This week’s Haftarah, from the book of Isaiah’s sixth chapter, has a dialogue between the prophet, the Seraphim (angels) and the Almighty. I am fascinated by the fourth pasuk (sentence) which says “And the doorposts shook from the voice of He who called, and the house (the Temple in Jerusalem) filled with smoke.”
The rest of the chapter deals with Isaiah’s worthiness, his sanctification as messenger of the Almighty, and the warning message he was to bring to the Jewish people.
We’ve all had our doorposts shaken in recent years - on personal and communal levels - and our houses have indeed filled with a smoke so thick that we seem at times unable to see anything clearly, rather hearing the noise and sensing the disquiet of these times. We can be depressed by this, despondent, immobilized. But we can also be motivated as Isaiah was to introspection, to discovering or accepting our weakness or impurity, and to finding the strength to reclaim our holy mission.
Let’s recall and reclaim that.
Our mission is to bring light to the world. Our methods are to fill it with good deeds.
Our innovation - copied by others, to be sure - was to uphold “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself”, and interpret it to shun that which is hateful to you in your behavior towards others.
Our uniqueness lies, among other things, in the growing, evolving, and magnifying scholarship that we built with divine inspiration on the words of the written and oral Torah. We are still at it, 3500 years after Sinai.
Our stubbornness plays its role in our continued existence, and our connection to our land after 2000 years of exile is testament to that stubbornness.
And now, in 2026, our holy mission is imperilled if we forget its importance, its uniqueness, and its universality. None of it prevails if we are overcome. None of it has value if we don't transmit it to our children. None of it flourishes in the gardens of our communities if those gardens are not defended and protected.
The doorposts trembled, the Temple filled with smoke. But out of that maelstrom walked Isaiah, and he had a message to bring. So do we.
Shabbat Shalom