Teachings from Tradition
Rabbi Eddie Sukol
Parshat Vaetchanan
Deuteronomy, Chapter 3, verse 23 through Chapter 7, verse 11
Shabbat Nachamu (Sabbath of Consolation)
Haftarah: Isaiah, Chapter 40, verses 1 through 26
Just as music is composed of both notes and rests, so too the Torah consists of letters and blank spaces. To grasp fully the meaning of Torah we must understand not only the words scribed on the parchment, but the white space around them. As in art, the Torah has both positive and negative space and we derive understanding from both.
We must see the words of the Torah in order to read it. Yet the Torah, in a public setting, is typically chanted. This is Judaism’s aural tradition. The melody, the musical intonations, contribute to the meaning of the text. Thus we must not only see Torah, we must hear Torah. True listening requires that we are attuned to both the words of Torah and the silences surrounding them.
The Talmud teaches that we should strive to develop not only a listening ear, but also a listening heart. I think this is because we hear sound with our ears, but we understand silence with our soul. My teacher, Dr. Sheldon Blank, z’l, taught that we must strive to become sensitive to the sounds of the words that others speak and to the silences between.1
This week we observed the holiday of Tisha B’av, the Ninth of Av. It is the saddest Jewish holiday, commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other calamities that befell the Jewish people on that date.
This Shabbat, immediately after Tisha B’av, is known as the Sabbath of Consolation, Shabbat Nachamu. It takes its name from the special Haftarah (prophetic reading) from the prophet Isaiah selected by the rabbis for this Shabbat.
"Be comforted, be comforted my people, says your God."
".נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ עַמִּי יֹאמַר אֱלֹהֵיכֶם"
"Nachamu, nachamu ami, yomar eloheichem."
(Isaiah 40:1)
Isaiah’s prophecy continues with words of comfort and consolation to a community that has suffered defeat at the hands of its enemies. Isaiah understood that the Jewish people needed to hear the words of God.
To avoid despair the community had to develop the ability and possess the strength to hear and to listen, meaning they needed to hear the words with their intellect and understand the silence with their souls. God’s voice, God's utterances, were made up of words and silences.
This principle is a kind of Jewish parallel to the concept of yin and yang that puts forth the idea of complementary, interconnected forces that are inherent to life and the existence of the universe. It is a theological expression of positive and negative space.
Isaiah’s prophecy is rooted in comfort and consolation. Mirroring Isaiah’s instruction to "be comforted," Estelle Frankel in her book Sacred Therapy teaches that each of us possesses the ability to heal and to renew our lives. She writes that the soul inside every person "enables…us to transform the difficult circumstances of our lives into something meaningful and holy. It is awakened whenever we discover the divine force of healing moving through our lives at the darkest of moments.”
Our task then is to listen to the words and the silences, to see the letters of Torah and the white spaces surrounding them, to hear the notes and the rests. Through this we will be comforted. Through this we will heal from our hurt.
This Shabbat I pray that Isaiah’s words, "Nachamu, nachamu, Be comforted, be comforted" ring in our ears and resonate in our soul.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Eddie Sukol
1.Convocation Honoring Robert Frost, 1960, Prophetic Thought: Essays and Addresses.