Making sense of the sedra: Vaetchanan

This week conjures up memories for me of my earliest youth, holidaying with my grandmother Rebbetzen Dr Judith Grunfeld z”l. She was the last surviving one of my grandparents, who all, with God’s help, escaped the Nazi crematoria. This is Shabbat Nechamu, the Shabbat after Tisha B’Av, when she would join us for a week in the mountains.

For many years, my grandmother helped refugees, survivors and their families here in the UK. She would often say: “Thank God the Jews were scattered and not all in Europe, as we would have been totally wiped out by Hitler.”

She used to explain this week’s parsha, Vaetchanan, to me each year with tears in her eyes: “God Himself will one day comfort the Jewish people for all the troubles and torments we have been through.”

The Haftorah starts with a description of a bright future for the Jewish people, in which their troubles and struggles will have come to an end and the nation will have achieved its destiny. Rabbi Samson Rafael Hirsch (Germany, 1808-1888) explains that our galut (exile) is considered here in its dual importance and meaning, for ourselves and in regard to our role in the world. For us, our exile is the time and place to improve in our service of God. While in exile, as a “nation of priests” (see Shemot 19:2), we are also meant to set an example of how human beings should treat each other, in an ideal society.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that God guarantees our eternal existence and that our mission will be successful. He tells the prophets to proclaim loudly and forcefully, to be bearers of good tidings to Zion and Jerusalem. However dark and gloomy events may be, we are promised that “as a shepherd, God feeds His flock”; God will ensure our survival.

That is the proclamation – the promise – which the children of Zion are always to keep in mind during their wanderings: the good tidings which Zion-Jerusalem will herald. However little their immediate experiences seem to bear this out, steadfastly, unshakeably, they are to hold fast to it! For God Himself has proclaimed and promised it and he keeps his word.

As it states in Isaiah 40:33: “He is the one who brings princes to nothing and makes judges of the world like emptiness.”

Where is the glory of the Pharaohs, the world empires of Nineveh and Babylon, the majesty of the mighty Persian kings? Where are the Macedonian world-empire and the dynasties of the Ptolemies and Seljukians? Where is Rome? Where is the Third Reich, that was meant to last 1,000 years but lasted 12?

God asks us to remain close to him as a nation and to keep focused on our mission; then we shall endure. Challenging as it is now, we are assured that in the end the Jewish people will survive and thrive. “Be comforted, be comforted my people!” (ibid. v.1).

Bring them home now and Am Yisrael Chai!