Tag: Isaiah

Where now?

The “collapse” series, launched at the close of Tammuz (late July 2025), began with questions and with cisterns that, God complains, “can hold no water.” In the ensuing weeks, we’ve marked institutional destruction with the mourning and introspection of Av and Elul; we’ve focused on relationship repair and building of shaky new structures through Tishrei’s Days of Awe and Sukkot; and we closed out one Torah reading cycle at Simchat Torah, leading once again into exile, murder, communal violence, catastrophic flood, family conflict, and social scattering.

Now, 14 weeks on, as the Torah portion calls “Lekh Lekha [Go for, or to, yourself!]” (Gen 12:1), this series on repentance in a time of collapse comes to its close. I originally imagined the series as leading toward the high holidays, but the new year came with so many uncertainties… and so I held off, waiting for a logical end point. This closing came for me, sadly, when Tzedek Chicago, where I had been an active member for some years, used my “Al Chet for Institutions” at Yom Kippur services without any plans for organizational teshuvah. (For anyone interested, I formally resigned on October 27 and posted a further update on October 31 after the congregation separated with the second of its foundational co-cantorial soloists.)

Lekh Lekha: Go where?

At the beginning of Elul, Jeremiah’s haftarah questions invited us into a wake-up call and conversation for the season of repentance. The haftarah for Lekh Lekha, Isaiah 40:27-41:16, also begins with a question:

לָמָּה תֹאמַר יַעֲקֹב וּתְדַבֵּר יִשְׂרָאֵל נִסְתְּרָה דַרְכִּי מֵיְהֹוָה וּמֵאֱלֹהַי מִשְׁפָּטִי יַעֲבוֹר׃

Why do you say, O Jacob,
Why declare, O Israel,
“My way is hid from GOD,
My cause is ignored by my God”? — Isaiah 40:27

Jewish Publication Society commentary notes how this differs from “the theological motif that God deliberately hides [the divine’s] face from [God’s] creatures as an expression of anger or rejection (cf. Deut 31:18; Ps. 44:25)” and identifies the question as a “quote from a communal lament, bemoaning a lack of knowledge” (The JPS Bible Commentary: Haftarot, 2002. Michael Fishbane, citing Claus Westermann, 1969).

The Torah portion itself asks: “Whence do you come [אֵי־מִזֶּה בָאת]? and where do you go?” [וְאָנָה תֵלֵכִי] (a messenger of YHVH of God to Hagar, Gen 16:8).

Both questions seem fitting for this point in our collapse travels.

In addition, the haftarah offers a kind of bookend for the cistern images which began this series. Back then, God chastised the people for having abandoned “Me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, That can hold no water” (Jer 2:13). Now, the people are addressed as “Seed of Abraham my friend” or “…who loved me” [זֶרַע אַבְרָהָם אֹהֲבִי] (Isa 41:8).

We’ve spent weeks considering forms of collapse around us and cisterns that no longer seem to hold water. Now we are reminded that, whatever may be broken around us, the seed of relationship with the divine is still available.

This is the tenth in the series, “Calendar Notes for a Summer of Collapse“

NOTE

UPDATE October 31, 2025: Over the past four months, Tzedek Chicago has separated the congregation from both long-time co-cantorial soloists: in one case, using the vague “intractable differences” explanation often employed in quashing union/labor disputes; in another case, using specific language about misuse of power which seems directly contradicted by structures of the organization. While I do not deny any individual’s experience of harm, I have witnessed enough problematic uses of power within the organization by those making the public declarations to be wary of how these actions have been taken and announcements made. At this point, although I am deeply grateful for individual relationships I have made over the years and cannot rewrite history to remove my contributions to the congregation, I must re-evaluate any association with the congregation as an entity.

More at “Stepping Away“




Grass Roots: a holiday question and memorial reflection

As we approach the high holidays, grass shows up in two haftarah readings. What do these verses tell us in this season of repentance and return? I am pondering. Meanwhile, a recent yahrzeit called to mind the sweetness of grass as well as its transient nature. Does that, too, carry a message for the high holidays?

We learn on Shabbat Nachamu, the Sabbath of Comfort that follows the lowest point in the Jewish calendar, that “all flesh is grass,” and that “grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever” (Isaiah 40:6-8). Three weeks later, on Shabbat Shoftim, we are told “Mortals fare like grass” (Isaiah 51:12). (Full verses and Hebrew below)

Learning to Witness

My father, Delmar G. Spatz — called just plain ‘Spatz’ by most adults, including my mom — was raised in northern Wisconsin. He moved to Chicago after his Army Air Corps service during World Ward Two; he’d been stationed in England but still taught us to sing “How Ya Gonna Keep ’em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree).” Spatz met Bette, a native of Chicago. They married in 1951 and settled on the city’s West Side. He died in 1976, the summer I was 16.

The hole my dad left has taken many shapes over the decades. This is his 40th yahrzeit. And it appears to me this year that his death – and his life – form a hollow that creates a lens.

A few weeks ago, my older sister, Martha, and I had the opportunity to discuss some of what he taught us to see. She told me how, in 1968, he walked her out to see the tanks, deployed a few blocks from our apartment in the wake of Martin Luther King’s murder and the subsequent unrest. Later that year, during the Democratic National Convention, Dad sent Martha and a friend downtown to the Prudential Building – then the tallest place around – so they could see without direct risk to themselves what was happening between police and protesters in Grant Park.

That was the year Martha turned 14. I guess my younger siblings, Amy and Bob, and I were considered too young for these particular field trips.

But learning to be a witness was a major part of our education in all the years we had with Dad. He especially emphasized noticing people and circumstances that regularly went unrecognized.

It took me a long time to realize that my classmates were not being taught see the same way my dad wanted us to see. It might take me another 40 years to explore just how the lenses crafted by my dad’s lessons worked – and continue to work – in my life.

grass2Meanwhile, though – in the way each yahrzeit seems to bring its own new facet of blessing – this year I recall another aspect of that lens. I remember Dad teaching me to notice how the strongest blades of grass, when pulled gently from the ground, would yield a hidden, moist taste treat. He helped me recognize that the greenish-white part of a watermelon, the stuff closest to the rind – that so many people toss away – is often the sweetest. And together, on many a horridly hot summer day, we witnessed how sitting absolutely still could call up a breeze more cooling than anything produced by a fan, electric or paper.
— these reflections were shared with Temple Micah on August 20, 2016.

Haftarah Verses from Isaiah

קוֹל אֹמֵר קְרָא, וְאָמַר מָה אֶקְרָא; כָּל-הַבָּשָׂר חָצִיר, וְכָל-חַסְדּוֹ כְּצִיץ הַשָּׂדֶה.
יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר נָבֵל צִיץ, כִּי רוּחַ יְהוָה נָשְׁבָה בּוֹ; אָכֵן חָצִיר, הָעָם.
יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר, נָבֵל צִיץ; וּדְבַר-אֱלֹהֵינוּ, יָקוּם לְעוֹלָם.

Hark! says one: ‘Proclaim!’ Another says: ‘What shall I proclaim?’
‘All flesh is grass, and its goodness is as the flower of the field;
The grass withers, the flower fades;
because the breath of the LORD blows upon it–surely the people is grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God stands forever.’
— Isaiah 40:6-8, in Haftarah Va’etchanan

אָנֹכִי אָנֹכִי הוּא, מְנַחֶמְכֶם; מִי-אַתְּ וַתִּירְאִי מֵאֱנוֹשׁ יָמוּת, וּמִבֶּן-אָדָם חָצִיר יִנָּתֵן.
I, even I, am He who comforts you: who are you, that you fear Man who must die, Mortals who fare like grass… — Isaiah 51:12, in Haftarah Shoftim

Hebrew text from Mechon-Mamre.org,
Translation adapated from “Old JPS” and Sefaria.org
BACK