This is the d’var Torah I delivered on Saturday, July 18, at Congregation Neveh Shalom.
Before we even open the Book of Devarim this week, we hear the echo of another text. We call this Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision, because of the opening words of Isaiah: “Chazon Yeshayahu” — “The vision of Isaiah.” It’s the Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the day on which we remember the destruction of both Temples and many other tragedies throughout Jewish history.
It’s an odd pairing: a prophetic vision and destruction, hope and grief, Torah and lament. And perhaps that is exactly the point.
The Book of Devarim begins with Moses looking backward. After forty years in the wilderness, he gathers the people and retells their story. He reminds them of their triumphs and, perhaps even more importantly, their failures. He recalls the episode of the spies, the endless complaints, the moments when fear eclipsed faith. Moses understands something profound: a people who refuse to remember honestly are destined to repeat what they refuse to learn.
But Moses also asks a question that feels remarkably contemporary. Overwhelmed by the burdens of leadership, he cries out:
“Eichah esa levadi…” “How can I bear your troubles, your burdens, and your disputes alone?” (Deuteronomy 1:12)
That single word “Eichah” is what connects this week’s Torah reading to Tisha B’Av. It’s the same word that opens the Book of Lamentations: “Eichah yashvah vadad…” “How lonely sits the city…” (Lamentations 1:1). The sages heard the echo intentionally. The road to destruction didn’t begin with burning buildings. It began when a community became consumed by conflict, division, blame, and the inability to carry one another’s burdens.
Our tradition teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. Whether that phrase captures every historical complexity is almost beside the point. It names a spiritual truth. Societies rarely collapse overnight. They erode one relationship, one act of contempt, one refusal to listen at a time.
It’s hard not to see ourselves in that mirror. We live in a world that rewards outrage over understanding, certainty over curiosity, and winning over listening. Every disagreement is treated as an existential battle. Every difference becomes a reason to separate rather than to engage.
And yet Shabbat Chazon is not simply a vision of destruction. Isaiah’s vision is ultimately one of possibility. He imagines a Jerusalem restored through justice and righteousness. Tisha B’Av itself is filled with seeds of hope. Tradition teaches that the Messiah is born on Tisha B’Av, not because suffering is redemptive, but because even in our darkest moments, Judaism insists that hope is never extinguished.
As we begin Devarim and prepare for Tisha B’Av, Moses’s question becomes our own. How do we carry one another’s burdens? How do we build communities where disagreement does not become division? How do we choose compassion over contempt? If destruction begins with forgetting our shared humanity, then redemption begins by remembering it.
May this Shabbat Chazon give us the vision to see not only what is broken in our world, but what is still possible. May we become people who repair before things shatter, who listen before we judge, and who choose to build the kind of community and the kind of world that future generations will be grateful to inherit. Shabbat shalom.
Rabbi Eve Posen 