By Rab Guido Cohen
A.I.M. Bogota, Colombia
Parashat Vaetchanan is always read after Tisha B’Av, once we have asked God “to make us return to Him,” so that we may return. The Tisha B’Av fast signals the beginning of a period of exile, not just in national and historical terms, but also in individual and existential terms. On Tisha B’Av, our feeling of remoteness from the Eternal One reaches its maximum peak and therefore, in the midst of the desolation we feel for having entered into an exile dimension, we pray to God to make us return. And that is what He starts to do starting this week, with the succession of prophetic texts of comfort which we read in the Haftarot and which will slowly add, step by step, to the reading of Psalm 27, the sound of the Shofar, the Slichot and other rituals, until we reach the gates of the time of Teshuvah, return, and atonement.
On Tisha B’Av, the breach between the place where we would like to be and the place where we actually are, is greater than ever. We leave “our land,” abandon the place promised to us, and feel awed. And after Tisha B’Av we start to come back, we set out on the path to return to that place which we should never have left.