As my parents died 10 and 15 years ago at a ripe old age and having raised 4 children, 11 grandchildren and some 20 great grandchildren, the task of cleaning out their home fell mostly to my older sister, Judith who lived closest to them, with the rest of us helping. For the half-Century before then, I had been in doubt as to what Parsha was read by me at the time I became Bar Mitzvah. I don’t think it was due to my having found an unguarded bottle of schnappes that forgotten day could be the source of my forgetting; it was more likely that reading Torah and cantillating the Haftorahs became something beloved to me, so that, I suspect, I’d read every portion multiple times and liked most of them. In any case, Bar Mitzvahs in the Orthodox Community during the late 50’s weren’t the Big Garish Bashes they became, somewhat later.
But back to my parents’ house. When we cleaned it out, I found a pamphlet for the reading for Shabbos Nachamu, this week’s Parsha. As my Brother’s Bar Mitzvah was earlier in the year and my Sisters were pre-Bas Mitzvah, Shabbos Nachamu must’ve been mine. This Shabbos, Jews read Moshe’s plea to God to allow him to cross the Jordan with his just-emancipated followers, the Ten Commandments (one of three times they’re read in services), and Isaiah and Handl’s “Comfort, ye. Co-ommmmmfort, ye-ee, my peo-ple.” Ach du lieber! This is my Bar Mitzvah Parsha some 60 years later.
It wasn’t so odd, I thought, after all: My Mother’s name was N’chama, the Comforter. I had before fascinated about the root word לנחם (l’nachem). In Isaiah, it certainly did seem to have the meaning of comforting. Isaiah watched the hardships accumulate on his sinning people and was promising that a day would come when things would be better. The root word, though, also appears in Genesis where God “Nachems” on his creation … וינחם על מעשיו, there meaning that he was dispairingly disappointed in the creations that he once celebrated. Abel in the 19th Century and Freud in the 20th believed that primal words oftentimes had antithetical meanings. Sacer, in Latin, was both Holy and Profane, as was the word Kadosh קדוש in Hebrew. Maybe, still I thought, the word refers to an ability to move from one feeling-position to another. When we comfort the mourner on a loss, we offer: “May the Holy One Blessed be (S)He, comfort you ינחם אתכם with the rest of the mourners of … the Holy City of Zion.” But we can also move from satisfaction to dissatisfaction, etc.
Ah! The freedom to not be stuck in one feeling but to have the flex to be ebullient AND to cry … to relish childish joy AS MUCH as we gather to jointly feel sadness. For a while, I was quite obsessed with the idea.
Any case, back on Trump’s Farm and right about this time in the Land of Milk and Money, it seems quite appropriate to find a little flex in the rigid partisanship in which we live and to permit ourselves moments of hopefulness in a Republic that is being threatened from within. Isaiah’s enemy was coming mostly from the outside, even if depressed Izzy blamed the Ba’al worshipping sinners who gave up their allegiance to their God. Here in the US of A, we’ve been through 5 years of a Two-Bit Would-Be-Emperor strutting on Shakespeare’s stage and uttering angry nonsense signifying nothing except destruction and his apres moi le deluge apocalyptic madnesses. We’re tired and angry and frightened.
This was, however, also a good, if wistful, week. We got to read the ethical will … the צוואה (tzava’ah … an old Jewish tradition of leaving a Will that deals with ethics more than China and Silverware) of a decent man on the day of his funeral. He told us in his own words to take heart … to not give up the fight … to keep our eyes on the prize. Listening to three past Presidents eulogize this brave man who kept getting into good mischief, I thought of the reading of our Great Leader, Moshe, and his difficulty in making peace with his mortality and to the dashing of his dreams to see the full-fruit of his own Dream. Only Congressman Lewis did it better.
Maybe, tomorrow in the Zoom-Shuls of the World, it would be appropriate to cantillate John Lewis’ New York Times piece … qua a new Haftorah … one that I’ve never had the honor to sing.
Congressman John Robert Lewis … You did real good! I/We loved your decency, your bravery and your heart. We loved you.
