Comfort our Nation

The Jewish people are very resilient and it says something about our values and our character. Just Wednesday night we were sitting on the floor, and crying inside, or outside. Across the entire north of our country, people huddled in shelters from our enemies rockets. Jews across the globe took the Parochet off the Aaron Ha Kodesh to show our mourning. And we read of a torturous history from Roman times, through the Crusades, the pogroms, and the finally the Holocaust.

Someone sent me a Kina, a poem, the eulogizes the destroyed communities of Gaza. In intricate Hebrew the paytan, the author, wove together the tragedy and the history. But unlike most of the kinot that we say on Tisha Bav, this one accused many living Jews of betrayal. It used the names of our leaders like names of long gone enemies of the Jewish people. In effect it was a manifesto of hate and pain, instead of realizing that all these tragedies come from the same One who sends all our blessings. It was is if he had forgotten the most prevalent motif in kinot—that our shortcomings, our inability to love and cherish each Jew, to really love our neighbor in spite of all their differences, to teach Torah in a compassionate and open way, to be a Kiddush hashem in all our efforts and actions—are responsible for the tzar, the pain, the tragedy.

Soon it will be TU B’Av. We will jump up from the ground, and dry our tears, and embrace life. Lets take Tu B’Av this year, and the comfort of this Shabbos Nachamu, and get all of Israel, all of the Children of Israel, everybody, to start to comfort, to love and cherish and honor each other. Really if we can just start that now, we will see miracles. That is the potential of Shabbos Nachamu.