August 16, 2024
D’var by Betsy Fuchs
My family and I were members of Temple Beth Israel in Chicago when I turned 13 years old long ago in 1957. At that time Beth Israel was one of the few Jewish congregations that had Bas Mitzvahs for girls. However, the practice at my congregations was that the Rabbi wrote the d’var Torahs that both boys and girls presented after they read four Hebrew verses from Torah. The Rabbi wrote for me this extraordinary line as part of my d’var: “When I read my Torah portion tonight, I realized it full implications for the first time.” At 13, I did not understand one word of the verses I read from Torah and I could not have realized any important implications from the portion I read.
I start with this story because at Beth Emet where I belonged for many years and now at JRC, there have been many times I got new insights while attending services and studying Torah. And this week was one of those times for me.
Monday August 12 was Erev Tisha B’Av and some of us gathered at JRC to hear Lamentations. Cantor Howard chanted a few chapters and others were read by JRC Chaverim. Before Lamentations was read, we had a discussion sponsored by JRC’s Immigrant Justice and Racial Equity taskforces and the Israel-Palestine Working Group. Abby Harris-Ridker presented three questions and asked that we find a few people we didn’t know very well and discuss our answers with them. The questions were:
1) What does it mean to be in exile or be one who is exiled?
2) How do we determine where home is?
3) How do these questions resonate with you?
JRC is great at getting us to think about Judaism with the help of our chevarim, our companions and friends, some we may know well, and others may be new to us, some we may have met the first time at beach services this summer.
Our discussion and sharing at Tisha B’Av made us pay attention to the horrors described in Lamentations and to associations we made with what is going on in our dear country, our dear world and particularly as they relate to Israel and Palestine to immigration and racial equity problems in the U.S.
And I came to a new and surprising REAL insight while preparing for this d’var. I hadn’t noticed in the many years I’ve attended Tisha B’Av services and listened to Lamentations that on the Shabbat following Tisha B’Av, which is TODAY, the first of seven Haftorot of Consolation is read. After we sink low during the reading of Lamentations, on Shabbat we are presented with Isaiah Chapter 40 which starts this way in Hebrew
NACHAMU NACHAMU AHMEE
And translates to
Comfort, oh comfort my people.
And this year, at this season I have a new and deeper understanding of this one part of the Jewish calendar. And I take comfort in the words from Isaiah and I am grateful to our ancestors who paired Isaiah’s Nachamu verses with Lamentations.
And I am comforted by being a part of this loving and caring community which challenges me to live more fully in this world and – with all of you – to face today’s difficult realities and to do what we can to make the world a little better.
We are not alone.
We have each other and our wonderful Jewish traditions.
Shabbat Shalom.