I haven’t ever had to plan school activities for the days that lead up to Tisha B’av but I suspect it’s more complicated than the planning we do for our high school’s Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony. (Which might often feature a round of full-contact musical chairs, a cherished school tradition. And in case my mom or wife are reading this, I feel like I should say that I definitely, totally, 100%, know that I should NOT participate in that type of shenanigans, so you have nothing to worry about.)

If I did find myself teaching Torah in the land of the platypus and the wallaby, I think I would want to spend some time focusing on the 7 haftarahs that come after Tisha B’av as well. You might already know that there are 3 special haftarot before Tisha B’av called the “3 of calamity” that portend the destruction of Tisha B’Av and then there are “7 of consolation” that give words to uplift the spirit of the Jewish people after the destruction. In 2025, I think it was easy to get into the mindset of calamity and destruction. But Jewish consciousness doesn’t want the preamble to the Yomim Noraim (high holy days) to be devastation. We are called to enter the Days of Awe from a mindset of closeness and consolation, and that’s what I would want to teach about.

That said, there is an irony here. Last Motzei Shabbos, I was holding my little blue chair and my kinnos to go to Eicha, when we got the call that my dad had died on Shabbos. It was totally unexpected. He had a massive heart attack and despite the fact that CPR was started right away, and the ambulance came right away, and the hospital was right across the street, his heart never restarted. The irony is that just as everyone else was shaking off the last vestiges of the 9 days, I was getting ready to start Aveilus. (In shul we read the famous, “Nachamu, Nachamu Ami,” and I was thinking of writing a blog titled, “Nachamu? Nachamu? Not me!” but I didn’t think the internet would appreciate my sense of humor.) I’m writing this on the day I got up from Shiva. We put the furniture back, and Misaskim came and picked up their chairs and Torah, and now I’m trying to glean some lasting meaning from the week of shiva.  And maybe think about it in the context of the 2^nd of these Haftarot of Consolation.

Let’s start at the beginning. What is consolation? I don’t think that when the sages set up these haftarot they had in mind simply that the first three haftarahs are prophecies that bad things are coming and the last 7 are prophecies that good times will come, because the fact that things WILL be good doesn’t really make up for things being bad. Meaning, the fact that chocolate tastes good doesn’t make up for the fact that spinach tastes bad, because really, I would rather eat chocolate without ever having to eat spinach.

The most famous gemorah of consolation is unquestionably the story at the end of Mesechet Makkot, where the group of scholars see a fox running through the remains of the Kodesh Hakadoshim (the holy of holies) and then cry. But Rabbi Akiva sees that scene and he laughs. In explanation he says that the reason for his laughter is that now that he’s seen the prophecy of wild animals running free in that sacred space, he is confident that the prophecies of the old and young rejoicing together in a rebuilt Jerusalem will also be fulfilled. Having been shown the connection between the destruction of now and the redemption of the future, the scholars respond, “Akiva, you have consoled us. Akiva you have consoled us.”  (See there for more details.) I don’t think that the consolation is ONLY that, “it was bad now and later it will be good,” because these scholars KNEW the future would be good. These aren’t people that gave up all hope of a Messianic Era. The consolation is in understanding that the destruction now IS a stepping stone towards the future. It IS already, right now, the lowest rung on a ladder that has its top in the heavens. I think that this idea is very much aligned with the central thesis of Frankel’s Man’s Search for Meaning, that suffering is lightened and endurable if the suffering is meaningful. Consolation comes from understanding that suffering has a purpose.

That said, I don’t think this is the type of consolation that a mourner is being offered in a Shiva house – at least it wasn’t in my Shiva house. Mostly what I experienced was people trying to shift thinking from the sadness around the separation of death to focusing on the parts of life that were meaningful and important. It was about trying to see this sad moment in the context of the whole relationship, and on the whole, that relationship was good and meaningful.

And I think that brings us to the haftorah. It’s hard to know exactly when during his life the prophet Isaiah is speaking the words of chapters 49, 50, and 51 because (all together now class) “The book of Isaiah is arranged thematically, not chronologically.” That is, for the most part, all the “bad” prophecies are in the front of the book and all the “good” prophecies are at the end of the book, and right in the middle is the Assyrian invasion and (ultimately failed) siege of Jerusalem. So it’s hard to know if really, really, the prophet only talked about “fire and brimstone” things at first and then after that holocaust only about the messianic era or if the book was just arranged that way by the Men of the Great Assembly. Regardless, either the prophet wanted to use these words to console us, or the Men of the Great Assembly did. So we can say the context of this haftorah is after the Assyrian invasion, the exile of the Northern kingdom, and the destruction of everything in Judea except Jerusalem.

With all that having just happened the prophet turns to the broken and dejected people and says, “Can a woman forget the child of her womb? She will forget them before I forget you. It’s as if you are engraved on my hands and your walls are perpetually in my sight.” Every verse in this haftorah is a call to understand the love Hashem has for the Jewish people.

Did the words of love make the memories of destruction go away? No, that’s not their goal.

Rabbi Akiva’s laughter didn’t chase the fox out of the Holy of Holies.

The funny and memorable stories of dad don’t give us a chance to say goodbye.

That’s not their goal.

The goal isn’t to mask the flavor of spinach with chocolate.

The goal is to say that this thing that happened is sad. It’s OK to be sad. But it’s not the ONLY thing.

The consolation of the haftorah is in knowing that the destruction that happened is not an end of a relationship, it’s a part of the relationship.

And in that I think we can say, “Isaiah you have consoled us. Isaiah you have consoled us.” Even in Australia.

Rabbi Mordechai Soskil has been teaching Torah for more than 25 years. Currently he is the Associate Principal of the High School at Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School. He is also the author of a highly regarded book on faith and hashkafa titled "Questions Obnoxious Jewish Teenagers Ask." He and his wife Allison have 6 children and a blessedly expanding herd of grandchildren.