Va’etchanan/Shabbat Nachamu
How do we find our way from brokenness to renewal?
Reflection on parashat Va’etchanan/Shabbat Nachamu by Rabbi Lauren Tuchman, Or HaLev Teacher
This Shabbat, immediately following Tisha B'Av, is known as Shabbat Nachamu, or the Shabbat of Comfort. It is the first of the seven Shabbatot between Tisha B'Av and Rosh Hashanah, when we are rebuilding and returning from a place of destruction and challenge to a place of newness and possibility.
This week we also read Parashat Va'etchanan, containing many famous passages that find their way into liturgy, including the declaration of the Shema and its opening paragraph V`ahavta, ‘you shall love’. There's a beautiful juxtaposition between Shabbat Nachamu and the reading of Va'etchanan in that both of these invite us into remembering who we are at our core.
V'ahavta reminds us of the command to love with all our heart, soul, and might. There is something here that's constant: on the way, when we lie down, when we rise up. So too in our practice we can come home to who we truly are, remembering our innate and basic goodness and our divine nature and belovedness at the very center.
May we utilize what the tradition has given us as practice instruction and practice inspiration for this Shabbat, and for the many Shabbatot to come, as we move through the latter half of Av into Elul and then on to Rosh Hashanah: remembering who we are, returning home to who we are, and finding our way, as we are given space to, from the brokenness of Tisha B'Av to the renewal of possibility that the new year brings.