Parshat Vaetchanan: this marks 29 years exactly since my bat mitzvah. I opened the haftarah in the Sefaria app and I was able to chant the whole thing without any trouble (it’s the only haftarah I can chant, though I like to think I’d recognize most of the trope melodies outside of the one portion I’m comfortable with).
One difference from 29 years ago: I had to up the font by like four sizes because my eyes do not like teeny tiny words anymore. But I still can remember those 13-year-old feelings reading this text from my little study pamphlet, color coded for trope arrangements.
Another difference: I had no idea at age 13 wtf these words actually meant. Now I reread the translation and it’s hitting home. The Vaetchanan haftarah is extremely relevant to today and I’m not sure a kid could understand it even if they tried (and I tried) (a little).
The most I could decipher as a kid was that I was chanting about shepherds and something about Jerusalem. My child brain was of the opinion that this could honestly summarize half the haftarah portions out there (something about shepherds and Jerusalem) and I remember being a bit disappointed that the one assigned to me was so boring.
It’s not boring. It’s beautiful. It’s poetry. And it’s very confident, somewhat aggressive poetry at that. It sings to the people that we should not be afraid. That we should live in joy. That we are grieving and punished but we are protected by a power mightier than anything man could summon.
That all the world’s nations (Lebanon is the only one mentioned specifically) are a speck of dust compared to the long-term scope of the universe.
That nations rise and fall and are essentially nothing, in comparison. That their leaders depart when they’ve barely arrived.
“Do you not know? Have you not heard? Have you not been told from the very first? Have you not discerned how the earth was founded?”
I’m blown away by how relevant my own haftarah portion is to our lives today. And it does give me comfort. In these timeless books, the knowledge comes to us when we need it. And I think as a nation, this is definitely the knowledge we need today.
