Now You Know The Haftorah read the week before Tisha B’Av begins with the words, “Chazon Yeshayahu,” the vision of Isaiah, hence this week is called Shabbos Chazon, the Shabbos of vision. Rashi on this posuk tells us that Amotz, Yeshaya’s father, and Amatzya, King of Yehudah, were brothers. This seems out of context. Are we trying to play some sort of Jewish Geography? Does Isaiah’s prophecy gain some sort of credibility simply because he had royal blood in his veins? The phrase that Rashi uses is found in the Gemara (Sota 10b) where it says, “A woman who is modest in her father-in-law’s home will merit to have children who are kings and prophets. We know this from Tamar (who was Yehuda’s daughter-in-law yet he didn’t recognize her when her face was not veiled.)” It then uses this phrase to prove it. At the time, the union of Yehuda and Tamar appeared unseemly, yet it was the beginning of the house of David and ultimately Moshiach. Similarly, the Haftorah which discusses the destruction of Jerusalem and the Bais HaMikdash by HaShem’s decree seems to signal the end of the Jews, yet it is only another step in the entire process leading up to Moshiach and HaShem’s rule over all the inhabitants of the world. That is why the very first thing Rashi tells us is to look beneath the surface, and use insight and vision to see the good hiding behind the face of evil. #theObservantJew
Posted on: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 22:00:00 +0000
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