As many of you know, I returned last night from 10 days in Downeast, Maine, Mt. Desert Island, Acadia National Park, etc. It’s a place so beautiful my dad was moved to say, on our first visit 30 years ago: “Moses must have made a wrong turn somewhere in the desert!”

Alas, the natural beauty of fir trees, salt air, and craggy, rocky mountains is not always accompanied by sunny weather. There’s always some misty days. This year there were many, most of our vacation, in fact. Everyone was talking about global warming and its affects, given the unusual nature of the storms with lightning and thunder and torrential downpours, sort of what we had here a few weeks ago.

While out for a walk one day – reminded of a similarly cloudy stormy day in the January of 1996. I was in Jordan on top of Mt. Nebo, reading the last words of the last of the five books of Moses – Devarim, that describe the view he had the day before he died. As consolation for not getting to go into the land, God showed him the land from the finger of the Galilee in the north, to the Negev desert in the south, from the great sea, the Mediterranean, to the mountains on which he stood. It was breathtaking and quite moving, to, as the spiritual puts it: stand on the rock where Moses stood.

We begin this Shabbat the yearly reading of Devarim, or, as its known in Greek and English,
Deuteronomy. The name comes from two greek words, Deutero, which means “second” and “nomos”, which means law. Hence, Deuteronomy is the second telling of what happened during the forty years in the desert, as remembered by Moses. In a way, it’s Moses’s farewell speech, given not to those he left Egypt with but to their children who are about to cross the Jordan into the promised land.

Interestingly, when Moses tells them of what their parents had done for forty years in the desert, Moses doesn’t say what THEY did, but says: what YOU did. He drums into the second generation the experience of the first, making it their own, hoping that they will assimilate it and thus be able to avoid the pitfalls and mistakes made by their parents. More radically still, the message is pitched even to us living in the twenty first century; we are the “you” Moses included that day. We too stand at a juncture, at the banks of a river whose far shore holds incalculable challenges and blessings, if we will only be wise enough to discern which is which.

At this time of the year, the link between Moses’s last speech and who each of us is here today finds full expression in the cycle of ten Haftarah readings preceding the High Holy Days. This Shabbat is the last of three Shabbatot preceding the ninth day of Av, tisha b’av, the day we recall the destruction of the first and second temple. These three weeks of Torah and Haftarot preceding the ninth of Av are filled with words of reproof, as Moses warns and condemns the Israelites, and the prophets follow suit. After tisha ‘ b’av, however, the tone changes entirely. Verses of consolation, Nechemta, flow to the people, to soothe them and remind them that no matter how bad things had gotten, better time would soon be at hand.

This week’s Haftarah is taken from the Book of Isaiah, and it’s theme is so powerful the entire Shabbat is named in its honor. Shabbat Hazon, the Sabbath of vision.

And what is the vision we speak of? To answer, let’s transport ourselves back two hundred years ago, to the back of the classroom of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, who lived in late eighteenth century Eastern Europe. He begins his lecture asserting that Shabbat Hazon is so named because on this Shabbat, the Shabbat immediately preceding Tisha B’Av, every Jewish person is afforded a vision of the third Temple, rebuilt to the glory of its predecessors.

Permit me to share a parable, says the rabbi, in order to illustrate what I mean.

Once, there was a king who had a garment made for his son. When the son received the garment he wore it out in no time, climbing, running, jumping and sliding in the dirt in the stables. The King preceded to make his son a second garment, but this one, too, soon was soiled and unusable. The King made a third garment, but this one he kept and didn’t give to his son. He held it up and said: when you are ready, you will receive the garment.

Reb Levi Yitzhak finished the story, inhaled briskly, and asked: what do I mean by this story?

A student in the front of the study hall quickly rose to his feet. Clearly, he said, the garments stand for the destroyed temples. And the third withheld garment for the third yet to be rebuilt temple you say we can have a vision of today. But I have a question for you: why does the parable use a garment as a metaphor for the Temple? Shouldn’t it have been something else? I mean, a garment doesn’t last forever; it frays and over time falls apart. The Temple, but for our forebears’ backsliding, would have lasted forever. Why not compare the Temple to an object made of metal or stone, something enduring and indestructible?


Reb Levi Yitzhak waited a few moments and looked out to the students. Does anyone have a response? It’s a reasonable question. Why is the parable about a gift of a garment rather than of metal or stone?

Toward the back of the room, a student lifted his hand slowly. “Yes, it’s true that a garment is transient, much moreso than a building. But the point may not be about the building as a structure, but about the Temple as something more.

In other words, think about a garment. Little by little, it takes on the character of the person who wears it. The problem with the king’s son was that he didn’t realize how his behavior would ruin the garment and make it entirely ineffective. So too the Israelites didn’t realize that their behavior would sully the Holy temple, making it unfit as a place to honor God. Only once the people saw the connection between their behavior and the temple would God be willing to rebuild a third temple.

…A Sabbath parable in the shadow of Tisha b’Av, the day we remember our cultures most articulate expression of its love for God, the Temples, and how our own misdeeds brought them to dust. A message for us corporately to be sure, but also for us as individual, solitary human beings who yearn for the capacity to change ourselves to more fully embody who we want to be and should be. As the hope of a rebuilt temple endures among some of our people, may the new year enable us to realize the promise each of us holds for repentance, redemption and growth.

Shabbat Shalom.