiah 54:10)