Vaetchanan (Nachamu): Finding Your Shema

The Jewish calendar is a funny thing. Most of the time it seems to just run along, following its own internal logic, and unrelated to the secular calendar, world events, or anything else outside itself. Yet every once in a while, the Jewish calendar can surprise us, and things don't seem so random and disconnected after all.

This week we're reading the Torah portion Vaetchanan, and it's also Shabbat Nachamu. "Nachamu" means "comfort," and it is always the first Shabbat after Tisha B'av, the day when we commemorate many major calamities throughout Jewish history. Shabbat Nachamu, the Shabbat of Comfort, begins a series of seven weekends leading up to Rosh Hashanah, throughout which we read special texts relating to comfort and hope, building ourselves up after Tisha B'av and preparing for the beginning of the New Year.

Shabbat Nachamu always coincides with Vaetchanan, and clearly there's something very appropriate about reading this text on this special weekend.

Vaetchanan contains both the recitation of the Ten Commandments and the Shema. These are two of our most major texts; one outlines the most important mitzvot in the Bible, and the other declares our central creed as Jews. On this Shabbat where we seek comfort, where we are picking ourselves up after having revisited thousands of years of Jewish tragedy, we also proclaim the essence of Judaism.

With everything going on in Israel right now, I think we are all in need of a little comfort. We all could use some re-examination, and a return to focusing on our core values. It may not be that the Shema gets your heart racing, or the Ten Commandments fill you with awe, but they do remind us of something essential: What do we stand for? What is the central principle, or principles, that make life worth living? We each need to figure that out for ourselves, and for our communities, because that is what gives us comfort and strength. That is what will lift us up and urge us forward.

So I ask you this weekend, on Shabbat Nachamu, to answer this question

for yourself: What is my Shema? What is the guiding principle that I return back to, that helps me understand who I am and what I believe in? We've got seven weeks to prepare for the start of the new year, and I think answering that question will be a big step in the right direction in preparing for the start of the New Year.