In his
incredible book, “This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared,” Rabbi Alan
Lew writes of how each of our lives “is a strange dance of pushing forward to
get back home.” Pushing forward to get
back home. And he writes of the power of this particular quarter of the year in
which we find ourselves right now (no, not the summer, but the period of months
that begin just before Tisha b’Av and
continue through the High Holy Days) to impact our path on that journey, all
through the process of teshuvah –
that turning and returning to the best of who we can yet be. For most, I think, teshuvah-talk doesn’t really start until Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur, but the truth is, Jewish tradition begins the teshuvah conversation much earlier – seven weeks earlier to be precise,
marking the start of a period of time that many, myself included, believe is of
real consequence.
On Tisha b’Av, we lament the calamities of
our people throughout history, but we also lament the calamities of our own
lives. The Temple is always a metaphor
for the soul’s wholeness, and when we mourn the Temple’s destruction, we mourn
too the brokenness of our own souls, of our relationships with each other, of
the brokenness and destruction in our world.
Something that this year in particular wasn’t hard to do. According to Lew, “Tisha b’Av is the moment of turning, the moment when we turn away
from denial and begin to face exile and alienation as they manifest themselves
in our own lives – from God, from ourselves and from others... Teshuvah is the gesture by which we seek
to heal this alienation and find connection, reconciliation, and anchoring in
our lives.”
And so
this Shabbat, the first Shabbat after Tisha
b’Av represents our first step out from the exile and despair of Tisha b’Av. It is called Shabbat Nachamu- "Shabbat of Comfort," referring to the opening
verses in the Haftara we recite
tomorrow morning, where the prophet Isaiah eases the people’s anguish after the
destruction: Nachamu nachamu ami – take comfort, take comfort my people. So whereas Tisha b’Av immerses our souls in a place of darkness, this Shabbat of
nechama, of comfort, comes to teach
that although desolation and alienation feel so all-consuming, we must not give
up hope, we cannot shut your eyes from seeing our self and our world from the
way they might yet be.
But
how do we do that? How do we move from immersive
despondence to eyes and heart open to the promise of a better tomorrow?
This
week’s Torah portion, which is always read on Shabbat Nachamu offers a powerful insight right as it opens, as Moses
recounts what is perhaps one of, if not the most heart wrenching part of his
own story. Speaking to the generation
that will cross over into the Promised Land, Moses shares this with them: I
pleaded with God, I begged God with all my soul “O God, You let me see the
works of your greatness and your mighty hand. You whose powerful deeds no god
in heaven or on earth can equal! Please, let me cross over and see the good
land on the other side of the Jordan.”
But
God says, no. Moses continues: “But God
would not grant me my wish and said, “Rav
lach!” Enough! Never speak to me of
this again.”
Moses
- the only one to see God face to face - so longs just to touch, to step onto
the land, to which he’s dedicated his life to lead the Jewish people that he
literally begs God to take back the Divine punishment that forbids him to get
there. “God, you can do anything, he
says, I’ve seen you perform miracles.
Please, do this one thing for me, your most loyal servant.”
And still,
God says no, rav lach, you already
have so much Moses. This is enough. Moses, who has had it all, is left with one
thing he can’t have. He is left longing for something else.
So
many of us understand this story as one of failure or God’s abandonment, but I
think we read it on Shabbat Nachamu
because it is in fact just the opposite, as it gives us back our sense of life. We don’t ever get there – to the finish line. It’s why every year at Passover, we always
say “Next year in Jerusalem.” We never get there. None of us do. And the truth is, every arrival that seems
like a finish line, really only turns out to be another starting point. But there is a beauty and a gift of longing deeply
for something. It gives us something to
strive for, something to move towards, in particular in times when it would
otherwise seem like we couldn’t go on.
Robert Browning must have known this deep Torah truth when he famously
wrote: “Ah but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp.”
So
this day, this Shabbat of comfort, amidst a still shattered world, we are
called to rise up from amidst the ashes, and ask ourselves what is it that we
long for? What is it that we ache for? What triggers in us a sense of yearning
that is strong enough to drive us forward out of yesterday and into tomorrow? And then, can we hold on to that longing,
that yearning to really feel it sink it and move us?
So as
we move forward for the next seven weeks leading us up to Rosh Hashanah, the
renewal of our world and our souls, we need to awaken this longing in our
souls. We can ask ourselves: in what way are we trading in our deepest desires
for something less than – in what way
have we placated our souls with nourishment that doesn’t truly sate us? And how can we raise up our awareness of our
longings so that it might become a vehicle turning us toward teshuvah, pushing us forward to get back
home?
It’s not
about destination. It is always about
the journey. It is the longing that pulls us
toward wholeness. It is the longing that
will bring us back home.
