Whats our “day after” vision?

We, as Jews, have long been preoccupied with our vision for “the day after.”

Since infighting brought our Temple up in flames 2,000 years ago, we’ve been envisioning the day after.

Each time one gives Tzedakah, they are bringing the world closer to the “day after.”

At the end of the Seder, when we shout “Next Year in Jerusalem,” we are asking to realize the “day after.”

And when we sing *Oseh Shalom…Hu Yaseh Shalom,* we are longing for this “day after.”

How has our nation held onto a vision for two millennia? How did we carry that vision from Iraq, where we wrote the Talmud, to Spain, from which we were later expelled? How did that vision get passed from mothers in the ghetto to children in a free world?

Our vision for a better tomorrow fills our prayers and rituals, our poetry and our pain. It is a vision we hold dear, and it is one that, on occasion, is shown to us from above.

The mystics tell us that this Shabbat, the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, known as Shabbat Chazon, is a Shabbat of Vision. On it, the soul is granted a vision of the future, one which touches and motivates it to keep striving to make that better “day after” a reality.

In the words of Rabbi Levi Yitzchok of Barditchev:

A father tailors a garment for his child. Irresponsibly, the child rips the garment beyond repair. So the father tailors a second one. Once again, the child ruins it. The father tailors a third garment and shows it to the child: “The garment is ready, as soon as you are.”

We are the child. Our Father in Heaven gave us two Temples, splendid portals of Divinity. During the first, our people embraced paganism, bloodshed, and immorality, and it was destroyed. During the second, infighting and senseless hatred led to its destruction.

The era of universal peace and harmony, of purpose and good—the era of the Third Beit HaMikdash (Temple)—is only waiting for us. On this Shabbat, we are shown a vision of that future era—a promise that it is simply waiting for us to actualize and a motivation to make it happen.

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It was the first holiday after their liberation, and in a DP camp, Rabbi Yekusiel Yehuda Teitelbaum, who lost a wife and ten children in the Holocaust, was leading a group in prayer when he suddenly screamed towards heaven:

“Master of the Universe, this is not the liberation we hoped for! The liberation we prayed for was the liberation heralded by Elijah the prophet, not one headed by troops and tanks!”

Our vision for the “day after” is one that is truly transformative, one in which the “wolf lies with the lamb” and nations “beat their swords into plowshares.”

This Shabbat, our soul is shown that vision—not just a vision of the hostages coming home, but a transformative vision that justifies the 2,000 painful years it took to arrive there.

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Questions, comments? I would love to hear from you! Email me at RabbiMotti@JPortland.com