Is it About Them and Not About You?
The first Tishah B’Av was anything but subtle. The spies told your ancestors,
“There is no way we can conquer the Land.”
They heard, and were shaken to their core.
[…] Everything the spies said about the Land was true. They had only two options; one was to admit defeat and face doom – the other was to trust completely in Hashem’s providence and promises. One choice by its nature led to weeping, the other to simcha.
After all, they had direct prophecy telling them they could and would enter the Land.
Years later, both Batei Midkash were destroyed on the same fateful day. The first destruction was caused by idol worship, promiscuity and bloodshed. Are any of these grave sins part of your repertoire? The second Churban was a result of senseless hatred. Do you remember hating anyone senselessly? Are you paying their dues or your own?
In 135 C.E. Beitar fell. It was the most populous city of Israel and the heart of Bar Kochva’s rebellion against the Romans. In Gittin 57 you find a rather cryptic story about the event that led to the incredible bloodbath that followed. “Because of the spoke of a chariot wheel, Beitar was destroyed.”
For they [the residents of Beitar] had a custom: When a boy was born they would plant a cedar tree, and when a girl was born they would plant an acacia. At the time of a marriage, their trees were cut down and the wood was used to make the bridal canopy.
“One day Caesar’s daughter was passing by, and the spoke of her chariot wheel broke. Her attendants cut down a cedar and took the wood to fix the chariot. The residents of Beitar came and attacked them, and her attendants went and told Caesar: “The Jews are rebelling against you. The Romans attacked, destroying everything in their path.”
Do you use chariot wheels? Have you ever met a Roman? There’s more. You never saw the Beis Hamikdash, but you are held accountable for its destruction. So is it really just about them?
Maybe not.
Rav Mendel Hirsch, Harav Shamshon Rafael Hirsch’s eldest son, did us the cheesed of writing and editing his father’s essays on the hastarah; the questions of contemporary relevance to seemingly archaic practices and events are addressed head-on. His first, and most significant instruction for this week’s haftarah is “Don’t look at the past, Look at the present.”
Yeshaya Hanavi lived 150 years before the fateful military and political events began to unfold. The Beis Hamikdash was still standing, the offerings still happening daily, courtyards were full of worshippers, the kings were still of the House of David. His people saw nothing wrong in their lifestyles or their personal lives. Their complacency was a cataract blocking their vision. They didn’t see the yawning abyss. His prophecy accompanies you as much as it accompanied them in exploring the underlying disintegration that they had made their own..
His prophecies are hard to hear, easy to dismiss, but meant to awaken you, guide you away from the abyss that we have taught ourselves to ignore. Yeshaya rebuked his people about the way they offered sacrifices, not the sacrifices. The function of a korban is to give you experiential access to the acknowledgment that you have an animal self, and then elevating it. What were the offerings about?
As the word korban tells you, it is about achieving closeness to Hashem. The means of achieving this kind of closeness was the service that the Torah describes and mandates. For them, the service had become not a means of getting closer to Hashem but a substitute for living lives devoted to serving Hashem. The means became an end in itself.
Does this have anything to do with you, who have never offered a koran? Do you sometimes avoid awareness of Hashem’s presence in your life by getting so involved in the way you to a mitzvah that you forget for Whom you are doing it?
Yeshaya began his prophecy with the word chazon, which is generally translated as “vision.” Rav Hirsch explains that it is related to the word chazeh, the center of the torso. It describes the heart of the matter, not its external surface. He starts with a famous parable. Does an ox not know the one who bought him? Does a donkey not know his master’s stable?He is telling us that Hashem has expectations of us. An ox knows who defines his place in life. Did the Jews in the desert somehow forget that getting out of Egypt demanded the same kind of direct intervention that the Land’s conquest would require?
[…] Have you forgotten that you don’t have to play hide and seek with the laws that govern a place, which Rav Moshe famously called a “nation of chessed,” in order to get by? Did you forget that both challenge and ease are a matter of Hashem’s will? Are you that different from your ancestors in the desert?
Do we know what made Jews into Jews and Israel into Israel? Do we know Who sustains us – or do we engage in self-congratulatory acts of “national pride”? Yeshaya spoke about the Sanctuary under siege, which can spell out an almost paranoid fear of religion leaking out and affecting national life.[…]
Rav Hirsch points out that when we ask Hashem to rebuild the Beis Hamikdash, while at the same time we do not deal with the causes of its destruction, we are blinding ourselves to what the outcome would be.
The Beis Hamikdash was destroyed because its existence at the time was the means of desecrating Hashem’s Name rather than sanctifying it. Given our fractured and fragmented identities (not as Hashem’s people, but as individual and competitive, egoistic self-definitions), would another Beis Hamikdash draw us together, or separate us even more?
Is there no hope?
“If no place of Israel’s greatness remains, Hashem will restore judges and counsellors who truly do not look after their own interests but who are ready to sacrifice themselves for their people, who will lead them to restoring Yerushalayim to being a city of righteousness, a state of loyalty to conscience”
(Yeshaya 1:26).
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