Rabbi's Blog

This week, Jews around the world read Va'eschanan, the Torah portion that contains the Ten Commandments. It is also Shabbos Nachamu—the "Sabbath of Comfort"—named for the opening words of the prophet Isaiah: "Comfort, comfort My people, says your G-d." 

Coming just days after Tisha B'Av, the annual day of mourning for the destruction of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, the question almost asks itself: What exactly is the comfort?

Perhaps the answer lies in two seemingly unrelated stories that emerged this week.

One made headlines because just last week, archaeologists uncovered monumental stone columns dating back to the First Temple period beneath Jerusalem. Nearly 2,600 years after the destruction, these massive remnants have re-emerged from beneath the earth. They are more than archaeological artifacts. They are testimony. The Temple was not a legend or a metaphor. It stood. Our history is real, our roots run deep, and the Jewish story has outlived every empire that sought to erase it.

The other story was far more unsettling. A growing public debate has emerged over the role some therapists may be playing in encouraging adult children to sever relationships with their parents rather than work toward healing and reconciliation wherever possible. To be sure, every family situation is different, and in cases involving abuse or genuine danger, separation may be both necessary and healthy. But many mental health professionals themselves are expressing concern that our culture has become too quick to discard relationships that, while strained, may still be capable of repair.

At first glance, these stories have nothing in common. Yet this week's Torah portion reveals that they are deeply connected.

The Fifth Commandment instructs us to "Honor your father and your mother." The Talmud tells the remarkable story of the sage Avimi, who fulfilled this commandment with extraordinary devotion. Although he was himself an accomplished Torah scholar, he would personally run to open the door for his elderly father so that he would not have to wait even a moment. On one occasion, his father asked him for a cup of water but fell asleep before Avimi returned. Rather than wake him, Avimi stood patiently beside him, holding the cup until his father awoke. At that very moment, the Talmud says, Avimi was granted an insight that had previously eluded him: he finally understood why the biblical psalm describing the destruction of the Holy Temple begins not as a lament, but as "A Psalm of Asaf." A song.

A song? How can anyone sing about the destruction of the Temple?

An ancient rabbinic teaching answers with a moving parable.

A king built a magnificent wedding canopy for his beloved son. When the son rebelled, the king became furious. Yet instead of striking his son, he tore down the wedding canopy. Watching this unfold, the prince's tutor began to sing. Those around him were astonished. "How can you sing while everything is being destroyed?" The tutor replied, "Because the king poured out his anger on the canopy instead of his son."

That, explain the Sages, is the meaning of the destruction of the Temple. G-d destroyed His House, but He spared His children. The very destruction of the Temple testified that the covenant between Father and child remained unbroken. Only someone who had developed such profound sensitivity to honoring a parent could fully appreciate this truth. Avimi understood that authentic love is not measured by the absence of discipline. Sometimes love demands painful consequences. But genuine love never abandons the relationship itself. Perhaps that is the message our generation most needs to hear.

We live in a culture that increasingly views relationships through the lens of personal fulfillment. If a relationship becomes painful, difficult, or disappointing, the instinct is often to walk away. Judaism offers a different perspective. While it fully recognizes that some situations require distance for the sake of safety and wellbeing, it also teaches that relationships—especially between parents and children—are sacred covenants, not disposable contracts. They deserve patience, gratitude, humility, and every sincere effort toward healing.

Which brings us back to Shabbos Nachamu. The comfort offered by the prophet Isaiah is not that the destruction never happened. It did. Nor is the comfort that everything will somehow work out in the end. The comfort is far deeper. Before speaking about redemption, Isaiah reminds us of something even more fundamental: "Comfort, comfort My people."

Notice what G-d does not say. He does not say, "Comfort those who once were My people." He says, "My people." The Temple may have been destroyed, but the relationship endured. The House fell, but the family remained.

In fact, the Sages teach that this was the very meaning of the destruction itself. By "pouring out His wrath upon the wood and the stones rather than upon His children," G-d revealed that His covenant with the Jewish people could never be broken.

Suddenly, those newly discovered First Temple stones take on an entirely new significance. They are not simply remnants of an ancient building. They are silent witnesses to an eternal relationship. Empires have risen and fallen. Nations have disappeared. The Temple itself was reduced to rubble. Yet the covenant survived.

Perhaps that is why these stones are emerging from beneath Jerusalem during the very week we read Isaiah's words of comfort. After lying hidden for centuries, they seem to whisper the same message as the prophet himself: The Temple may have fallen. The covenant never did. And there can be no greater comfort than that.

Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Ruvi New

If there is one thing our generation has become expert at, it is preserving pain.

Every tragedy is archived. Every trauma is documented. Social media ensures that painful moments never really disappear; they are replayed, reposted, and relieved. Therapists rightly encourage us not to suppress our wounds, but sometimes our culture goes a step further—we begin to define ourselves by them. Our suffering becomes part of our identity.

The Jewish people know suffering better than perhaps any nation on earth. And yet Judaism has always insisted on something extraordinary.

This Wednesday night we will read Megillas Eichah, (the scroll of Lamentations) Jeremiah's heartbreaking lament over the destruction of Jerusalem. Curiously, unlike Megillas Esther, read on Purim, Eichah is generally not read from a handwritten parchment scroll. Instead, it is read from an ordinary printed book.

Why?

The great halachic authority Rabbi Mordechai Yaffe, (1530- 1612) the Levush, offers a remarkable explanation. Writing Eichah on parchment would give it an air of permanence. It would suggest that exile is our permanent condition. We deliberately refrain from doing so because we live with the certainty that Tishah B'Av will one day be transformed into a festival of joy. We refuse to give our national tragedy the permanence of parchment.

That perspective has never felt more relevant.

Since October 7, the Jewish world has endured one of the darkest chapters in modern Jewish history. The massacre, the hostages still languishing in captivity, the war, the surge of antisemitism across university campuses and city streets, and the painful isolation felt by so many supporters of Israel have left wounds that will remain with us forever.

These events deserve to be remembered. They must never be forgotten.

But they must never become the final definition of who we are.

Significantly, the Torah often expresses remembrance in the future tense—"yizkor." Jewish memory is never merely retrospective. We do not simply look backward with nostalgia or grief. We remember the past as part of a story that is still unfolding, one whose ultimate destination is redemption. Memory is not an anchor keeping us trapped in yesterday; it is a compass pointing us toward tomorrow. Every act of remembrance is, in essence, an affirmation that the final chapter has not yet been written.

That is why we do not write Eichah on parchment.

We mourn honestly, but we refuse to canonize despair. We grieve deeply, but we refuse to believe that exile is the last chapter. We carry our pain without allowing it to become our identity.

This is also the profound message of Shabbos Chazon. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev (1740- 1809) famously taught that on this Shabbos every Jew is shown a vision—a chazon—of the Third Beis Hamikdash. Before we enter the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, Hashem grants us a glimpse of how the story ends. Before we read Eichah, He shows us the future. Before we descend into mourning, He reminds us that redemption is already on the horizon.

Hamas intended October 7 to become the defining image of Jewish vulnerability. Judaism refuses to grant them that victory. We will remember October 7 forever—but never as the final chapter. It will become another chapter in the long story of Jewish resilience, faith and redemption.

We remember every victim. We pray every day for every hostage. We stand shoulder to shoulder with our brothers and sisters in Israel.

But we do not write Eichah on parchment.

Because the Jewish story has never ended with destruction.

It ends with redemption.

Shabbos Chazon reminds us that before we can see redemption with our eyes, we must first learn to see it with our vision.

Good Shabbos and Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Ruvi New