Shabbat Nachamu

Torah study or prayer? Man or Woman? A transcendent perspective or an emphatic view? Two pathways through life, and two consolations in the future redemption...

The way our calendar is set up, Parshat Vaetchanan is always on Shabbat Nachamu, when we read the first haftarah of consoling.

My wife, Dina, once asked: “When every month you were losing more and more abilities to ALS, you just said, ‘Let’s figure out how to deal with it.’ How come it didn’t seem to faze you?”

The Shabbat following Tisha B’Av is known as “Shabbat Nachamu.” The name is taken from the opening word of the week’s haftarah.

This week’s haftorahIsaiah 40:1-26. is the first of seven consoling the Jewish people. After the Three Weeks of darkness and destruction, G‑d consoles us through the words of His prophet Isaiah. Each week, the consoling grows more and more powerful.Avudra...

The cycle of moving from darkness to light is expressed on this Shabbat, the Shabbat after the ninth of Av, the fast which commemorates the destruction of both the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.

The first of seven haftorahs describing G‑d’s promise of ultimate comfort and consolation begins with G‑d’s command to Isaiah, “Comfort, comfort My people!”

The Shabbat following Tisha B’Av is called Shabbat Nachamu due to the opening words of the haftorah: "Be comforted, be comforted my people"; why the double expression?

When you’re feeling sad, do you go to your father or to your mother? Is it transcendence that you seek, or the solacing embrace that assures us that nothing is meaningless, that everything we are and feel can be borne, inhabited and redeemed?