Shabbat Chazon and Tisha B’Av
This Shabbat is called Shabbat Chazon, the Shabbat of Vision. But it’s not the comforting, inspiring kind of vision we might expect from a sacred day of rest. The vision we receive comes from the prophet Isaiah, and it is raw, disturbing, even bitter: a vision of a people who have turned away from justice, whose rituals have become empty gestures, whose society is crumbling beneath the weight of its own corruption.
Isaiah cries out, not because the Temple lies in ruins, but because the soul of the people is in disrepair.
It’s a hard message to sit with. Especially on Shabbat. Especially in summertime. But maybe that’s the point. We aren’t meant to look away this week. Shabbat Chazon and Tisha B’Av force us to look directly at what we might otherwise try to ignore: destruction, loss, grief, exile. And we are asked: what caused it? What still causes it?
The book of Devarim, which we begin reading this week, is also full of retrospection. Moses recalls the missteps and rebellions of the Israelites. But he doesn’t retell them to humiliate; he tells them so that the people can choose differently this time. Isaiah does the same. His vision is fierce, but it’s also full of hope. The haftarah ends with these words:
“Zion shall be redeemed with justice, and those who return to her with righteousness.” (Isaiah 1:27)
Redemption doesn’t come by waiting or wishing. It comes when we restore justice, when we repair what is broken. When we stop thinking holiness lives only in ancient buildings and start seeing it in how we treat one another.
And that, perhaps, is the hidden mercy of this week. Because even Tisha B’Av, the darkest day of the Jewish calendar, holds within it the first seeds of rebuilding. In fact, tradition says that the Messianic Age will begin on Tisha B’Av. Not out of triumph, but out of grief. Out of the realisation that what was can never be again, and yet something new might still grow.
Isaiah’s vision is not a punishment. It is a wake-up call. And Shabbat Chazon is our opportunity to prepare ourselves and transform. To step into the ashes with clear eyes and open hearts. To face what has been destroyed, and commit again to building a Judaism, a world, that is more just, more compassionate, more worthy of its sacred calling.
May this Shabbat hold space for both the sorrow and the dream. And may we, like our ancestors before us, find the strength to build from the rubble something that will last. Not because it is grand, but because it is good.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Adrian
