“For My Days Are Consumed in Smoke…”
When the Children of Israel stood at Mt. Sinai before the Master and Maker of all worlds “they were like a single man with a single heart” who affirmed everything that Hashem commanded, “all the people together with a single voice” (Exodus 19:8, 24:3).
The emphasis on the unity of Israel as a nation of individuals and a land repeatedly is likened to the Unity of the Creator and His creation. His portion, Jacob, His “intimate treasure” and “treasured people” must be intact in order for the fullness of His grace to permeate the world (Deut. 32:8; Exodus 19:3-6; Deut. 26:17-19). When Israel is hurt, to the extent that it is “consumed” the world distances itself from G-d.
The nations are growing extremely distant from the source of life in their predatory lust to seize “the land of life.” They are the predatory birds that Abraham drove away from the song and Promise of the land (Genesis 15:11). But they are nothing, a drop from a bucket, dust from His scales; a storm wind shall sweep them away…
The Jewish people will rise up and lead the remnant of the mad world back to the source of all blessings and light, back to its milk and wine that feeds only when Israel is whole.
Judaism also emphasizes the similarity between a human being and a tree: “man is like a tree of the field” both in our mortality (“like a sprout so he sprouts”), in the sanctity and value of life and as a source of life. Thus Israel is forbidden from cutting down fruit trees even when engaged in a milchemet mitzvah (mandatory war) against enemies within its borders or preparing to attack it beyond its borders (Deuteronomy 20:19-20).
So it is with great distress that we observe not only hundreds of thousands of homeless Israeli Jews whom the world’s powers typically do not consider to constitute a “humanitarian crisis” but the devastated forests of northern Israel. Iran – Hezbollah burnt down hundreds of thousands of trees, the glory and song of the Land. Mountains that have take sixty or a hundred years for the Jewish people to restore to life have been burned in five weeks. “The Land of life” that the nations so often desolated has again, in part, been laid waste. Ishmael its savagery enflamed and armed by Edom has charred the nation and land in Edom-Ishmael’s long-running war on Jacob and His G-d, their covenant against Hashem (psalm 83). The more they rage the more He counts them as emptiness and nothingness (psalm 2; Isaiah 40:15-24).
But in the meantime they rage and His people, Land and Name are desecrated every day.
Because Jews are and should strive to be responsible for each other, “like a single man with a single heart” and because Israel is both a nation and each of its individual persons the burning of the precious forests of Israel evokes a psalm that powerfully articulates the identity of Israel as the isolated and afflicted man; it also, as a corollary, evokes the eternal Providence of the Almighty to cherish and settle Israel “in the face of the nations.”
“A prayer of the afflicted man when he faints and pours forth his supplications before Hashem” (Psalm 102): “This,” comment the sages, “is the prayer which comes to the presence of G-d before all the others” (Zohar 23b on Genesis). This prayer is particularly suited to the twilight of history, our age when “all the nations of the world gather against Jerusalem”; when we watch them “consume Jacob, and devour his pleasant habitation.” Year by year for decades we watch the noose pulled tighter by the powers. Still, “behold! They may indeed gather together but it is without My consent. Whoever will gather against you will fall because of you” as the Nefillim (“fallen ones”), Anakim (“giants” or “enormities”), and the Rephaim (“shades”) fell, those who attacked, and those who should have helped but did not (Isaiah 54:15; Zohar 25a & b).
The Zohar’s scholarly discussion of the psalm pursues the threads of these related themes and vocabulary. Israel alone in the twilight burnt and burnt again…
“This [psalm 102] is the evening prayer which is single, without a husband; and because she is without a husband she is poor and dry. Like her is the just man, poor and parched. This is the seed of Jacob which resembles the evening prayer that typifies the night of captivity” (Zohar 23b).
Israel is “poor, parched and dry”; lonely, without a spouse, incomplete “in subjection to all nations,” metaphors treated repeatedly in the prophetic readings of consolation during the weeks between 9 Av and Rosh Hashanah. The texts remind us that so long as Israel is subservient to American diplomats and their fig leaves in the UN and EU it is “in subjection”; it is not sovereign and not intact. Indeed, in the view of the nations it is clear, especially in this time of Oslo and the Road Map that Israel is not intact. Because it is fragmented and torn, not sovereign, not wholly committed to Judaism and the G-d of Israel it also has been charred and parched, the enemy having chosen the driest time of year to launch its rocket barrages and burn the desirable Land from Rosh HaNikra to Ma’a lot, from holy Tzfat and Meron to Kiryat Shmona, Kibbutz Lavi and Bet Keshet (“rainbow”). A bow of death assaults Israel’s promise of life abundant…
And so in this twilight of history, in the Erev Shabbat of the sixth millennium, Israel is the flame-surrounded evening prayer for the entire world, “like a lonely bird upon a rooftop…”
“For my days are consumed in smoke, and my bones are charred as on a hearth. Smitten like grass until withered is my heart for I have forgotten to eat my food.” Those who know, who closely observe Israel, who engrave its features and people on their palms, in their heart and mind know that the symptoms of a terrible defeat and betrayal have been made plain in these fires; have been made plain in the failures of logistics, even of food and water in the IDF. This follows from the expulsion of the Jews from Gush Katif. General Udi Adam, a commander in the north now, boasted then that “our logistics killed the settlers.” This sin returned to his recent failures of logistics and purpose. Lovers of Zion have watched in horror as its government scarcely allowed the nation to fight its enemies; how it fought mainly to save its own ‘face’ and to preserve the artificial state to the north carved by imperial powers from the wholeness that is Israel. They listen to the intensifying howls of competing jihadists whose only unity is in their genocidal malice toward the nation and Land G-d chose as His treasure. This echoes the boasting of a regime that rejects Jewish victory just as it expels Jews from homes in their homeland.
The regime suppressed the people and fought against Scripture; for not only are “the Lebanon” mountains and watershed part of the Promised Land but it is written that ”Lebanon will be insufficient kindling and its wild beasts insufficient elevation offerings” (Isaiah 40:16). Failing to fight by the light of these truths, instead the forests of northern Israel burned.
Therefore the situation of Israel is that “I have become like an owl of the wasteland…all day long my enemies revile me; those who boisterously ridicule me curse by me. For I have eaten ashes like bread and mixed my drink with tears…” This is the shoah, every shoah of Israel, and the impending shoah of our days. “My days are like a lengthened shadow and I wither away like grass” (psalm 102:4-12). Because of those Jews “who cherish her stones and favor her dust,” Israel and Jerusalem have not reached this condition. With their faith and courage eliciting the help of Hashem, Israel will go no further down that road. But the scars of the recent attack point toward desolation and the need for awakening. At twilight, shadows lengthen…
“The prayer of the afflicted man who pours out his supplication before Hashem” emphasizes that the individual Jew recognizes his or her identity with the entire nation of Israel, its precious land and the honor of the Holy One and Creator. The structure of the Amidah, the core of Israel’s daily liturgy, shows that the prayer of the Jew is not only for himself, however great his pain is, but for his pain to be lifted by the redemption of the entire nation, the flowering of the land, in-gathering of the people and complete rebuilding of Jerusalem. “You will arise and show Zion mercy, for the time to favor her, for the appointed time will have come.” “Sound the great shofar for our freedom; restore our judges as of old.” The constructive, life-affirming and practical aspect of Jewish faith, service and prayer are emphasized in the focus of this “appointed time” of independence: Zion, the foundation of the earth will be built. When the entire Land is repaired and complete, the Holy One “will have appeared in His glory. “He will turn to the prayer of the devastated one,” Israel “the just man… poor and parched” like a single woman (Zohar ibid; psalm 102:14-17).
The uplifting of these afflicted, “storm-tossed ones” is one with the glory of G-d. When His portion, Jacob, is intact in its place in the world, His presence fills the world.
Moreover, the glory and redemption of the poor man, Israel, will be the liberation of all those condemned to unjust bondage and death, foremost among them, the Children of Israel about whose extinction the entire world again, only six decades after the shoah, shows by turns its complacency or glee.
The prayer of the afflicted man, “the evening prayer” that comes to G-d before all others is not only for the entire healing of Israel here and now, it also shows the Jewish insight that identity is fulfilled in posterity, in an unbroken strand of generations bonded by history and remembrance and reflected in the Eternity of Israel (Netzach Yisrael), the Holy One. Netzach denotes “the G-d of faithfulness” (Zohar 297a on Deuteronomy 32). Empires and their schemes come and go, the heavens may wear out like a garment, “but You remain the same and Your years are endless. Your servants’ children shall be settled and their children will be established before You” (psalm 102:28-9).
This eternity, the settlement of the Land and its inheritance by their children’s children is one with the One, the Netzach Yisrael. And because He does not lie (Netzach Yisrael lo y’shakeir, 1 Samuel 15) “your children will return to their borders” (Jeremiah 31; Isaiah 54). This is victory. The land is glory, song and victory, the place where the Eternity of Israel is manifest fully.
In its emphasis on fellowship and guarding the inheritance of offspring, Judaism is an unselfish, wise and caring faith and practice. It knows that its identity in the present is based on remembrance of its origins and persistence to fulfill the dream of establishing its offspring in that glorious history’s structuring of the future perfect. Perhaps this is why the powers forever try to blot Israel out: they want everything to be forgotten except their own self-serving lies du jour. They mean to serve Israel only as a villain serves its victim. If they can, and like storm clouds they are gathering, they would blot out Israel’s light with their garish darkness. Drunk with the wine of arrogance and power, they are giddily destroying the world. For when the Holy One put His words in the mouth of the Jewish people, all the mitzvoth centering on embracing the Land He made explicit that this is synonymous with His “emplacing the heavens, and laying the foundations of the earth” (Isaiah 51:16).
The eternal establishment of Jacob-Israel in Zion is “the song whose foundation is in the holy mountains.”
In this twilight time, in twilight lands of wrath and God’s hidden countenance it becomes particularly heartening to recall verses such as these:
For the mountains may be moved and the hills may falter, but My kindness shall not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace shall not falter said the One Who shows you mercy, Hashem (Isaiah 54: 10, 55:1-11 cf. Numbers 25:12-13).
Israel the nation will dwell alone but fulfilled and complete, in wedded bliss each couple with the land, and with G-d, “like a bridegroom rejoicing over his bride.” Israel each one and the nation will dwell secure, solitary in the likeness of Jacob in a land of grain and wine: even his heavens will drip with dew” (Deut. 33:28). It will turn its back on the UN for “it will not be counted among the nations.” Instead, “nations will walk by the radiance of its light.”
Hashem waits for the shofar voice of the hoping, afflicted and loving heart. The living beings, the chayot of the Chariot convey the prayer of the afflicted man and nation to the everlasting doors which “straightaway fly open” in all seven palaces of creation like a kindled Menorah to fulfill the promises for the children’s children of Israel. ”Then the world will yield its produce” (psalm 67, psalm of the Menorah); “the appointed time will have come.”