Haftorah for Shabbat Hazon-- Parashat Devarim

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July 27 2006
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July 29, 4 Av, Yeshayahu 1:1-27
Sent with the hope that our past informs our future, teaching us how to merit, as individuals and as a nation, a cessation to all our troubles and times of peace and nahat to serve God fully and well.

Yirmiyahu was the New Yeshayahu

While Yeshayahu lived 150 years before the Destruction, and is better known as the prophet of consolation, the Midrash notes that he, like Yirmiyahu, was active during the reign of four successive kings. While the point seems banal, the Midrash’s raising it suggests that it saw a parallel between the two prophets, the one of consolation and the other of destruction.

Noting that Yeshayahu’s last king was Hizkiyahu, a king held up by tradition as the paradigm of how a king should act, one who convinced/coerced the Jews to worship God, I wonder whether Yeshayahu’s career might have been different had he not had the good fortune of associating with Hizkiyahu. Possibly, had Hizkiyahu not acted as he did, Yeshayahu would have had to have been Yirmiyahu.

Remember that the Northern Kingdom was exiled by Ashur in Yeshayahu’s time, and that the defeat of Ashur around the walls of Yerushalayim was a dramatic miracle, not an expected result. If so, the Destruction of the Temple was the culmination of hundreds of years of the Jews’ failing to listen to their prophets, failing to adhere to even a minimal standard of observance. This week’s haftarah lists a few of those failings, making clear that God was not nitpicking, God was complaining about the Jews’ ability to see themselves as righteous despite obvious and glaring flaws.

A Pause to Consider a Corollary to Sherlock Holmes’ Rule

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had Sherlock Holmes tell Watson his famous rule: eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is the truth. Rothstein’s not-so-famous corollary is: be careful what you define as impossible, because you might unknowingly eliminate the truth.

Perhaps a non sequitur, I bring it up here because Yeshayahu faces a people so confident that he will fail to budge them, despite speaking in the name of God. The people he addresses “know” that sacrifice and other purely ritualistic aspects of the religion are what God cares about, more than social justice or caring for society’s legitimate neediest.

It is this failing that Yeshayahu characterizes as not knowing God. His call to Heaven and Earth, in terms that are meant to remind us of Parshat Haazinu, obliquely feeds into three other themes that appear here. Since Moshe Rabbenu had set up Heaven and Earth as witnesses and guarantors of our pact with Hashem, it is their job to administer punishment as well. We are supposed to recognize that punishments and bad times stem from our abandonment of God, a challenge for people, such as in Yeshayahu’s time who do not even agree that they have abandoned God. Note, too, that abandonment did not mean that they left God completely, only that they left the Torah’s desired path enough for God to deny the value in what they were doing.

The Comparison to Sodom

Yeshayahu’s striking use of Sodom and Amora as a metaphor for his audience was sure to catch their attention, but also focused on the central failing, their dealings with the poor and underprivileged. In this context, we can see how their sacrifices might be rejected as having little or nothing to do with true service of God. The ability to involve oneself in ritual without its impacting one’s other actions shows that the ritual itself is so flawed as to be almost useless. Any time observance can comfortably coexist with glaring inadequacies, the rituals are not as whole as they could be, and may lose their meaning completley.

Yet the people observing them assume they are better than okay with God, they are doing what God wants. Imagine the situation Yeshayahu depicts, a Jew coming to genuflect before God, arms outstretched beseechingly, when he has killed someone. While we may not know people who embody quite as glaring a contradiction, a little honest reflection, I suspect, will give many examples from within segments of the Jewish community we think of as our own.

As a side note, the comparison to Sodom also reminds us how rare it is for evil people to think of themselves that way. Even in Sodom, perhaps, the people thought they had a workable morality, and were shocked when destruction rained down on them. Evil moralities are not always obviously so, and sometimes it is the reverse—the evil morality is more obvious and intuitive than the one upon which God insists.

That same problem bedevils our ability to rise to the challenge Yeshayahu offers, in which God guarantees inconceivable forgiveness if only we hear God’s true messages. Since everybody thinks they’re listening to God’s messages, how do we separate the true from the false or flawed ones, and then convince others of that truth? Like I said before, beware what we eliminate as impossible, because sometimes that is exactly what God seeks.

Two final points are all I have space for. First, the gemara uses a verse in our haftarah as proof that the Jews of Yeshayahu’s time would reject rebuke by pointing out similar flaws in the person raising the point. The tragedy in that scenario is a)that everyone had the flaws, so no one was free of taint, but more importantly, b) that people could not accept criticism that accurately captured their flaws, because of the failings of the person bringing it up. It is never pleasant to deal with a hypocrite, or someone so in denial about themselves that they do not realize the irony in their criticism, but if the point they make is true, it behooves us to learn from it anyway.

When God Does It, It Will Not Be Nearly as Much Fun

The last point, vital to stress repeatedly since no one I know believes this, is that the other option always out there is that God will bring the redemption by cleansing us of the sinners in our midst. That cleansing, which may not happen all at once, will be painful, with segments of our nation being killed or punished for their wrongs.

If we repent without denial, we can find the God of Mercy. If not, the God of Truth (same God, different modes) will purify the nation, actualizing truths we have been avoiding all these years. We can get to redemption ourselves by meriting it, or have God drag us there. As we face yet another Tisha B’Av without having taken the first road—not an easy one, either, since it involves giving up our self-serving untruths—we can hope that this will be the year we absorb the messages we need to, and merit the true and complete return for which we all long. Shabbat Shalom.

Isa.1
[1] The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.
[2] Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the LORD hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
[3] The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib: but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
[4] Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the LORD, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward.
[5] Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
[6] From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment.
[7] Your country is desolate, your cities are burned with fire: your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate, as overthrown by strangers.
[8] And the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city.
[9] Except the LORD of hosts had left unto us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
[10] Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.
[11] To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the LORD: I am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of lambs, or of he goats.
[12] When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts?
[13] Bring no more vain oblations; incense is an abomination unto me; the new moons and sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting.
[14] Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.
[15] And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you: yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.
[16] Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;
[17] Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow.
[18] Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.
[19] If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land:
[20] But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.
[21] How is the faithful city become an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness lodged in it; but now murderers.
[22] Thy silver is become dross, thy wine mixed with water:
[23] Thy princes are rebellious, and companions of thieves: every one loveth gifts, and followeth after rewards: they judge not the fatherless, neither doth the cause of the widow come unto them.
[24] Therefore saith the Lord, the LORD of hosts, the mighty One of Israel, Ah, I will ease me of mine adversaries, and avenge me of mine enemies:
[25] And I will turn my hand upon thee, and purely purge away thy dross, and take away all thy tin:
[26] And I will restore thy judges as at the first, and thy counsellers as at the beginning: afterward thou shalt be called, The city of righteousness, the faithful city.
[27] Zion shall be redeemed with judgment, and her converts with righteousness.

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    Learning on the Marcos and Adina Katz YUTorah site is sponsored today by Judy & Mark Frankel & family l'ilui nishmos מרדכי בן הרב משה יהודה ע"ה and משה יהודה ז"ל בן מאיר אליהו ויהודית