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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg

Good Morning.

Today is the eighth and final day of Passover.

The first day commemorates the liberation of the Children of Israel in the past; the last looks forward to the future redemption of all humankind. That’s why the rabbis chose for today’s prophetic reading Isaiah’s vision of the coming of the Messiah, "In that day society will be governed justly and the cause of the poor upheld. Nature will thrive: the wolf will live alongside the lamb (not, as my teacher wryly joked ‘each night a different lamb’). In that day ‘They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea."

It’s one of the most beautiful chapters in the entire Hebrew Bible.

How far away Isaiah’s vision seems today, not just distant, but receding, as wars and misery claw viciously into our world.

But Isaiah’s words were not set in good times either. They were forged in a Jerusalem under siege from Ashurbanipal’s armies and surrounded by destruction. For many of the people of Isarel, and Gaza, it must feel like that today.

But Isaiah wasn’t just a dreamer. He had something tougher to say: Never abandon hope! Never give up on a vison of peace!

He was enlisting the spirit’s resilience in the long struggle against violence and wrong. His message wasn’t: ‘Just wait, and the Messiah will come,’ but rather, ‘We must all be part of this. We can do justice. We can care for all creatures.

Please God, this can be a world where ‘they neither hate nor destroy.’

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