Consolation, and Being Consoled

An extraordinary event happened to me this week. Out of the blue, I received an email with a scanned page from a newspaper published in Frankfurt, Germany, on August 7, 1936. The page contains paid announcements, some of weddings, and one, in particular, of a bar mitzvah - of my father. The sender of the email was looking for the announcement of his grandparents’ wedding, and seeing my dad’s name, decided, solely out of curiosity, to see if he could find anything about him in Google’s huge warehouse of data. He assumed that just about any name one would find on that page would lead to a dead end - death coming at the hands of the Nazis in the Holocaust that would begin just a few years later. To his surprise, he came across the article that I wrote about my dad in the weeks following his death in April, 2010.

There was something very meaningful about seeing this somewhat perfunctory advertisement, and so I thought I would share it, and its backstory on how it came to me, with friends on Facebook. I was quite amazed by the reaction it elicited. Over 40 people “liked” the clipping of the ad, including friends of friends, and 18 comments from friends.

For me, two years after my dad’s death, this response to the clipped ad about my father’s bar mitzvah on 15 August, 1936, brought me a sense of comfort, one that I had not known since the weeks following his passing. Perhaps this was all the more so because this coming Monday, 6 August, would have been his 89^th birthday.

As I was collecting my thoughts about this incident, I thought about how this relates to a larger context within the Jewish calendar. On Sunday we observed the fast of Tish’ah b’Av, the day on which we commemorate the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, the defeat of Bar Kokhba, and other calamities that befell the Jewish people throughout history. This Shabbat we begin reading the cycle of haftarot, prophetic portions that follow the reading of the Torah, known as the שבעה דנחמתא, the seven haftarot of consolation. All these readings are taken from the concluding section of Isaiah, beginning with Chapter 40. Some have characterized this section of Isaiah as distinct from the earlier 39 chapters; in academic circles it is often referred to as Deutero-Isaiah because it is believed to be the product of a different author in a later generation. Some have referred to these twenty-six chapters as among the most beautiful literature ever written; all I can say is that reading from these chapters often hits me deep in my heart.

The haftarah begins with the words:

נחמו נחמו עמי

יאמר אלהיכם

Console, console My people,

Says your God.

Unlike many prophecies that begin with some sort of introduction, this one begins abruptly, and yet, with soothing words. The passage continues:

דברו על-לב ירושלים

וקראו אליה

כי מלאה צבאה

כי נרצה עונה

כי לקחה מיד ה‘

כפליים בכל-חטאתיה

Speak to Jerusalem’s heart

And declare about her

That her sentence has been fulfilled

Her [expiation for] wrongdoing has been accepted.

For she has received from God’s hand

Double for all her sins.

The prophet wastes no time. His mission is put in simple terms: comfort the people, tenderly, and get them to move on. For if they wallow in their guilt or suffering, they will stagnate. They suffered more than enough, and, as the following verses show, they have work to do.

As I thought about this experience I had this week, I thought about the duplication of the word נחמו, console, in the first verse. Wouldn’t a singular expression of consolation be enough? 

Time has passed since I was a mourner. Life goes on. And still, I think about my dad every day. I see his pictures. I hear his voice. The initial sting of loss may have diminished; I can think of my dad and sometimes laugh, and sometimes think about the lessons that I learned from him. But I still feel the loss, and the residual pain comes to the surface.

This is what I glean from the seeming redundancy of the imperative נחמו, console. Consolation is not a one shot deal. Sometimes it must be revisited, because in those moments when we can get stuck in pain over the past, whether it is a deceased loved one, the break-up of a once meaningful relationship, or the memory of a past defeat, we can lose momentum, falling prey to depression or other demons that we need to recognize, but not allow to take over our lives. Time may heal all wounds, but the scars may last on and on.

In a larger context, the same is true for a group, a community, even a whole nation. We can be struck by calamity, but to get stuck in that tragedy doesn’t change anything about the initial wrong, it intensifies the wrong that we bring upon ourselves. In the wake of the destruction of the Second Temple, there were Jews who wanted to go into perpetual mourning. The rabbis discouraged that; it would only add to the destruction visited upon them by Rome. Likewise, in our generation, we can let the Holocaust shadow our Jewish lives into the future. But the pain over that past can get in the way of making our future; it certainly can cause us to move backwards.

That leads to one of the most important lessons that I learned from my dad. He never forgot his memories of Germany, neither the rise of the Nazis and Kristallnacht, nor the Germans who tried to help, and at times, protected his family. He didn’t harbor ill-will towards post-war Germany for the crimes of the Third Reich. And he didn’t live with the fear of those days and did not let them shadow his vision for the future. 

Mark Mulgay

15 Av 5771