WARNING Haftarah #2: How???

How did we get here? How did we allow things to get this bad, look the other way when our institutions became corrupted and immoral, and hand our fate over to the insane whims of power-hungry dictators??? These are, of course, the questions
that the ancient prophet Jeremiah posed to his audience in this week's Haftarah. Our rabbinic ancestors did two really clever things by putting this forward as the parallel text to our parashah. I'll get to those sneaky lessons in a minute. I first want to remind you that this is the second Haftarah (of three) that takes us from a minor fast day, the 17th of Tammuz, when the walls of Jerusalem were breached, to THE major day of sadness on our Jewish calendar, Tisha b'Av, the ninth of the month of Av, when the Temple was destroyed. Many other disasters also befell us on, or around, this day, so it's a catch-all for lamenting oppression and persecution. These are the three Haftarot of Rebuke, hence my titles for these blog posts are "WARNING Haftarah" #1, 2, and 3. But our grief and concern is not just historic; it is very much real and present-day. And the rabbis do NOT want you to forget it.

Jeremiah is mainly just focused on his contemporaries. They worship idols, and they form allegiances with nations that "should" be enemies, like Assyria and Egypt, and turn their backs on allies. Hard to imagine, I know. The prophet exclaims:

"How can you say, 'I am not defiled, I have not gone after the Ba'alim [idols]'?? Look at your deeds... consider what you have done!!" (2:23) Jeremiah is stunned that they would deny wrongdoing in the face of incontrovertible evidence. Now, I said Jeremiah was "just" focused on his compatriots, which made sense because he was facing a real-time crisis. However, by bringing his prophecies to their own audience, hundreds if not thousands of years later, the rabbis are sending an important message. Babylonia may be long gone, as are the Assyrians and the infamous Ba'alim-statues; but we're still violating God's laws and failing to care for God's vulnerable children. Tisha b'Av isn't just powerful because we remember the past; it challenges us to introspect and be better moving forward. These Haftarah texts prepare us for Tisha b'Av and remind us that we too are part of Jewish history, and we too have an obligation to make our societies and congregations the best they can be.

So here's the other smart trick the rabbis pull: a hidden linguistic link. Jeremiah's most powerful indictments, including the one I quoted above, start with the same word, "Eich," meaning "how." As in "HOW can you keep sinning like this?!?"

And it's a word that can lead you in many different directions, right? It's a genuine inquiry - "How did we get to this state of affairs?" - it's a rhetorical and indignant declaration - "How could our leaders be so callous?!?" - and also a hope and challenge for the future - "How will we work to improve our situation?" Furthermore, it's a question that requires specific answers, details, plans. Not just "why did it happen," but "how, precisely, are we going to start fixing it?" But the rabbis were even more clever still! The text we read next week on Tisha b'Av is the Book of Lamentations; a tragic story told by an author living post-destruction, who witnessed the ruin of his/her people, and who cries tears of utter despair. In Hebrew, Lamentations is called "Eicha," from the same root as the word "how," "Eich."

This single word thus represents a powerful bond between our two texts. And yet, their meanings are different. The first word in the Book of Lamentations is "Eicha," which can be translated as "Alas!" It is a deep, bitter, tragic outcry of grief.

Everything is ruined; all hope is gone. But if you just drop out one letter, we are instantly transported to Jeremiah, pleading with the people to change and be more caring... before it's too late. The rabbis don't just want us to learn ABOUT history; they want us to learn FROM history. Listen, I know there are many, many reasons to despair. "Alas" and "If only..." seem like ever-present lamentations on our minds and hearts. But the Bible is - and our ancient teachers are - challenging us to shift "Oy Vey" into "OK... how do we affect change?" We can't learn anything from history until we truly listen to what it's trying to tell us; that is why we read Jeremiah and Eicha. But if we treat our history like a museum, protected behind a glass wall, then we are failing to engage with it and make it applicable to our lives TODAY! Sooo... how do YOU want to read these texts and internalize these messages? How are you going to let it spur you to action? And how, ultimately, are you going to help change the world and make it a better place? The time is now, for all of us to ask "how."


Images in this blog post:
1. CC image courtesy of "Philip Halling / A crack in the wall, Newbridge on Usk / CC BY-SA 2.0" on Wikimedia Commons
2. CC image courtesy of hohum on Wikimedia Commons
3. CC image courtesy of AFIMSC on www.afimsc.af.mil
4. CC image courtesy of bukvoed on Wikimedia Commons