Parashat Devarim (Shabbat Chazon): We're Coming Home

I think that I speak for virtually every English person in this country and abroad (unless you're also German) in expressing my delight at the breathtaking and historic achievement that took place on Sunday at Wembley Stadium.  A huge mazel tov to the Lionesses as a result of becoming the football champions of Europe.  The ‘Beautiful Game’ has finally come home!

The ladies have faced an uphill struggle to gain recognition for Women’s Football, having overcome enormous challenges to reach this point.  I am certain that this will be the springboard to an exciting future for the sport across the country.

As Jews, we understand what it means to achieve something significant after negotiating barriers that seemed insurmountable.  Often, we constructed obstacles ourselves because of the short-term and thoughtless decisions our ancestors made.  Something that seemed right at that moment led us into unchartered waters, that changed the course of our history.  When we should have taken a turn, that would have greatly advanced our development, we balked and instead turned around, and ground to a halt.  On occasions, when we could have planted trees and benefitted from their fruit, instead we cut them down before they had a chance to grow.

Which is why tomorrow, on Tisha B'Av (the ninth of Av) which is without a doubt the saddest day in our annual calendar, we should be reflecting on the tragic ramifications of our decisions.  Were it not for it being Shabbat, we would be doing so, right now.

Moshe, our greatest leader, describes his frustration with the nation to whom he dedicated his adult life:


 

Deuteronomy 1:12

But how can I bear alone all your problems, your burdens, and your disputes?

דברים א׳:י״ב

אֵיכָ֥ה אֶשָּׂ֖א לְבַדִּ֑י טׇרְחֲכֶ֥ם וּמַֽשַּׂאֲכֶ֖ם וְרִֽיבְכֶֽם׃

Chazal, our Sages ensured that, for this Parashah to have the most resonance, it had to be read on Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat which precedes Tisha B'Av, when we recite the Megillah that shares its name with the first word of this verse.  Megillat Eichah or Lamentations initiates and then encapsulates the very essence of the day itself.

·         How could these events befall our people?

·         How do they continue to inform our past and help us make sense of our present?

·         How can they help us to forge our future?

Megillat Eichah is the first step on our journey in helping us to answer these questions.

It is five weeks before Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses our teacher) is about to mark his 120th birthday and reach heaven, but not Israel.  The man who vociferously argued with Gd against taking on the job of leading this problem-ridden, quarrelsome and argumentative nation out of Egypt, through the desert and into the land of Israel, is poised to deliver the three greatest oratories in the entire Tanach.  At the age of 119!

I am a teacher and have been for nearly fifteen years (actually more, but I took a break from formal education to learn how to become another kind of educator).  We know what it feels like to be teaching children at the end of the academic year.  What began back in September as an enthusiastic quest to mould young minds with inspirational and life-changing ideas, the like they had not hitherto experienced, feels like a distant dream by the time you stand in front of a class in mid to late July!

The children are frustrated and bored and 'smell the summer' air circulating around the classroom.  If you're fortunate, you have an air-conditioning unit to make life a little more palatable.  If you're not, you are spending tortuous hours with students who are wilting before your eyes.

If I, a simple teacher, am struggling to make it through a year without collapsing from fatigue, can you imagine what it must have been like for a person of the calibre of Moshe?  He carried not one but two generations through the desert.  He was responsible for the fate of millions of grumpy, stubborn and forlorn individuals.  A 'stiff-necked-people' who no less than Gd Himself wanted to wipe out numerous times.  Can you blame him for asking how he alone, can bear their difficult temperament?  Yet, here he is, nearly forty years on, refusing to give up on them.  Goading and inspiring them in equal measure.  Warning them of what would happen if they didn't heed his counsel and preparing them for the next chapter in their national development.  Five weeks shy of his 120th birthday and with the knowledge that after everything he had achieved, he would not be there to lead them into the Land.

If they had followed his advice, the only 'how' that we would have recited could be found in today's Parasha.

How could these events have befallen our people?  Because when our teacher spoke, our minds were not focussed on his words.  We were thinking about the forthcoming summer.  Had we listened, we would not have spent many years living through an endless winter.  Our 'classrooms' would have been visions of a rosy future where the spiritual air-conditioning would reinvigorate us and bring about the coming of Moshiach.

It didn't happen.

Years passed and the memory of our Temples faded into our national subconscious.  How blessed we were to live under Jewish sovereignty which lasted less than eight decades (seventy under the reigns of the first Commonwealth of Kings David and Solomon and seventy-seven under the Second Commonwealth of the Hasmoneans).  Empires rose and fell.  Expulsions and Inquisitions came and went and finally we witnessed the Shoah in living memory.

Eichah?

How could this be?

How could this have happened?

Does Tisha B'Av make more sense now?

And then, seventy-four years ago, we were given a third bite of the Jewish cherry.

It has lasted longer than the fifty-six years between England's footballing victories.  Our third Jewish Commonwealth, despite all the existential internal and external challenges it faces, is stronger than ever.  Tomorrow is Tisha B'Av and we will start fasting a short while before Shabbat ends.  But, like our fellow footballing citizens, we always hope for a way to turn national mourning into international jubilation.

For Moshe, despite his experiences, never gave up on us.  He knew that he would not make it through to September but his successor, Joshua would be there to lead the new class into their next phase.  Moshe Rabbeinu endowed us with his final gift, the Mishne Torah - the repetition of the Torah that we also call Sefer Devarim. 

At this juncture, with our current situation, we must ensure that we don't 'give up on us'.

Baddiel and Skinner's anthemic refrain of 'It's Coming Home' has held our national morale aloft long after the floodlights on the pitch have been shut down.  Eventually, football came home and we too await the time when Tisha B'Av will be the day when we can celebrate the final redemption because our own refrain can only be : 'We're coming home'.

May it happen speedily in our days.

Shabbat Shalom.


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