Kavanot: פרשת ואתחנן תשפ״א

This is a re-presentation of my shiur from שבת נחמו תשע״ג.

This week’s parsha, ואתחנן, always falls right after Tisha B’Av:

And the Chofetz Chaim brings a straightforward explanation for the halacha:

And that is the usual explanation, bringing us from the איכה of Moshe to the איכה of Yeshaya to the איכה of Yermiyahu. But that’s not what the words say! The halacha is not that דברים comes before Tisha B’Av (like במדבר comes before Shavuot) but that ואתחנן comes after Tisha B’Av.

I think that the שולחן ערוך is saying that the critical thing is not the תוכחה before Tisha B’Av; we get plenty of תוכחות. It is the נחמה afterward. That consolation is in the section that we read on Tisha B’Av itself. It starts with the bad news:

Then it gets better:

What’s interesting is that the נחמה here is that you have lots of hard work ahead, תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך. It will not be easy and the final redemption will not be handed to you, but be reassured that it will come: באחרית הימים ושבת עד ה׳ אלקיך ושמעת בקלו.

This is reflected in the haftorah that gives this Shabbat its name:

ישעיהו פרק מ is the beginning of what the academics call “Deutero-Isaiah”, where ספר ישעיהו changes from תוכחה to נחמה. It is the introduction to the next 7 weeks of haftorot, the שבע דנחמתא.

We tend to mis-translate נחמו as “Be comforted”. But that would be in the passive, ּנִחַמּו. The actual word is in the צווי,‎ נַחֲמוּ. It is a command to the navi and others (it’s plural; who else is being commanded?) to comfort עמי. Hence the King James Bible translation, “Comfort ye, Comfort ye my people”.

The Targum assumes that ישעיהו is addressing other נביאים:

Similarly Ibn Ezra:

But I would suggest something different. The trop is נַחֲמ֥וּ נַחֲמ֖וּ עַמִּ֑י, with a טִפְּחָ֖א under נַחֲמ֖וּ. That acts as a comma. The translation should be “Comfort ye diligently, O my people”. The עמי is an apostrophe. ה׳ is not telling the people to be comforted; He is telling them to go out and do the comforting.

And what is that comfort? קול קורא במדבר פנו דרך ה׳; ישרו בערבה מסלה לאלקינו.

The קול is not that of ה׳ (the Artscroll translates this pasuk as “A voice calls in the wilderness”, as opposed to פסוק ו:‎ קוֹל אֹמֵר, which is translated, “The Voice says”, capitalized). It is that of the people. And what are they supposed to say?

פנו דרך ה׳; ישרו בערבה מסלה לאלקינו. Make a highway for ה׳. Not “ה׳ has forgiven you” or “ה׳ will rebuild the מקדש”, just telling each other that they need to start paving the road. What kind of comfort is that?

I would assume that ישעיהו is being metaphoric; the road here is Moshe’s תדרשנו בכל לבבך ובכל נפשך to return to ה׳. Yeshaya is saying: You need to build the road. ה׳ will help, lowering the hills and raising the valleys, but the work has to come from you.

As Rabbi Daniel Fridman says, it’s a strange consolation.

But we need to understand that this is in fact a consolation. The נחמה of שבת נחמו is not that everything will be better. It is that, despite the disaster, we will be able to get back to work.

And eventually, your work will bear fruit: ראו כל בשר יחדו כי פי ה׳ דבר.

And the structure of ואתחנן demonstrates this principle. ספר דברים is basically a long speech by Moshe, starting with a historical introduction then going through all the laws that בני ישראל will need. But there is an interruption:

Instead of going from ד:מ to ה:א, Moshe stops for a demonstration, a kind of multimedia presentation of how to do mitzvot. But the mitzvah he chooses isn’t really a mitzvah, as Rashi points out:

The idiom of אז יבדיל means that Moshe planned the designation, not that it actually happened:

Moshe is showing that even after the depredations of בעל־פעור and his own failure to enter Israel, the response has to be to take whatever steps are possible to begin the process of return. Yes, the work is hard. No, we may not see the fruits of our own labor. But the fact that it is possible to start working again is itself the greatest נחמה.