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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.

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