Insights into Megillat Eicha

Dr. Esther Shkop Torah lecture series

Leaving the lecture on Sunday night Miriam and I felt as if we started Tisha B’Av early this year.  To say that it was chilling would be an understatement.  Being raised by a couple of child WWII survivors who in 1980’s were mentally living in 1942, do I need this chilling reminder every year of what our people went through?  Do the wounds of my soul need to be reopened again and again, does it have to relive all these horrendous moments, days and years of torture and insane deprivation?  I remember being a day dreamer as a child, focusing on the beauty of nature, losing myself in a beauty of a flower or a cloud, or a blade of grass glistening in the rain.  Later I learned to be engrossed in beauty of the written word, harmony of mathematical theories, awesome and infinite beauty of G-d.  Yirmiyahu had his moments of sublime allegory talking about glistening spills of blood on cobblestones, shining like jewels in the sun on the road of exiles, when the earth was paved with blood.  He went to look closer and in the blood there were footprints of little children’s feet as they were led to captivity.  He fell on the ground and kissed the footsteps in the glittering blood, and he followed the trail to the camp, where he hugged and tried to comfort the survivors. 

Haftorah Chazon - Nahamu

Whenever I leave Dr. Shkop’s class, I have a heart-gripping feeling that what I have just learned were likely the most important things I ever learned in my life.  This is a place to check my usual sense of humor at the door, because this is what truly matters. 

This session contains commentaries on the ending of Haftorah for Shabbat Hazon and beginning of Shabbat Nahamu.  The latter has some important points on the nature of suffering, punishment, possibility of consolation after catastrophe, aftermath of the Holocaust, return and redemption. 

Haftorah Masei - Devarim

Dr. Esther Shkop

Session #3 10/23/2012

 

Haftorah Masei - Jeremiah, Chapter 2 – 4

We continued revisiting Jeremiah Chapter 2 from the last shiur:

2:8 The Kohanim did not say, ‘Where is Hashem?’; those charged with teaching the Torah did not know Me; the shepherds rebelled against Me; the prophets prophesied by the Baal; and they went after those that cannot avail.

Jeremiah Chapter 2

Dr. Esther Shkop

Jeremiah, Chapter 2. 

Jeremiah 2:1 The word of Hashem came to me, saying, 2:2 “Go and call out in the ears of Jerusalem, saying: Thus says Hashem: I recall for you the kindness of your youth, the love of your nuptials, your following me into the Wilderness, into an unsown land.  2:3 Israel is holy to Hashem, the first of His crop; all who devour it will be held guilty; evil shall come upon them – the word of Hashem.