Shalom Chaverim!
This Shabbat is the Shabbat just prior to Tisha B’Av. It is called Shabbat Chazon, the “Shabbat of Vision”. In the Torah we read Parashat Devarim, and the haftarah begins with the words חֲזוֹן יְשַׁעְיָהוּ, chazon Yishayahu, “the vision of Isaiah.”
Maybe we need to dust off of this word חֲזוֹן, chazon – “vision”. We don’t speak of “vision” from day-to-day as we go about our busy lives. What is the long-term “vision” that guides us through the here-and-now? What are we aiming towards? Are we still oriented towards that goal? Is our path leading us there, even if circuitously? Is what we are going about doing in the meantime aligned with the values that our vision requires in order to be achieved ultimately? Does this “vision” continue to inspire and energize us?
Tisha B’Av is an annual reminder of our national story, a story that envisions the horizon wider than we usually see through the narrower perspective of each of our individual stories.
With all the turmoil and concern, grief and yet hope, worry and fear, and so much else over the last year (and still) for the Jewish People and for the world as a whole, seeing the “vision” once again is more necessary than ever. With regard to Israel, the vision is simple. We know what the vision is, even of so many in the world deny it: We came back to our land after two thousand years of exile to be a blessing to this region and a blessing to the entire world.
Sivan Rahav-Meir writes: Words like “redemption” or “holiness” never frightened our ancestors, neither in exile nor at the beginning of the Zionist movement. Today our lexicon is much more modest. We frequently talk about “rights” but not about our obligations, about global values but not traditional Jewish national values, and our grand hope is simply to create a system in which all of the tribes of Israel will somehow get along with each other – without a shared vision.
Our commentators explain that Shabbat Chazon is the Shabbat on which each one of us must expand our vision and imagine the maximum – the redemption of our nation and the personal redemption of each and every one of us. This is the time to pay attention to what is missing in the world, to absence, to space, to trouble, to distress – and to pray for the good….
Rav Kook once wrote: “We have begun to speak of great things, among ourselves and in the ears of the entire world, and we have not yet finished. We are still in the middle of our speech.” Tisha B’Av is not just a day to mourn what we have lost, but a day of remembering what is expected of us.
SHABBAT SHALOM!
Rabbi Michael