

For all the horrors that have come to beset us, afraid each
day in waking of what the news will bring, I found myself reeling, feeling
personally assaulted, unable to breathe, “how dare you, how dare you,” words
that have come to me again and again. In the week following the horrors
remembered on Tisha B’Av, day of
mourning and fasting, laments and dirges for our own sufferings, of exile and
wandering; Jews gathering around the country to speak from our own experience
as refugees to the pain of those suffering today at our southern border, so the
insult that twisted the words of a Jewish poet. Tempest-tossed in the sea of my
own emotions, the gall of one more who would tear the shreds of our decency
with Orwellian inversion of the precious words of Emma Lazarus. I thought of
the opening of Franz Kafka’s “Amerika,” a young man standing at the rail of a
ship entering New York Harbor, gazing out, “…as though in an intenser sunlight.
The sword in her hand seemed only just to have been raised aloft, and the
unchained winds blew about her form…” (Amerika, p. 3).


In is the Torah portion of that week, Va’etchanan (Deut. 4:23-7:11), Moses pours out his heart as he
recalls to the people how he beseeched God to let him enter the Land, which
alas was not to be. That others might enter this, our American land, the word va’etchanan tells of prayer as
supplication, prayer that pleads from a shattered heart, prayer that purifies
the land on a torrent of tears. Please God, help us to find comfort, to restore
decency, to dry the tears upon the face of the Mother of Exiles and upon the
faces of all the children for whom she weeps. The Shabbos of Comfort begins a
seven-week journey that brings us to the edge of a new year and its renewal.
These seven weeks are called the Sheva
d’N’chemta/the Seven of Comfort, so describing each of the seven prophetic
readings from the Prophet Isaiah that offer comfort after the horrors recalled
on Tisha B’Av. On the Shabbos of Comfort that begins the seven, an answer is
given to our seeking of comfort, a hint of the source from which it comes.

As its own offering of comfort, of prayer and protest,
please read the poem of Emma Lazarus, speaking her words as supplication, words
to know in their truth, words to hold and protect that they not be abused, nor
the people to whom the lamp is raised. As did a little child so long ago, so it
is for each of us, ever so gently, to offer to each other a sprig of lavender.
A tune forming in my heart, words fluttering on my lips, the memory of a moment
still brings comfort: Little girl with a
sprig of lavender, gentle be, gentle she, comfort ye my people; comfort ye,
comfort ye with a sprig of lavender.
The New Colossus
BY EMMA LAZARUS
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
Rabbi Victor H. Reinstein
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