Posted July 22, 2010
The haftorah for this Shabbat begins with the famous words, “Nachamu, nachamu ami” — “Comfort, oh comfort my people.” The use of the word nachem to mean comfort or consolation is very familiar to us. It is the first word in the additional prayer that we recite in mincha on Tisha Bav and it is the central theme of the blessing that we give the mourner in a house of mourning, “Ha-Makom ye-nachem etchem.” However, this same word seems to have a different usage in the Torah. In the episode of the Golden Calf, God wants to destroy the entire nation. Moshe pleads with God to relent from his anger and the Torah reports, “Va-yinachem Hashem al ha-ra’ah asher diber la-asot le-amo” — “God relented regarding the evil that He declared that He would do to his people.” How did the word for comfort come to be used to refer to God’s relenting on the punishment?
I believe that the answer can found in a final usage of the word nachem. At the end of the Book of Breishit, Jacob dies and the brothers are afraid that Joseph will finally retaliate for the fact that his brothers sold him to Egypt. However, Joseph did not retaliate. Rather, the Torah says, “Va-yinachem otam va-yedaber al libam” — “Joseph reconciled with them, speaking kindly to them.” Here, the same word, nachem, is used to mean reconcile and in this meaning lays the secret to understanding the significance of this word in the different contexts in which it is used. The choice of the word nachem to express God’s relenting regarding his punishment following the sin of the Golden Calf reflects the fact that the act of God’s relenting is based on the ability to reconcile with man’s inclination to sin and to appreciate that this inclination cannot lead to the destruction of the entire nation.
Finally, the use of the word nachem to mean comfort or consolation reflects the idea that the experience of being comforted following a tragedy is based on the ability to reconcile oneself to the tragedy. It is only through reconciliation with what has transpired that one is able to deal with the tragedy, whether it is a personal or national one. As the period of nechamah begins this Shabbat, let us all reconcile ourselves to those things that we cannot change and work together to improve those things that can be changed.

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LECTURE SERIES
- A Study of Halachic and Cultural Responses to Jewish Crisis and Tragedy
- American Jewish Translations of the Torah
- Biblical Studies
- Court Jews: Jews and Judaism on Trial Throughout the Centuries
- Crime: Does It pay?
- Development of Jewish Law
- Glimpses into the religious Lives of Early Modern European Jewry
- Halakhah in the Post-Shulhan Arukh Period
- History and Theology: The Thirteen Principles of Rambam
- History of the Yeshivot in LIthuania
- How Did the Rabbis of Early Modern Times Interpret the Bible?
- Jewish History
- Jewish Theology
- Jews and Hollywood
- Jews and Hollywood: Part II
- Jews in New York
- Judaism Confronts Modernity: Jewish Experiences in the Nineteenth Century
- Manhattan Stories: The Historical and Cultural Impact of Jews in Manhattan
- Medieval Biblical Commentators Respond to the Torah and Their Surroundings
- Prayer
- Rabbinic Judaism
- Rabbinic Narratives
- Rabbinical Semiaries in America
- Snapshots of American Jewish History
- Survey
- The Impact of American Society on American Rabbinic Reponsa
- The Yamim Nora'im and its Liturgy
- West Side Stories
- Yeshivot in the Land of Israel