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your hands out toward Me (in
prayer) I will close My eyes,
”
says God, “the more you pray
the less I will listen.
” (Isaiah
1:15)
Yet in the very next chapter,
Isaiah delivers some of the
most famous words of hope, of
vision, of peace, that the world
has ever known. These same
words are engraved opposite
the United Nations building in
New York:
“Many nations will come and
say, ‘let us ascend the mountain
of the Lord’ … and the world
will come … because the word
of Torah will go forth from
Zion and the word of God from
Jerusalem … and they will beat
their swords into ploughshares
and their spears into pruning
hooks. Nation shall not lift up
sword against nation anymore,
and they will no longer study
warfare.
” Isaiah 2:3–4
Isaiah, of all the Prophets in
the Bible, is the poet laureate
of hope. So, somehow, the man
who announced the doom of
the city also announced the
new age that would someday be
greater in its blessings than the
destruction.
Likewise, Jeremiah gives us
two of the three haftarot lead-
ing up to Tisha b’
Av, and of all
the Prophets, he was the one
who most vividly foresaw the
terrible events that would soon
happen. In chapter three of
Eichah, he says, “I actually saw
it. I didn’t just foresee it the
way other people did. I actually
lived through it.
”
But it was Jeremiah who
also said in the name of God,
“There is hope for your future.
”
(See Jeremiah 31:16) And, “Just
as I threw Myself into destruc-
tion, I will take that same
energy and use it to build and
to plant.
” (Jeremiah 31:27) And
Jeremiah says something else
in Chapter 31 that nobody else
says in all of Tanach: “Thus says
the Lord who gives the sun to
give light by day and the moon
and the stars by night … only
if these things cease to be, will
the Children of Israel cease to
be.
” (Jeremiah 31:34-35)
Jeremiah is the person who
says the Jewish people will be
the eternal people.
How is it that these supreme
Prophets of doom also became
supreme Prophets of hope?
Because they relied on God’s
promise in parshat Bechukotai
that “even when they are in the
land of their enemies, I will not
so despise them as to destroy
them, thus invalidating My
covenant with them.
” (Vayikra
26:44) God says, “I will keep
My promise. I will never
let them be destroyed.
” The
Prophets had God’s word, and
that gave them hope.
We have here a unique
phenomenon. The Jews gave
to the world this idea of time
as a narrative of hope, which
meant that what is lost can be
regained, what is destroyed can
be rebuilt and what disappears
may one day return.
Our Prophets were able to
see beyond the horizon of his-
tory, so that where everyone
else saw doom, they also saw
the hope that lay just over that
horizon, and they understood
that there was a route from
here to there. That really is a
remarkable vision.
We are the people who
gave the concept of hope to
the world. We kept faith, we
never gave up, and we honest-
ly observed for 26 centuries
without a single pause, the line
in Tehillim 137, “I will never
forget you, O Jerusalem.
” And
because we never gave up
hope, we finally came back to
Jerusalem.
Hope rebuilds the ruins of
Jerusalem. The Jewish people
kept hope alive, and hope kept
the Jewish people alive.
Seeking Our
Betterment
D
euteronomy is, in
many ways, the ulti-
mate Jewish “good-
bye,” a longwinded retelling of
everything that we read in the
previous four books, outlined
via a soliloquy from our
tradition’s great leader.
Standing before his
people, Moses restates
the key statutes of God’s
law and recounts the
pinnacle moments of
their 40-year journey
together. However,
while one might expect
this farewell to be a
warm-hearted ode to a
lifetime of leadership,
what we encounter
instead is a harsh
chastisement, reminding the
people of the many times in
which they fell short, com-
plained and acted wickedly.
It is natural that we as the
inheritors of this text would
hope for a more uplifting
scene at the close of Moses’
tenure. However, there are
two important things we must
remember as we listen to his
speech this week.
First, it is in this moment
that Moses is facing his own
punishment and rebuke from
God. Standing before his peo-
ple as they prepare to cross
into the promised land, fulfill-
ing the mission to which he
dedicated his life, Moses’ con-
tempt and disappointment are
palpable, and we don’t need to
be psychologists to recognize
a least a little bit of projection
in his refrain.
Second, and more notable,
is the exercise of leadership
Moses is demonstrating. For
his words, when read closely,
are not simply a rebuke but a
call to live up to the potential
he knows the Israelites have.
In this way he is enacting
what our tradition will come
to call an act of tochecha
(admonition). Explaining the
power of this spiritual
tool when used proper-
ly, Rabbi Bradly Artson
writes: “Pointing out
someone’s shortcom-
ing or error should
not be a chance for
insults or a sense of
superiority. It should
not become an oppor-
tunity to humiliate or
gloat. Instead, a rebuke,
if properly intended
and given, becomes an
act of affirmation and
love, an affirmation that the
person is worth the effort in
the first place, and a faith that
he or she remains capable of
improvement. Offered with
love and a sense of humility,
a rebuke is a gift and a chal-
lenge.”
In our lifetimes, each of us
will face many moments of
disappointment with the peo-
ple with whom we share our
lives. In these moments, we
will have a myriad of choices
of how to respond. The easy
options will be either to stifle
our feelings in avoidance of
conflict or to lash out from a
place of anger.
The more difficult and
more productive option
though is what Moses demon-
strates. Living feedback that
calls another to be their best
self. This is not easy, but it is
both possible and powerful.
Rabbi Ari Witkin is senior director of
philanthropy at the Jewish Federation
of Detroit.
SPIRIT
TORAH PORTION
Rabbi Ari
Witkin
Parshat
D’varim:
Deuteronomy
1:1-3:22;
Isaiah
1:1-27.
AUGUST 8 • 2024 | 35