Shabbat Hazon: Parshat Devarim and Tisha b’Av

Screenshot of Yeats, The Second Coming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWYyqZJ0kW8

This shabbat is a “special” shabbat called shabbat hazon. It always occurs on the shabbat when we start reading the book of Deuteronomy which is always the shabbat before Tisha b’Av and it is called hazon (prophecy) because we read the third haftarah of admonition from the book of Isaiah which begins with the words חזון ישעיהו, the prophecy of Isaiah who prophesied about the destruction of Judah and Jerusalem during the days of four kings of Judah (c.785-698 B.C.E). The word eichah אֵיכָ֥ה appears both in this haftarah, our parsha and of course is the first word of the book of Lamentations (also called eichah):

וָאֹמַ֣ר אֲלֵכֶ֔ם בָּעֵ֥ת הַהִ֖וא לֵאמֹ֑ר לֹא־אוּכַ֥ל לְבַדִּ֖י שְׂאֵ֥ת אֶתְכֶֽם...אֵיכָ֥ה אֶשָּׂ֖א לְבַדִּ֑י טׇרְחֲכֶ֥ם וּמַֽשַּׂאֲכֶ֖ם וְרִֽיבְכֶֽם

אֵיכָה֙ הָיְתָ֣ה לְזוֹנָ֔ה קִרְיָ֖ה נֶאֱמָנָ֑ה מְלֵֽאֲתִ֣י מִשְׁפָּ֗ט צֶ֛דֶק יָלִ֥ין בָּ֖הּ וְעַתָּ֥ה מְרַצְּחִֽים׃

אֵיכָ֣ה ׀ יָשְׁבָ֣ה בָדָ֗ד הָעִיר֙ רַבָּ֣תִי עָ֔ם הָיְתָ֖ה כְּאַלְמָנָ֑ה רַבָּ֣תִי בַגּוֹיִ֗ם שָׂרָ֙תִי֙ בַּמְּדִינ֔וֹת הָיְתָ֖ה לָמַֽס׃

Because of the verbal confluence of these three sources, the torah and/or haftarah reader often chants most of the passages to the mournful tune of the te-amim/trope/cantillations of the book of Eicha.

Deuteronomy starts out by making clear that these are Moses’s last words to all Israel. The opening book is full of kvetches and threats that set the stage for the main message of the book, which is that we are God’s specially chosen people (for better or worse) and that we have to obey God or else. In verse 9, Moses complains that “I cannot bear the burden of you alone (לבדי) by myself. And in Verse 12 he again states “how can I bear by myself (לבדי), unaided the trouble of you, and the burden and the bickering?” Although the solution to this was given him by Yitro in the book of Exodus (chapter 18) there is no mention of Yitro’s contribution. Moses wants to take all the credit for himself. Sounds familiar? And Moses continues with the retelling of all the bad things that Israel did during the 40 years in the wilderness. He accuses the people of a lack of faith, which is the worst thing imaginable. In verse 35 he refers to them as the evil generation (הדור הרע הזה) who will not get to see the good land (which of course includes himself). God is not willing to listen to the entreaties of the people even when they say in verse 41 “we stand guilty before God; we’ll go up and fight”. God will not listen to them. This is a foreshadowing of the exile from Israel which will take place many years later. The refrain is “if you sin, you will be punished”. This is something we read daily in the second passage of the Shema which also comes from Deuteronomy. The first passage comes from next week’s parsha, which is a statement that there is only one God whom we are commanded to wholeheartedly love (Deuteronomy 6:4-9). It is almost like a loyalty oath. However, the second passage which comes in parshat ekev is very ominous, where rainfall is contingent on our behavior. If we behave and are loyal to God, there will be rain, if we sin, there will be drought:

“Take care not to be lured away to serve other gods…. for the Lord’s anger will flare up…and he will shut up the skies so that there will be no rain….and you will soon perish from the good land that the Lord is assigning to you” (Deuteronomy 11: 13-17).

The doomsday prediction that begins in Deuteronomy is carried over into Isaiah and then reaches its peak in the book of Eicha. Jerusalem, the city, the people, described mostly as women, are widowed. God appears to be dead to them; worse he is an avenger who not only does not protect them, but adds suffering upon suffering to them. Reading the book in light of the Holocaust or October 7^th is agonizing. We can also read the word eicha, by splitting the word eich—ah; or in Hebrew איך ה. And then we can ask, how is it that God (heh—‘ה ) allowed all this to happen? Or we can play around further and add a yod to the word and then ask ayeka—אייכה? Where are you? Which is what God asks of Adam and Eve when they hide themselves after the first sin. I am not the first to point out that eicha points to us, to find out how did all this happen? And if we can figure it out, will there be a solution? The ayeka points back to us, we are the locus of the story and it is up to us to do something, to change direction perhaps, to think out of the box? By playing around with god’s name, yah, the yud and the heh, we can perhaps rethink our destiny. Up to now, we sin, we are punished; God takes pity on us; we are forgiven. Then we sin again and are punished ad infinitum. One wonders where are we located now on this cycle of permanent abuse. We are constantly admonished to make better choices and we repent, but then go back to our old ways. What’s amazing is that we are still here as a nation. There are revealing midrashim which explain it all, but are actually horrifying scenarios to me.

THREE HORRIFIC MIDRASHIM

Another interpretation of HOW IS SHE BECOME AS A WIDOW! R. Hama b. Ukba and the Rabbis offer explanations. R. Hama b. Ukba said: It may be likened to a widow who demanded her alimony but not her marriage settlement. The Rabbis said: It may be likened to a king who was angry with his consort and wrote out her get, but got up and snatched it from her. Whenever she wished to remarry, he said to her, ‘ Where is your get? ‘ and whenever she demanded her alimony, he said to her, ‘ But have I not divorced you? ‘ Similarly, whenever Israel wished to practice idolatry, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to them, “Where is the bill of your mother’s divorcement?” (Isa. 50, 1); and whenever they wished that He should perform miracles for them as formerly, the Holy One, blessed be He, said to them, “Have I not already divorced you?” That is what is written, I had put her away and given her a bill of divorcement (Jer. 3, 8) (EICHA RABBA 1:3).

My reading of this midrash is that God is toying with us. On the one hand, he doesn’t want responsibility for our suffering; on the other hand, he won’t let us go (i.e. divorce us). The reader might understand this positively—we are willing to put up with a lot, so that we can continue to worship God and do not have to be parted from Him. There is another more frightening midrash:

Another matter, “if you lend money to My people,” that is what is written: “Rejected silver they called them [as the Lord has rejected them]” (Jeremiah 6:30). When Israel was exiled from Jerusalem, the enemies took them out in chains and the nations of the world were saying: ‘The Holy One blessed be He does not want this nation,’ as it is stated: “Rejected silver they called them.” Just as silver is refined and crafted into a vessel, and again refined and crafted into a vessel, and likewise several times, but the last time the person crumbles it in his hand and it is no longer used in crafting, so too, they would say of Israel that they have no possibility of recovery because the Holy One blessed be He has rejected them, as it is stated: “Rejected silver they called them.”
When Jeremiah heard this, he came to the Holy One blessed be He, and said to Him: ‘Master of the universe, is it true that You have rejected your children?’ That is what is written: “Have You rejected Judah, has Your soul despised Zion? Why have You smitten us and we have no cure?” (Jeremiah 14:19). This is analogous to one who would beat his wife. Her friend said to him: ‘Until when will you continue to beat her? If you wish to divorce her, beat her until she dies. If you do not wish to divorce her, why are you beating her?’ [The husband] said to him: ‘Even if my entire palace is destroyed, I will not divorce my wife.’ So too, Jeremiah said to the Holy One blessed be He: ‘If you wish to send us away, smite us until we die, as it is stated: “For, You have rejected us, You have been exceedingly angry with us” (Lamentations 5:22). If not, why have you smitten us and there is no cure?’ The Holy One blessed be He said to him: ‘Even if I were to destroy My world, I will not send Israel away,’ as it is stated: “So said the Lord: If the heavens above can be measured [and the foundations of the earth below probed, I too will spurn all the descendants of Israel]” (Jeremiah 31:36).

What the king is doing is illegal. In a real divorce situation, once the get, the bill of divorce is given, it cannot be retracted. The king is lying when he denies divorcing her. There are no clear explanations for God/the King’s behavior. It is clear that God is both alienated from and bound to Israel. In anthropomorphizing God, the sages are able to portray God’s full complexity. The result is that the wife has the legal status of an aguna, the chained woman.

In the third midrash below we should all ask: What is the point of all of this? Is it to punish the wife even more? The use of negative feminine metaphors to depict God’s relationship with Jerusalem is both dangerous and powerful. And last but not least, we have the awful explanation, that we the battered people give to ourselves about how we are willing to take this and not give up. Read the midrash and you will see how problematic it is:

Another thing about [“The Lord’s wrath I will bear, for I have sinned against him” (Micah 7:9)]: This is like a strong man who hits another person with a slap (like a strike that gives him 400 gold coins and he hits him with his hand on the cheek) and immediately kills him with a powerful blow (a deadly punch or strike). He goes back to his house and hits his wife with one slap from his hand, but she stands strong. They said to her, “The strength of your endurance is harder than that of all the athletes (soldiers) and all the mighty men who die from one powerful blow and one slap. How much more did you suffer from him, and yet you can stand?” She answered them, “The same one who strikes them with all his might also strikes me, but when he strikes me according to my strength, I can stand.” This is what the Lord said, “For I, the Lord, do not change, and so you, O descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed” (Malachi 3:6)….. “From the noise of the tumult, peoples shall flee” (Isaiah 33:3), but “you sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Malachi 3:6), as it is written, “Only against me have they sinned” (Lamentations 1:8). The Lord says: “The strength of Israel is severe, with half their strength gone you are not consumed” (Amos 3:2). As it is written, “I will heap disasters on them” (Deuteronomy 32:23) “[Half their strength] I will consume,” but “you are not consumed.” Therefore, the Lord says, “I will raise my anger.”

In this midrash, God is likened to a heroic figure with great strength who hits another man who immediately dies from the blow. This “hero”/God then goes into his house and hits his wife/Israel who withstands the blow. Her neighbors say to her, “all the great athletes have been killed from one of the hero’s blows—but you are able to survive more than one blow.” She answers them that “he hits them with all his might, out of anger, but to me, he gives what I am able to take”. The idea is that the people of Israel can stand up to God’s anger? God hits us and then returns immediately and re-creates us. Is this the comfort that Israel can take in our unique relationship to God? This last midrash conflates love with abuse. He does this to us, because He loves us—and that’s why we take it! Is it time to step up and say to the abusive God: We are mad and will not take this anymore, as was famously said in the movie Networks (1976).

David Blumenthal in “Who is Battering Whom?” suggested a theology of protest in response to the possibility that abusiveness is an attribute of God. He wrote that the definition of abuse is when the punishment is out of proportion to the sin. In his mind, God is sometimes abusive, and in wrestling with this truth, one must acknowledge and react to it. But the serious question is why do we have such midrashim?

SUFFERING IN JUDAISM—BLAMING OURSELVES

We are very good at blaming ourselves—which is not quite the same as taking responsibility for what we have done. Or perhaps it is. It’s something to think about. It is time to ask some hard questions about the role of suffering in Judaism, and in particular the role of women’s suffering, since the suffering of the Jewish people is so often depicted through feminine images. We are now forced to live with the consequences of a patriarchal world view. Rather than imprison abusive men, or at least putting electronic tags on their ankles, women go into hiding or run the risk of being killed. Conventional attitudes toward women are still being transmitted to us as part of our heritage and too often society responds unquestioningly to these views as if they were absolute truths. As we slowly slouch towards a theocracy, that tolerates abuse of both the other, which includes the weaker sex, foreigners, illegal aliens and captives, we should be hyper-alert to the dangers bought on by our patriarchal tradition. I think that a poem by Yehuda Amichai has captured an insight about the consequences of how so many of us think that we are in the right and the rest of the people are in the wrong. We see the deleterious effect on relationships in this poem about a home that has been destroyed by people who are always so right. The home (bayit) echoes the destruction of the Jewish national home (ha-bayit ha-leumi) and the Divine home, the Temple in Jerusalem (Beit haMikdash) both destroyed by unfounded hatred (sin’at hinam): His poem has been set to music.

“The Place Where We are Right”

by Yehuda Amichai

From the place where we are absolutely right

flowers will never grow in the spring.

The place where we are absolutely right

is trampled, hardened

like a courtyard.

However, doubts and loves

make the world rise like dough

like a molehill, like a plow.

And a whisper will be heard

in the place where a home [bayit/bet hamikdash] was destroyed.