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 I
can still remember the feeling of the weight lifting
off my shoulders. It was the summer of ‘86, and I had
just returned my gear after four and a half years in
the Israeli army. I will never forget the incredible,
almost spiritual high that lifted my spirits as I realized
that for the first time in years, I could do whatever
I wanted, without that nagging worry deep inside that
I might get a call in the middle of the night.
No
more patrols or forced marches, guard duty or inspections,
no missions to coordinate or briefings to prepare, and
no tanks to service and make ready, nor men to cover
or train. After four long years I could finally get
back to just being me.
My
parents were in Israel that summer, and we had planned
an outing for the next day; picnic, rented car and all.
In short, I could finally let my guard down.
I
still recall the moment of walking into my parents'
apartment in Jerusalem , with the smell of dinner cooking
in the oven, and the promise of a real vacation ahead.
And I remember sinking down into the easy chair in the
living room as my father turned on the news, realizing
I could finally, really relax. I figured all that pain
and tension was finally behind me. It was a mistake
I would never make again.
As
soon as the news on such a night begins, you realize
right away something is wrong. The newscasters take
on a more serious tone, and the music seems somehow
more dramatic.
There
had been a terrible ambush in the Jordan valley, and
two soldiers had been killed. I could feel my gut contract
when the image of the map came on the screen; this was
the area of operations my battalion had just taken over
a couple of days earlier. But as my tour of duty was
ending, there was no point to my learning the area and
sitting in on the briefings, so I had gotten out a few
days earlier than scheduled.
A
Jordanian soldier had sneaked over the border and ambushed
a jeep patrol, cutting down two of our boys, and the
second patrol that arrived on the scene was pinned down
as well, until the deputy company commander finally
arrived on the scene and took out the enemy soldier.
So
the next day, instead of a picnic, we drove to the cemetery
for Ronen Reichel's funeral. He had been a sergeant
in our unit, and I had said goodbye to him along with
everyone else just two days earlier, never imagining
I would be standing over his grave only forty-eight
hours later.
As
long as I live, I will never forget the image of his
mother, screaming, throwing herself on his coffin, begging
him not to go.
Are
there any words to say to a person under such circumstances?
I remember her dulled, lifeless stare, full of pain
and misery, washing over me after the burial, and I
remember averting my eyes, not knowing what to say.
Even now, more than twenty years later, if I ran into
Ronen's mother on the street, I still wouldn't know
what to say.
Are
there any words with which one can comfort someone after
such a loss?
Most
often, when we mourn the losses in our lives, the pain
of mourning is the recognition of lost opportunities.
We understand only too well what we have lost, and we
wonder whether we really appreciated what we had.
Did
we tell them we loved them enough? Did we take the time
to appreciate their smiles, and the particular things
we loved about them? Did we learn from them, and did
we spend time with them? And if indeed these lost opportunities,
imagined or real as they may be, are what we mourn,
can there ever be a comforting response to such loss?
This
Shabbat, the Shabbat after Tisha B'av, the
day we lost both of our Temples ( Batei Mikdash)
is traditionally called Shabbat Nachamu ,
the Shabbat of consolation, when we are comforted after
our terrible loss. Indeed, the prophetic portion (the
Haftorah ) we will read from Isaiah begins
with the phrase: “ Nachamu, Nachamu, Ami....” “Be
comforted, be comforted, my people....”, hence the name
Shabbat Nachamu .
But
how can one be comforted after such a terrible loss?
Two thousand years ago, in the year seventy, we watched
our cities burned to the ground, hundreds of thousands
of our people butchered, and many hundreds of thousands
more sold as slaves, mercilessly torn from the arms
of their beloved families. All of which was merely the
prelude to two thousand years of suffering: the crusades
and inquisitions, pogroms and blood libels, and that
final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust; all of these
we mourn as well on Tisha B'Av , the ninth
of Av. So how can a people, which have known such suffering,
ever be comforted? What is the meaning of this nechama
, this consolation?
It
is no coincidence that the portion we always read on
this Shabbat, Shabbat Nachamu , is the portion
of Vaetchanan, which literally means “And
I beseeched”, referring to Moshe's heart- rending prayer
beseeching of G-d to allow him, mistakes notwithstanding,
to enter the land of Israel with the children of Israel.
It
is hard to decide which is more painful: Moshe's pleading
to be let into the land of his dreams, or G- d's refusal
to acquiesce. But most interesting is Moshe's response
to this refusal: the Torah seems to just change the
topic!
After
describing how he had pleaded before G-d to enter the
land, and how G-d finally admonished him to cease speaking
of this request, and instead to install Yehoshua (Joshua)
to take his place, Moshe immediately begins to exhort
the Jewish people not to forget the Torah they have
been given, and then launches into a repetition of the
ten commandments, preceded by one of the most important
sections of the Torah: the first chapter of the Shema
.
All
of which leaves us with a number of questions. First
of all, if this desperate plea of Moshe's is so critical
to the final speech he is about to give the Jewish people
as they prepare to enter the land, one wonders why it
is not mentioned at the beginning of the speech (which
comprises most of the book of Devarim (Deuteronomy),
the fifth book of the Torah). Why isn't this request
offered at the beginning of Devarim (last week's portion)?
Why wait till Va'Etchanan , this week's portion?
And
if this week's portion's theme is all about consolation,
why is there no consolation mentioned for Moshe, immediately
after he is denied his life-long wish to join the Jewish
people as they enter the land? And what does all this
have to do with the Shema and the Ten Commandments?
Perhaps
in order to understand this, we need to take a closer
look at the concept of nechama, consolation, as it appears
in the Torah.
The
first instance is the birth of Noach , at the
end of the first portion of the Torah, Bereishit
. His father, Lemech , names him Noach
because:
“Zeh
Ye'nachameinu Mi'ma'aseinu....”
“This one will comfort is from the actions of our hands....”
In
other words, in the period preceding the flood, human
behavior had reached an all time low and violence filled
the world. Lemech's hope was that Noach would somehow
turn things around, leading the world and humanity back
onto the path of ethics and righteousness.
Now,
if this was indeed Lemech's hope, what then is the nature
of this comfort? How will a more righteous society comfort
the world after its evil ways? If anything, a re-discovery
of what life was really supposed to be, would make everyone
realize the lost
opportunities
they had wasted in living lives of violence and lust,
causing them to mourn their mistakes, not be
comforted in their newfound righteousness?
How
will a redirection be a comfort of past mistakes, rather
than simply a change of course to a new mode of behavior?
Interestingly,
Rashi suggests that the way Noach
will be a ‘comfort' to his generation is not by leading
them down the path of ethical excellence, but rather
by inventing the plow! Jewish tradition credits Noach
with the invention of the plow, and this somehow is
the vehicle for Noach's ability to comfort the world!
Why is plowing the field the comfort here?
Why not Noach's ability to be a role model of righteousness,
as suggested by the verse at the beginning of the portion
of Noach?
Even
more confusing is the fact that ‘ Nechama'
does not always mean comfort; sometimes, it seems to
have a completely different connotation, as, for example,
when G-d, in response to Moshe's entreaties, decides
not to destroy the Jewish people after the sin of the
Golden calf:
“
Vayinachem Hashem al ha'ra'ah
asher diber la'asot le'amo.”
“And Hashem (G-d) relented ,
concerning the evil He had said He would visit upon
His people. ” (Exodus ( Shemot) 32)
In
this instance, G-d is not comforting the Jewish people,
(although it must certainly have been a comfort to them
to know they would not be destroyed!) but rather, He
changed his course of action. This meaning of the word
‘ Nechama ' can be found in various places,
including G-d's relenting of having created man, thus
hastening the coming of the flood in order to destroy
the world and build it all over again, through Noach.
(See Genesis (Bereishit) 6:6)
And
yet, just as often, we find nechama used in
its more traditional format, such as when Yitzchak,
still mourning the loss of his beloved mother Sarah,
is finally comforted after her loss when he marries
Rivkah. (See Genesis (Bereishit) 24:67) As well, when
Yaakov is not comforted after the loss of his beloved
Joseph, whom he believes to be dead at the hands of
a wild ox, it says (“ Va'yema'en lehitnecham
” at the end of the portion of Vayeshev
).
What
is the relationship between G-d changing His mind, and
our being comforted?
Perhaps
the message of Shabbat Nachamu, is that there really
is no difference; our ability to be comforted really
depends on our decision, as it were, to ‘change our
minds', or, more accurately, to change our perspective.
In
a world gone mad, where violence was the rule, and wanton
destruction of life and property the norm, Noach bursts
onto the scene with the message that life is not about
destruction, but about planting and building. Ultimately,
if we are created then we must have a purpose, and every
time we tap into that meaning and that purpose, we give
meaning to creation all over again. So Noach invents
the plow, which is a vehicle for planting and growth,
and belief in a future down the road. And this stands
in direct contradiction to the wanton destruction all
around him.
Noach
had the potential to be a comfort to the world, because
he offered the world, even in a world gone mad, a new
perspective, and a different way of looking at the world.
And
this as well is what the Torah means when it suggests
that only after he marries Rivkah, is Yitzchak comforted
from the loss of his mother. It cannot mean that the
loss diminishes any sense of pain, but rather that now
as a married man, ready to build a family and plant
a seed that would ultimately grow to become the Jewish
people, an orchard that would one day feed the world
with the fruits of life, Yitzchak's life takes on a
whole new direction, a renewed sense of purpose.
It
was precisely this different way of looking at the world
that Yaakov could not grasp, not realizing that Joseph
was still alive. Indeed on his deathbed, Yaakov points
out that he never dreamed he would see Joseph alive
again, thus implying this different outlook was not
even within the realm of possibility for him, and thus
he could not be comforted.
This
might serve to explain G-d's apparent change of heart
after the sin of the Golden calf. It goes without saying
that G-d (Hashem) does not change. (If G-d is unlimited,
there cannot be something G-d isn't today that He will
be tomorrow, nor something He is today that He wasn't
yesterday.) So the Torah cannot mean that G-d ‘changes
His mind'!
Rather,
we change, and with our change, the entire world changes
along with us.
It
was not G-d that changed, rather, Moshe, in refusing
to accept the view of a Jewish people's imminent destruction,
instead sees the world through completely different
lenses. And, by changing the way he viewed the world,
Moshe changed the way we looked at the world as well,
thus changing our destiny as a people forever.
All
of which leads us back to our portion this week. Moshe
begs G-d to enter the land; because that is the way
he has looked at the world till now. But when G-d refuses
to allow Moshe to enter the land, Moshe's response is
to see the world in a completely different way. And
that is actually Moshe's ‘nechama' , or comfort.
If Hashem tells Moshe he is not meant to enter the land,
then there must be a purpose to that decision. Somehow,
there is meaning to the fact that Moshe will be the
role model whose students must learn to apply his lessons
even when he is no longer present; long after he is
gone.
Indeed,
this may explain why, after telling Moshe he cannot
enter the land, Hashem
nonetheless acquiesces to Moshe's request to see
the land, taking him up on the mountain
of Nevo' to see the land. ( Devarim (Deuteronomy)
3:27)
And
so, Moshe's immediate response to this decision is to
understand that he must pass on the essence of Judaism
and Torah to the next generation of Jews whose job it
will be to build a homeland where that message can flourish,
without its being dependent on any one leader. Hence,
Moshe immediately begins preparing the Jewish people
to see Yehoshua (Joshua) as their new leader.
This
explains why so much of the essence of Judaism is in
this week's portion, including the Shema, and the Ten
Commandments. Our greatest comfort after losing the
Beit HaMikdash (the Temple ) was to find the
strength to see a world without our holiest place, and
even without a homeland at all, as a world still filled
with meaning.
It
is only after Tisha B'Av , after we have mourned
our loss and appreciated what opportunities we have
missed, that we are ready to look at the world with
fresh eyes and rebuild it with a renewed sense of purpose.
I
do not know how a mother who has lost her beloved son,
can somehow look at a different world, seemingly empty
without the sights and sounds of the son she loved so
much, and still see a world filled with purpose and
meaning. It is not our place, on this earth, to attempt
to find answers to these painful questions, any more
than we can attempt to offer words that will comfort
a person in such pain.
And
it remains a mystery to me, how a people, having lost
so much, and after spending two thousand years seeing
death and cruelty all around them, could still find
the strength to see a world full of goodness and purpose,
choosing to build a state of Israel out of the ashes
of destruction that was the Holocaust. But it is certainly
our Nechama , this little country that we love
so much.
Perhaps
this is what awaits us after Tisha' B'Av .
We need to learn to change the way we look at each other,
seeing the inside and not just the externals, and after
commemorating a destruction that seemed to happen because
Jews could not learn to see what was beautiful in each
other, maybe at long last it is time for us to see each
other for the beautiful souls we are, and not get stuck
on the different opinions we share.
Perhaps
this year, if we look hard enough we will finally see
a land of peace, where Jews have learned to live together
in harmony, appreciating each other's different opinions
instead of debating them. Of course, to see that, we
all first have a lot of work to do, and a lot of Noachide
fields to plow!
Shabbat
Shalom,
Binny
Freedman
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