The reading of Parashat D’varim (the first Torah portion in the 5th book of the 5 Books of Moses – Deuteronomy) always precedes Tisha B’av (lit. 9th of Av), the Holyday commemorating the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem (587 BCE and 70 CE). Why, and what might this juxtaposition of holiday and parashah mean for us?

The Hebrew word d’varim (singular davar) means “word(s).” The Hebrew root daled, bet, resh also takes the form d’vir (“oracle”). In 1 Kings 8:6, the earliest occurrence of this verbal form in the Hebrew Bible, we read, “The priests brought the Ark of the God’s Covenant to a place underneath the wings of the cherubim, in the Shrine [D’vir] of the house in the Holy of Holies.”

Here, d’vir appears in one verse in parallel with m’komo (his Place – the rabbis always interpreted “Place” as the equivalent of God) and with Kodesh ha-Kodashim (Holy of Holies), the shrine from which God spoke. Much later the Talmud invested the d’vir with new meaning and connected it with the holy word itself, or The “Book.”

This development from shrine to word is not an accident. The Talmud asserts that despite the destruction of the two Jerusalem Temples, the embodiment of holiness (formerly found in the sacred precinct – i.e. the Holy of Holies) and God’s presence amidst the people in that shrine did not disappear from the Jewish people upon the Temples’ destruction and the people’s exile.

Evoking the essence of what the Jewish people’s sacred duties are, Rabbi Abraham J. Heschel asked, “Why and for what purpose was Abraham chosen to become a great and mighty nation, and to be a blessing to all the nations of the earth? Not because he knew how to build pyramids, altars, and temples, but ‘in order that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of God by doing righteousness and justice’ (Genesis 18:18-19).”

Rabbi Ismar Schorsch, the former Chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, put it this way, “Judaism survived because it replaced its cult with a canon. A portable and imperishable book that could transcend the traumas of history provided the bridge to eternity once ensured by a sacred space. Wherever the Jewish people might go, God went with them. The Torah became the inexhaustible wellspring for law and life, for piety and polity, the most treasured object of a religious culture that privileged literacy and learning. In the synagogue, the ark that houses it came to replicate the Temple’s inner shrine…book and shrine serve to perpetuate the experience of revelation, the verbal distillation of ‘that still, small voice’ that joins soul to Soul and mind to Mind.”

The rabbis believed that the first Temple was destroyed because the people had veered far from Torah and that they had forsaken the fundamental principle of tzedek, justice (“Tzedek tzedek tirdof – Justice, justice shall you pursue!” Deuteronomy 16:20). They believed, as well, that the second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred between one Jew and another.

Theirs is not an ancient message for an ancient time. The message of justice, compassion, love, and faith is ever relevant today in our Jewish community, in this country, in Israel, and throughout the world.

Tisha B’av is commemorated Monday evening and Tuesday, August 8-9.