By Rabbi Robyn Ashworth-Steen

It perhaps says something about my current state of mind that when I opened the news this morning and the headline appeared, ‘‘Butterfly emergency’ declared as UK summer count hits record low”, that I thought, ‘of course, the butterflies are leaving’. Certainly, it was a dramatic response. Yet, at the moment, it feels easy to be stuck in despair with wars raging abroad, vicious public and familial divisive conversations on Israel and Gaza, Sudan, Afghanistan, the climate crisis and so on. The dearth of butterflies felt desperately fitting to an already bleak picture.

Many previous generations have asked the same questions and, specifically, the question – what shall we do with a world that seems so broken? Ancient Jewish teachings posit that God continuously created and destroyed worlds until God declared ‘this one pleases me’ (Bereshit Rabbah 3:7). Another teaching states there were 974 generations created before this world (b.Chagigah 13b). The two schools of the eminent sages Hillel and Shammai even argue whether it would have been preferable that humankind was not created. They conclude that it certainly would have been preferable humankind was not created but given that they have been, they should, in essence, make the best of it and examine their actions (b.Eruvin 13b).^[1]

As we sit in the in time period between Tisha B’Av and Rosh Hashanah, our liturgical calendar pre-empts this feeling of despair by offering up ‘Haftarot of Consolation’ – seven readings which are set to offer hope. The word ‘haftarah’ means to take leave. It is hoped that we ‘take leave’ from the service, uplifted. For Parashat Ki Tavo we are offered Isaiah 60:1-22. The prophets are used to times of doom, having lived through tumultuous times. Their words range from condemnation and warning to hope, that if we change our ways, things will get better. It’s a troubling theology which suggests our punishment is deserved.^[2] In this Haftarah Isaiah proclaims, ‘The cry “violence”, shall no more be heard in your land’ (60:18) which I want to lean into and believe. Though, only two verses later Isaiah continues with this utopian vision by stating, ‘and your people, all of them righteous, shall possess the land the land for all time’ (60:21) which echoes the beginning of Parashat Ki Tavo, ‘when you enter the land that your God, Adonai, is giving you as a heritage, and you possess and settle in it…’ (Deuteronomy 26:1). Even these words of hope lead me to despair. Must a utopian vision demand winners and losers? Must others suffer for my liberation? Could there not be a liberative vision where all are free?

One teaching which I find helpful as it is both honest and hopeful is the idea that the dark times we are living in are birth pangs of the messianic time (a better time to come). Now, I warn against googling this term for the image has become enmeshed with some strange sects and theologies of harm. But taken out of those contexts I still find some relief. And it is to some ancient Sikh wisdom that I can find an equivalent teaching. Valerie Kaur in conversation with Brené Brown (you can find the episode here) asks, ‘what if this [time] is the darkness of the womb?’ What if we are ‘waiting to be born’? She talks of the ‘expansions and contractions’ of labour, the risks danger and beauty of birth and implores us to work out what our role is in this epic labour. Valerie says:

Every crisis feels like the last contraction and yet every cycle, there’s more. I think there are more of us than ever before, Brené. More of us awake to our oneness, more of us longing for a world of belonging, more of us who know that justice and liberation and peace run together. More of us than the warmongers and the terrorists and the demagogues who profit from our despair, who want us to believe that only those who have weapons or wealth hold the power in this world. But there are millions of us.

As I hear these words, knowing both the beauty of giving birth and the pain of miscarriage, I am taken back to the opening words of Bereshit when life and light was formed out of unformed void (Genesis 1:1-3). Yet, creation did not stop there, whilst a single human creature was formed they could not be alone – partners, communities were formed to sustain them. However small your cadre, your people who fully see you and show up to nurture you, however dark it may all seem, however hard it may be – hold on to those people to whom you belong and do not let go. Alongside the midwives of Shifrah and Puah, I will end with the words of Valerie Kaur:

And no one goes to battle alone. No one gives birth alone. No one should give birth alone, right? We need our people. We need our people. We need our midwives by our side. We need our ancestors at our backs.

May we be blessed as we seek consolation at this time. Amen.

• You can find a source sheet here with all of the sources referenced.

^[1] See also Kohelet Rabbah 7:13 where God implores Adam not to destroy the world. Though, you will see that Midrash ends with a troubling analogy of a pregnant woman imprisoned whose son was born and complains of the awful situation he find himself in – the king, in that story, replies by blaming the sins of the mother. It could be argued that this very teaching on not destroying the world is going someway to destroying the world.

^[2] The curses in Parashat Ki Tavo seem to mirror this world of reward and punishment (Deuteronomy 27:14-26).

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