DRASH – CHAZON

Rabbi Dr. Aviva Kipen

Leo Baeck Centre, Melbourne

Named for the vision chazon of Isaiah, whose prophecy provides this week’s haftarah, Shabbat Chazon falls on the 5th of Av. Chazon draws The Three Weeks, which anticipate the fall of the Temple on 9th Av, to a close. Chazon anticipates our spiritual reenactment of the historic destructions, expulsions and calamities, reinforcing the date as one of notoriety throughout the generations. The chilling proclamation of Isaiah lists “heinous transgressions” (My Jewish Learning).  This third haftarah of the series anticipates Tish’a b’Av as a goad, the rabbis (who emerged much later) having linked the condemnations of Isaiah to events at least a century later, the 586BCE destruction of the first Temple by the Babylonians. The tone of language is unambiguous: God doesn’t deal with hypocrites. God sees through empty ritual, whose underlying interpersonal care and commitment to justice have been subsumed to window dressing and are of no genuine benefit to the needy. Split between Northern and Southern Kingdoms since 931BCE, Isaiah is indeed goading his own people! ‘Pay attention Southerners, or you may also disappear like your northern brethren. After the Assyrian conquest in 722BCE, if you want to be the final two lost “tribes” then carry on as you are …. ‘

It is uncomfortable reading and leaves behind a theology of action and consequence. So too the upbraidings of Devarim [Deuteronomy 1 always coincides with this reading] in the resonant ‘choose blessings rather than curses’ formula, as repeated in a heightening despair by Moses, who knows that the people go forward to the new chapter of their corporate life without him. The fall of each Temple and other grotesque anniversaries have been orchestrated on this dire date. So, the pivot from admonition to consolation from this Shabbat to the next, is startling. Is that because we demand God’s countenance, as a despairing infant demands its needs be met by screaming until someone comes? Can the Divine Face be made to turn by our wailing? Could we withstand the idea that there is no hope (having set anguish-provoking haftarot for these three Shabbatot) were there not weeks and weeks of consolation orchestrated to follow, beginning with Shabbat Nachamu?

Where do faith and history meet? By what means is the “sacred score card” of our realpolitik tallied against our religiously motivated lives? How do we distinguish between “revisionism” as opposed to “the reality of multiple viewpoints” representing the complexity of victor and vanquished, trusted and manipulated, pure rather than naïve? The last book of Torah winds us towards the reality that nothing ends, that the opportunity of return to a new chance for better outcomes must be at the heart of the human condition. Were that not so, we would be in utter despair, at the low point of the Three Weeks, without any hope for a new start. We may reject many of the images of punishment listed by Isaiah, but we have plenty of tortures of our own to inflict upon ourselves, our congregations and the world at large. Grapple in the depths! Lower to the floor and wail on the night of Wednesday 22nd July, fast on Thursday 23rd. But there is no hope at all, unless we rise and respond to Isaiah’s bigger vision. We try for a better outcome, for us and for everyone. Shabbat shalom: let’s pause for reflection and renew our energy, to try for a better world.