(Delivered August 2, 2025)

Shabbat shalom! 

I’ve often wondered at the old song—an oldie even when I was young—based on chapter 3 of Kohelet. To everything—turn, turn, turn—there is a season—turn, turn, turn. The cognitive dissonance that comes from the pairing of that tune—achingly sweet and lilting—with words from such an existentially bleak source always leaves me puzzled. Similarly, our Jewish calendar has an emotional rhythm to it that can be at odds with our surroundings. In years past, one of my longtime rabbis, Rav Claudia Kreiman, would invariably talk, in the weeks leading up to Tisha b’Av, about how disconcerting it is—in the season of ice cream and going to the beach—to have this holiday of purposeful, concentrated grief, a day on which everything crashes in on us, literally and figuratively. 

But that was before. 

On Shabbat Chazon, on this last day before Tisha b’Av in the year 5785, even the sunshine and the ice cream carry a feeling of heaviness, like a scene of carefree frolic in a movie, where only the audience knows the lurking danger that’s threatening our happy protagonists. 

In this time of political and social turmoil—in the US, in Israel, and around the world—Tisha b’Av comes right on time. Indeed, just as Tisha b’Av commemorates the destruction of the ancient Temples in Jerusalem, I have felt too often in these past weeks and months like the structures our society has relied upon for decades are crumbling, while we watch helplessly, shaking our fists at one another and shifting blame.

It is, as several people in our community have remarked to me in this week alone, a hard time to be a human on this planet.

As always, I look to the Torah, not because I expect it to fix everything. We’re grownups here, and we know that fixing is not really on the menu, even from our gorgeous tradition. But in the absence of fixing, Torah still and always offers us something to hold onto, something that can help us turn toward one another and direct our thoughts to what’s eternal. 

So Parshat Dvarim, this opening portion of the last book of the Torah, has a subtle theme running through it—maybe more of a thread than a theme—and that’s where I’ve found my anchor this week. Five times in this rather short parsha, the Israelites are told not to be afraid. Each one comes in a different kind of context—either legal or militaristic—and the truth is I don’t necessarily love those contexts. 

But when we go looking in the Torah, sometimes we have to allow ourselves to soften the lens through which we look, so that we can actually see more clearly. My mother often says, “You go into marriage with your eyes open, and then you close them a little.” So, ironically, on Shabbat Chazon—the Shabbat of Vision—I’m inviting us to blur our gaze just a little bit, in hopes of grasping something bigger.

With respect to these five reminders not to be fearful, the comfort we might be missing in the verses themselves, rises more to the surface when our Sages come in to interpret. For example, the first half of chapter 1, verse 17 says: 

לֹא־תַכִּירוּ פָנִים בַּמִּשְׁפָּט כַּקָּטֹן כַּגָּדֹל תִּשְׁמָעוּן
לֹא תָגוּרוּ מִפְּנֵי־אִישׁ כִּי הַמִּשְׁפָּט לֵאלֹהִים הוּא 
Don’t differentiate by acquaintance in judgment; rather hear the lowly and the highborn alike.
Have no fear before anyone, for judgment belongs only to God.

The commandment is to be impartial in legal matters, not to favor your friends nor to regard social class as an indication of rightness before the law. Rashi takes this rather legalistic line as a reminder not to be fearful when we speak up in matters of justice. Surely in our world of all too many injustices, Rashi’s read speaks to the courage we all seek, as we navigate our way through the thorny issues facing us and the algorithmic fog that makes the truth an ever-moving target.

The next few reminders not to fear all come under the shadow of impending warfare. Again, not what stirs me personally, although it makes sense for its time and place. In chapter 1 verse 21 it says 

רְאֵה נָתַן יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ לְפָנֶיךָ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ
עֲלֵה רֵשׁ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יי אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֶיךָ לָךְ אַל־תִּירָא וְאַל־תֵּחָת׃
See, Adonai your God gives this land before you.
Go up, take it, as Adonai, the God of your ancestors, told you! Do not be afraid and do not be terrified.

And then just a few verses later, in verse 29, Moses reminds the Israelites of his admonition to the scouts as they went to assess the Holy Land, saying:

וָאֹמַר אֲלֵכֶם לֹא־תַעַרְצוּן וְלֹא־תִירְאוּן מֵהֶם׃
And I said to you: do not tremble, and do not fear them.

While the text is clearly about conquering land and peoples, both the Emek Davar and Ibn Ezra jump the tracks into metaphor and make a surprisingly tender link, from fear to brokenheartedness. Ibn Ezra explains the unusual word תַעַרְצוּן to mean שבר הלב בפחד—breaking the heart through fear. By this reading, the message really is: don’t let fear break your heart. 

Don’t let fear break your heart. 

In these trying days of chaos, uncertainty, war, and all manner of legitimate reasons to be both fearful and brokenhearted, this idea is countercultural, even radical. How can we not be afraid? How can our hearts not be poised at brokenness every moment? Yet the world we live in is surely no more alarming than that of our ancestors. After all, today’s haftarah describes their state of degradation and sin. 

כָּל־רֹאשׁ לָחֳלִי וְכָל־לֵבָב דַּוָּי
Every head is sick, every heart is weak. 

Sounds familiar. In ancient times, as today, human nature is capable of both righteousness and sin. The heart can be weak or strong, broken or whole. What is it that makes the difference? Our Sages suggest that it’s courage that strengthens our hearts and protects them from breaking. But what is the source of that courage?

The very last line of the parsha, chapter 3 verse 22, reads: 

לֹא תִּירָאוּם כִּי יי אֱלֹהֵיכֶם הוּא הַנִּלְחָם לָכֶם׃
Don’t be afraid of them, for Adonai your God will fight for you.

Blurring our vision again to allow for an interpretation more metaphorical than militaristic, the idea of God fighting for us lends a sense of possibility to our struggles. It invites us to imagine an unlimited source of strength and purpose, not for the sake of domination but for the sake of something larger and more lasting than our individual worries and woes. About this pasuk, the Emek Davar teaches: in the presence of God, we are unshakeable. If we wish to protect our hearts in this difficult era, the task before us is to locate that divine presence and cling to it. In order not to let fear break our hearts, the practice of faith in the divine can be our anchor. 

Blurring our vision to see more clearly, we proclaim ה’ לִי וְלא אִירָא—when God is with me, I have no fear.

Shabbat shalom!