How does the prophet respond when the people are suffering? Isaiah says, speaking in God’s name: “For a moment I hid My face from you, and with everlasting kindness will I have compassion on you (Isaiah 54:8).” Our hearts remain burdened with grief for the hostages who were murdered and one of the places we turn for understanding is to our ancestors, who again and again endured the pain of persecution and loss.
So how did the sages who came before us, who also suffered unimaginable losses, understand this verse? I looked at the commentaries and found a recurrent theme. In every generation, from rabbinic times until today, commentators acknowledge the pain expressed by the first half of the verse. For a moment, God is – or at least feels – absent, and in that dark void, the most terrible things befall us. Where was God in the camps or in the tunnels? There is no fully adequate response. Sometimes we ask these questions not to elicit answers, but to express anguish.
Yet those same commentators turn to the second half of the verse and affirm it as well. Yes, the pain is real, but so is the promise. We will always feel the loss. That loss will also permit us to understand things that move us forward: As Rabbi Johanan points out in the midrash, our eye has a light part and a dark part, but we can only see through the dark part (Midrash Tanchuma, Tetzaveh 6:6). In failure, loss and grief, in God’s hiding, we often see more clearly; we glimpse our deepest concerns and most fervent loves.
The Jewish world is in mourning. We are mourning for Carmel, Eden, Hersh, Alexander, Almog, and Uri. We are in mourning for all of those killed and wounded and their families and for the devastation in the aftermath of Oct. 7. There are no words that can make the pain disappear. No reassurances will shake the feeling that, for a moment again, God’s face was hidden and darkness grips the world.
This passage from Isaiah is called the “Fifth Haftorah of Consolation” – the fifth in a series of seven between Tisha B’av and Yom Kippur. The prophet recalls us to the challenges and afflictions our people have known in the past. He shares in the reality and depth of our pain. And he offers the consolation that this pain may be consuming right now, but the pain itself proves our compassion, and turns us toward the hope of God’s promise that endures.
May the memory of those we have lost be a blessing and give us the strength to be God’s partner in the sacred task of combating hatred and bringing light to the world.
