On this past Shabbat in our synagogues in Israel and around the world, Jews read from the first chapter of the classical prophet of Isaiah, on what has become known as Shabbat Hazon, the Sabbath of Vision, based on the vision of Isaiah in this stirring Biblical passage, one of the most famous in the entire Bible. On the one hand, the prophet offers a stinging rebuke of the immoral behavior of the leaders and the people at that time. On the other hand, he also presents us with a vision of what ought to be, the kind of righteous behavior we must practice if we are to live justly in our land.
Among other things we read the following verses which critiqued the behavior of the people and rulers of Israel at that time:
1:4 Ah sinful nation, people laden with iniquity! Brood of evil-doers! Depraved children! They have forsaken the Lord, spurnedthe Holy One of Israel, turned their backs on HIm.
1:21 Alas, she has become a harlot, the faithful city that was filled with justice, where righteousness dwelt, but now murderers.
1:23 Your rulers are rogues, and cronies of thieves, every one avid for presents and greedy for gifts; They do not judge the case of the orphan, and the widow’s cause never reaches them.
As I sat in synagogue and listened to the chanting of these verses, I felt that Isaiah was speaking as much to us today as he was to my ancestors in Biblical times. It was as if he was up on the current news and he knows that our current Prime Minister and many of his cronies are suspected of many dastardly deeds of corruption, that a former Prime Minister was in jail for 18 months for corruption, and that a former President of Israel was in jail for several years for rape, and on and on it goes.
If Isaiah were around today he also would be shocked at how much injustice there is in Jerusalem. He would be vociferously vocal about the fact that nearly 40% of Jerusalem's residents, who are Palestinians living in "East" Jerusalem, live with such unequal infrastructure in areas of education, housing and health, compared to the Jewish majority in Jerusalem, and the fact that the unofficial "shoot to kill" policy of the security forces is killing too many Palestinian young people unnecessarily, thus inciting more senseless violence. In addition, he would be talking about the growing gap between the rich and the poor in the Jewish sector as well.
The greatness of Isaiah is that he does not only offer a critique of the current malaise. On the contrary, he offers a vision that we should be aspiring to achieve in our personal and collective lives.
1:16 Wash yourselves clean, put your evil doings away from My sight. Cease to do evil;
1:17 Learn to do good; devote yourselves to justice; Aid the wronged. Uphold the rights of the orphan; defend the cause of the widow.
In very sharp and simple terms, Isaiah outlines for us the essentials of ethical living. It is a clarion call for living moral lives and for developing a society which will live by the highest possible ethical norms.
Note that it doesn't happen by itself. It seems that this kind of life is not necessarily based on human nature. Rather, one needs to learn to do good. It is a matter of education--serious, sensitive and systematic education over a long period of time. Similarly, justice is not practiced automatically or inherently as human beings. Instead, one needs to seek justice, to work at it over a long time. But there is a need for a basic human consciousness that we desire a just society, not just one that it good for the ruling elites.
We read the vision of Isaiah every year at this time of the year, just before the commemoration of Tisha B'Av, the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, the day in the Jewish calendar that commemorates the destruction of the first and second Jewish commonwealths in Biblical times, and other periods of destruction in Jewish history. And then we read from Isaiah for the next few weeks in the seven prophetic readings of "consolation" that follow Tisha B'av. If that isn't enough, we also read from Isaiah on the morning of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
Therefore, the vision of Isaiah ought to be deeply imbedded into who we are as Jews and what kind of Jewish society we are striving to establish in our own lifetime, with the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel after 2000 years. This is undoubtedly what the framers of Israel's Declaration of Independence had in mind in 1948 when they wrote:
THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.
Despite all this, I am feeling in recent years that we in Israel have lost our way and that we are stumbling about without any vision of the moral society that we would like to build. Perhaps our leaders --including the Minister of Education--should re-read Isaiah more carefully during the next seven weeks. It might help them to develop an ethical vision for our country which would be inspirational and relevant for all of our citizens. And then, in the words of Isaiah, "Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and they that return to her with righteousness". (Isaiah 1:27)