The Future

This past Shabbat, as every year before the Fast of Av, is called Shabbat Chazon, and we read the negative Haftarah from the First Chapter of the Book of Yeshayahu (Isaiah). It is a crushing condemnation of the Jewish people living in Yehudah (Judeah). Predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple because they had failed in their mission to follow the commands, both ethical and ritual, of the Torah.

The language in Hebrew is magisterial, powerful and crushing. I want to quote some excerpts both for its beauty and because it resonates with the current state of much of the Jewish people today. The translation and excerpts are mine.

It starts 

“ This is the vision of Yeshayahu Ben Amotz,  concerning Jerusalem in the days of Uziyahu, Yotam, Achaz and Chizkiyahu kings of Yehudah.” 

A time span from780 BCE to 690 BCE during which Assyria would destroy the northern idolatrous State of Israel in the North and invaded and threaten Yehudah in the south during Chizkiyahu’s reign. Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians around 720 BCE and Yehudah would finally fall to Babylon in 586 BCE.

It continues… 

“Heavens and earth listen to the word of God… I have produced children and brought them up, but they have rebelled against me . Even the ox knows its master and the ass its master’s  stable, but Israel do not know, and my people don’t understand.

O, you sinful nation, a people heavy with sin, you seed of evil, children of corruption . You have abandoned and provoked, you have turned backwards.

Listen to me you Princess of Sodom pay attention to the words of God you people of Amora God, why do you want to suffer more. That you continue to offend me. Why do suffer more that you continue to do evil. Every head is sick; every heart is weary from foot to head, nothing is solid. Your land is destroyed, and your cities are burnt. Were it not for a remnant of good people you would be exactly like Sodom and Gemorah.

I do not want your sacrifices says God…  when you appear before me , I didn’t ask you to come and trample my courtyards. Don’t bring me these meaningless offerings. I can’t bear when you come on holy occasions to worship me. When you spread your hands in prayer, I’ll hide from you will not listen because your hands are full of blood . Purge yourselves from the evil, learn to do good, seek justice, support those who are oppressed, take care of the orphans and the widow.”

The condemnation of a corrupt, morally failed society where those who care are outnumbered by those who do not, is crushing. And the religious hypocrisy of people who think that simply performing religious laws atones for corrupt behavior resonates today in many Jewish communities. There is so much excessive materialism and  self-indulgence in our neo-pagan societies. We are becoming corrupted.

This passionate cry of Yeshayahu’s of course warned of  the catastrophes that would befall the Jewish states then. And it warns us today.

Corruption, and  defection from any sense of shared identity with the Jewish people, has always been a problem  whenever the forces of oppression were relieved.  Now we witness how mainly in the diaspora so many apparent Jews have neither experienced a passionate religious tradition at home nor any knowledge of Jewish history and Jewish identity. It pains me to see so many of them giving their support to our enemies. And yet at the same time and on the positive side here is far more spiritual, religious and ethical Judaism thriving around the world. So many more institutions of study and academia than ever before, let alone during the times of the two Temples. So much charity and community support. And indeed, even to our enemies.

We have always bounced back.  The week after the Ninth of Av we read the Haftarah of Comfort from Yeshayahu (Chapter 40).

“Be comforted, be comforted my people, says God . Speak to the heart of Jerusalem and declare to her that a period of suffering is finished her sins have been forgiven. Even though she has received a double punishment from God.”

I don’t want to draw parallels between one era and another. Or suggest that history necessarily repeats itself although there are certainly themes that keep on coming up. The rising and falling of empires, strengthening and weakening of cultures, constant fluidity.

 As I look around the world at this moment, the rational side of me inclines towards despair. This is an era of billions watching commercial and pornographic clips and distorted narratives  that are so easily hijacked and distorted. As Winston Churchill once said, “a lie can travel all the way around the world before the truth can get its pants on.”  A return to irrational, medieval hatred and ignorance by far outweighing those whose reservations and criticisms reflect the different ways one can look at events.

However, depressed one may be at the state of events in the world from a rational point of view,  there is another way of looking at the world.  What I would call the mystical or the spiritual point of view. And that is where I derive great comfort from. We will survive and improve. Yeshayahu doesn’t hold back from criticizing what is wrong, but he offers us hope for the future not only for survival but for revival and I think that is the most important message of all.

One of my favorite vignettes from the Talmud records an exchange between Rebbi Akiva and his colleagues who visited the ruins of Jerusalem after the Roman destruction.

“When they arrived at the Temple Mount, they saw a fox that emerged from the ruins of the Holy of Holies. They began weeping, and Rebbi Akiva was laughing. They said to him “Why are you laughing? “He replied, it is written “Therefore, because of you, Zion shall be ploughed as a field,” (Michah 3:12). But in the later prophecy of Zechariah, it is written: “There shall yet be elderly men and elderly women sitting in the streets of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 8:4).  Now that the prophecy of Michah was fulfilled, the prophecy of Zechariah remains valid. They replied, Akiva, you have comforted us, Akiva, you have comforted us. (Talmud Makot 24b).

The prophets were realists, rationalists who saw the problems and the dangers. But they were mystics too. It was this non-rational faith, hope and conviction that helped us overcome and survive the rational. As it will today.

Jeremy Rosen

August 2025