What I said to my congregation on Shabbat:

Today is known as Shabbat Hazon—the Shabbat of Vision. It is taken from the first word of today’s haftarah which we will chant shortly. This is the vision of Isaiah…

That vision is a terrifying one, one of Jerusalem being destroyed and the Temple along with it. He urges immediate repentance so that his vision is avoided. This is the portion we read every year on the Shabbat before Tisha B’av which we will observe as a congregation on Monday night and Tuesday.

One of the connections between today’s parsha, the beginning book of D’varim and the haftarah is the use of a single word. Eicha. How. Eicha is also the opening word of the Book of Lamentations. At first it would appear that by pairing our Torah and haftarah the vision is just one of impending doom. We should only be focused on tragedy and mourning. And sometimes, especially at this season, that seems to be all we Jews talk about. Or is it?

Let’s look at the question Moses and Isaiah are each asking.
Moses says, Eicha, How can I do this alone? How can I bear alone your stress and your burden and your quarrelling? How can I lead this people. This is the beginning of his long farewell address, his ethical will, if you will. He has been doing it for 38 years and he is tired. Worn out. Exhausted. This is a stiffnecked, stubborn people that do nothing but complain and kvetch and believe that they can’t get to the Promised Land. They would rather be back in Egypt. Change is always difficult.

Isaiah painfully observes and asks, Eicha / How it has (or How has it) become as a harlot, a faithful city ”full of justice, in which righteousness would lodge; and now murderer.”
Rabbi Regina Sandler Phillips points out that Moses’s question, Eicha, How can I bear this alone can be understood two ways. One is rhetorical. It is a lament. I can’t do this. The other is the way of problem solving. How can I do this? Let’s find a way. The answer is I can. I would add, together we can. Together we can figure this out.
Isaiah’s question can also be understood two ways. One is lamentation—How terrible it is; the world as we know it is coming to an end. The other way, as Regina points out is one of analysis: How has it become so terrible and what can we do to fix it.
She argues that we need both ways of reading the questions. We need the lamentation and the grief and the mourning. We need to feel our feelings before we can rush into to fix something. She cautions, using Isaiah’s own later words, that our analyzing often leads to sh’lach etzba, literally fingerpointing, where no one takes personal responsibility. Hey, after all, it’s not my fault.
Lamentation is not all bad. The challenge of this question Eicha, How, is to understand the vision and the need for lamentation. G-d understood our need to mourn and saw it as a communal responsibility.
Thus says the Eternal-One of Hosts: Consider, and call for the mekonenot/ lamenting-women, that they may come; and send for the wise-women, that they may come. And let them hasten and raise a wailing over us, that our eyes may run down with tears, and our eyelids gush waters….So hear, women, the word of the Eternal-One, and let your ear receive the word of God s mouth; and teach your daughters wailing, and every woman teach her neighbor lamentation. (Jeremiah 9:16-17, 19)

I want to underscore that: Hear the word of the Eternal One, and let your ear receive the word of G-d’s mouth. Next week when we study the Sh’ma in depth we will read about the need to hear what the words of your mouth is saying in order for the Sh’ma to “count,” in order for us to be “yotzei,” fulfilled in our obligation. We also therefore need to be able to hear our cries, our mourning, our lamentations.

The Mishnah asks What is lamentation? That one (woman) speaks and all the rest respond after her… as it is said, quoting this verse from Jeremiah, teach your daughters wailing and every woman teach her neighbor lamentation. (Moed Katan 3:9) So lamentation was a call and response, a repeat after me kind of song and it was part of women’s leadership. Women knew how to lament, how to mourn and they taught it to their daughters, to their neighbors from generation to generation.

Nevertheless I don’t want to mourn. I am uncomfortable with it. I want to live in the present. I want to enjoy this beautiful summer weather. I don’t necessarily even want to plan for the future, to figure out how to execute the vision that this congregation has worked so hard to develop. I came to Elgin because I was impressed with the process of visioning that this congregation intentionally went through. It was hard work. There were complaints along the way. I sometimes feel like Moses, Eicha, How can I do this alone. But you were seeking a partner, not a solitary leader. I don’t have to. Together, you and I with G-d can figure this out.

Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev gives us a deeper meaning to this idea of vision.
A father once prepared a beautiful suit of clothes for his son. But the child neglected his father’s gift, and soon the suit was in tatters. The father gave the child a second suit of clothes; this one, too, was ruined by the child’s carelessness. So, the father made a third suit. This time, however, he withholds it from his son. Every once in a while, on special and opportune times, he shows the suit to the child, explaining that when the child learns to appreciate and properly care for the gift, it will be given to him. This induces the child to improve his behavior, until it gradually becomes second nature to him—at which time he will be worthy of his father’s gift.
On the “Shabbat of Vision,” says Rabbi Levi Yitzchak, each and every one of us is granted a vision of the third and final Temple—a vision that, to paraphrase the Talmud, “though we do not ourselves see, our souls see.” This vision evokes a profound response in us, even if we are not consciously aware of the cause of our sudden inspiration.
G-d presence is everywhere. It is a basic principle of our faith in the One G-d. The entire earth is filled with His presence” (Isaiah 6:3) and “There is no place void of Him” (Tikkunei Zohar 57). Nonetheless, G-d is closer to us in Jerusalem. I remember being in Jerusalem just before Tisha B’av one year where an Orthodox rabbi explained to me that you can encounter G-d anywhere, but here is where G-d dwells and you can meet Him (always a Him) with his newspaper and bedroom slippers. It was an image that worked for me. Somehow in the intensity of the July heat in Jerusalem it is just easier to find G-d.
Chabad.org said it this way: “The Holy Temple was a breach in the mask, a window through which G-d radiated His light into the world. Here G-d’s involvement in our world was openly displayed by an edifice in which miracles were a “natural” part of its daily operation and whose very space expressed the infinity and all-pervasiveness of the Creator. Here G-d showed himself to man, and man presented himself to G-d.” In Jerusalem we can see G-d, we can meet G-d. That is part of the vision.
Twice we were given the gift of the Holy Temple. Twice that Temple was destroyed and we were exiled and the Divine Presence was banished. Or was it? The Shekinah is referred to as the manifest presence of G-d in the Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem throughout Rabbinic literature. It is present in the acts of public prayer, “Whenever ten are gathered for prayer, there the Shekinah rests” (Talmud Sanhedrin 39a); in righteous judgment,”when three sit as judges, the Shekinah is with them.” (Talmud Berachot 6a), and personal need “The Shekinah dwells over the headside of the sick man’s bed.” (Talmud Shabbat 12b).
We are told that “Wheresoever they were exiled, the Shekinah went with them.” (Megillah 29a). Some say that the doves that live at the Kotel are a sign of the Shcehinah’s ongoing dwelling. In our musaf service we pray for a return to Jerusalem and a return of the Temple. Midrash tells us that G-d will build us a third temple. It won’t be human construction and therefore it will be eternal and invincible. We will read a story Monday night about this Temple to be. For now, the midrash teaches that G-d has withheld this gift, this third suit of clothes, keeping it in a higher, heavenly sphere.
We get glimpses of it. Shabbat, according to Heschel, is a foretaste of the world to come where we will have easier access to the divine presence. And once a year, this week, on the Shabbat of Vision, we are able to see this third temple. We perceive a vision of the world at peace with itself and our Creator. What would that look like to you? How do you perceive this vision?
Why does Levi Yitzchak use a metaphor of a garment. It is so personal. Why not stick with the metaphor of G-d dwelling in His house, the Holy Temple? We had a good discussion here. A suit is something that you can grow into or out of and back into again, like being close to G-d’s presence. It is very personal, created just for you, fitting you just right. It has various compartments, pockets, hiding places. It can be beautiful or threadborn. It was like the sparks of Torah were flying and I could see our own communal sense of vision.
Then I explained what Levi Yitzchak meant. G-d chose to reveal His presence in our world in a “dwelling”—a communal structure that goes beyond the personal to embrace an entire people and the entire community. Yet the Holy Temple in Jerusalem also had certain garment-like features. It is these features that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak wishes to emphasize by portraying the Holy Temple as a suit of clothes. This goes back to our vision of embracing diversity—or dare I say it pluralism. The temple itself embraced diversity—it had separate sections for men, for women, even for the stranger among us. It had a special room, the Holy of Holies, just for the high priest and only for once a year, on the Day of Atonement. In fact, while we know about the Pharisees and Saducees and the Essenes, at the time of the destruction of the temple there were some 70 different sects. Each practicing Judaism as they saw it. Each having a different vision. Although the Temple expressed a single truth—the all-pervasive presence of G‑d in our world—it did so to each individual in a personalized manner. Although it was a “house” in the sense that it served many individuals—indeed, the entire world—as their meeting point with the infinite, each and every individual found it a tailor-made “garment” for his or her specific spiritual needs, according him or her a personal and intimate relationship with G-d. Levi Yitzchak’s teaching parallels the midrash that we all stood at Sinai and that G-d created a special voice for each person so that each person could hear just they needed to during the awesome experience of the revelation of Sinai. Hearing and seeing, listening and vision. That is what this week’s Torah and Haftarah portion are about.
For me then, Tisha B’av becomes a day not of lamentation and looking back, but looking forward and acting today to make the world a better place, a better place for the indwelling of G-d. Our parsha ends with hope. Joshua will lead the people and is told not to be afraid because G-d is with him. Moses is instructed to encourage him and strengthen him. None of us has to go it alone. We have our community and we have G-d. We do not need to be afraid. In the end, that is the vision.