Pinchas
Abraham Joshua Heschel on Parashat Pinchas, read on Shabbat Pinchas · The Three Weeks have begun — with one of this week's three questions for the two of you.
We are now in the period between the seventeenth of Tammuz and Tisha B'Av — the season of remembering what was destroyed. Heschel's whole work on Shabbat is, in a way, the answer to this season. Israel had two sanctuaries: a sanctuary in space, which fell, and a sanctuary in time, which still stands. Every Shabbat is a quiet declaration that the deepest things between God and Israel — and between two people who love each other — cannot be destroyed by any catastrophe of stone. The Temple in space is gone. The temple in time, every seventh day, is still being built.
When the Temple was destroyed, the rabbis taught that we still had two things: prayer and the Shabbat. What still stands between us, even on the days when other things seem to have collapsed?
The full week — the passage itself with its source, the other two questions, and the closing verse of hope — lives in the app. Together Tomorrow on the App Store.