This week’s parshah is the beginning of the book of Devarim: “These are the words that Moshe spoke to all the Israelites across the Jordan?” ((Deuteronomy 1.1.)) We have wandered for 40 years in the wilderness waiting for this moment of final redemption. We are about to cross over into the Promised Land and Moshe stands before us recounting our journeys and travels, trials and tribulations.
He recalls the establishment of judges and a system of justice: “Hear between your brothers, and you shall judge rightly between a man and his brother or his sojourner. You shall recognize no face in judgment. You shall hear out the small person like the great one. You shall have no terror of any man, for judgment is God’s.” ((Deuteronomy 1:16-17. Trans. Robert Alter, “The Five Books of Moses.”)) This story that Moshe begins to review reminds us of where we have been and tells us where we are going. But it also tells us how we must live our daily lives; with justice for all, Jew and non-Jew, great and small. Perhaps these laws and instructions are a type of road map for getting to the Promised Land on the other side of the Jordan.
Yet, the message of this parshah, this moment of standing at the brink of redemption, is juxtaposed with the mourning of destruction and exile which will take place next week. Devarim is the parshah that is read every year before Tisha b’Av, the most serious day of communal mourning on the Jewish calendar, which begins this coming Wednesday evening. According to tradition, both the first and second Temples were destroyed on this day, making Tisha b’Av the anniversary of the beginning of exile.
The traditional mourning practices of Tisha b’Av mirror those of shiva, as if a family member has died. The entire community acts for a day ((586 BCE by the Babylonians and 70 CE by the Romans, as the story goes.)) as if we have lost a parent or a child. This is the level of sadness and anguish that these rituals are meant to invoke - the same pain as if you had lost your brother or sister.
And for what are we mourning? Among the descriptions of exile and destruction found in Eicha, or Lamentations, which we read on Tisha b’Av, is the following:
Our heritage has passed to aliens,
Our homes to strangers.
We have become orphans, fatherless…
We are hotly pursued;
Exhausted, we are given no rest…
We get our bread at the peril of our lives,
Because of the sword of the wilderness.
Our skin glows like the oven,
With the fever of famine. ((Lamentations 5:2-10.))
While this text no longer describes the physical reality of most Jews in the world, it is a hauntingly accurate portrayal of what is happening to the people of Darfur, Sudan. 400,000 are already dead in Darfur, the number of orphans and fatherless unfathomable. According to the United Nations, 2.5 million people have now been exiled from their land, their “heritage has passed to aliens.” Despite a peace agreement signed in May, violence continues in Western Sudan, ((“Darfur Violence Worse Since Peace Deal,” Washington Times. 7/6/06.)) as those who remain are “hotly pursued… given no rest.” According to the World Food Programme, 3.5 million are now hungry, their “skin glows like the oven with the fever of famine.” And when many of those in exile in the refugee camps go out to collect firewood or water, they face the threat of violence from the Janjaweed. And so they are forced to attend to their basic needs at “the peril of their lives, because of the sword of the wilderness.”
While Jews are no longer living in physical exile, millions of other people are. And, with this type of tragedy, is not the entire world in spiritual exile as well? As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote, “God himself is not at home in the universe. He is not at home in a universe where His will is defied and where his kingship is denied. God is in exile; the world is corrupt. The universe itself is not at home.” ((The Insecurity of Freedom, 258. Cited Samuel H. Dresner in “I asked for Wonder: A Spiritual Anthology, Abraham Joshua Heschel.” Pg. 23.))
Yet it does not have to be this way. We are also always standing at the Jordan about to cross over to the Promised Land. We have the power and the responsibility to stop the violence and the destruction, to prevent the famine, and create better, safer conditions for the refugees and the internally displaced people of Darfur. A UN led peace-keeping force can and must be sent to the region so that there will be “no terror of any person.”
There is a clash, a butting of heads, between the seemingly contradictory themes of the parshah and those of Tisha b’Av. In our parshah we are on the verge of redemption; our slavery and wandering have ended as we stand across the Jordan about to enter into the Promised Land. But Wednesday night and Thursday of next week on Tisha b’Av, we will mourn our exile and read about destruction from the book of Eicha.
Our challenge is to hold both of these extremes: to stand at the brink of redemption and stand simultaneously amidst the destruction. Our work in the world, the work of tikkun olam, is everything in between these two polar opposites. ((Thanks to Rabbi Nancy Epstein for clarifying this concept.)) We must live in the tension between destruction and redemption, and work from the awareness of exile towards a time of liberation. We can do this by following Moshe’s lead: by reflecting on where we’ve been, where we are going, and the justice we will need to pursue for everyone, in order to get there.
About this commentary
AJWS publishes a weekly Torah Commentary that explores a social justice theme in the Torah reading for the upcoming Shabbat. This series was made possible in part by funds granted by the Charles H. Revson Foundation. It reflects the ideas and opinions of the author and not necessarily those of American Jewish World Service or its partner organizations.
Reprinted with permission from The American Jewish World Service. AJWS publishes a weekly Torah Commentary that explores a social justice theme in the Torah reading for the upcoming Shabbat. This AJWS Torah Commentary was written by Joseph Berman a second year rabbinical school student at Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts. This series was made possible in part by funds granted by the Charles H. Revson Foundation. It reflects the ideas and opinions of the author and not necessarily those of American Jewish World Service or its partner organizations.