At the moment of destruction, the Midrash (Eicha Rabbah, Introduction, Chapter 24) paints a heartbreaking scene. Avraham Avinu is walking with Hashem — ארוכות וקצרות, long and short paths. He turns to God and asks: "מה לידידי בביתי?" — "What is My beloved doing in My house?" How can this sacred space lie in ruin? Hashem answers: "Your children have sinned." Avraham pleads: "Perhaps only a little?" But Hashem replies: "Their sins are many… and not only that, they have driven the Shechinah away from among them."
Avraham's anguish runs deeper than the loss of a building. He fears spiritual extinction — that in the aftermath of churban and exile, Torah itself will be forgotten. Hashem shows him two paths: a short one and a long one. The short exile is that of seventy years after the destruction of the First Temple. Even in that brief period, Torah was nearly lost. The people no longer knew how to observe Shabbat properly until Nechemiah re-taught them the halachot. What, then, would happen in a longer, more bitter exile?
But Hashem then shows him the longer road — the exile we are still navigating. And in it lies a promise: Torah will not be forgotten. Despite the tears, the wandering, the pain — the flame of Torah will continue to burn.
That is the context in which we read this week's Haftorah from Yirmiyahu, the first of the שלוש דפורענותא, the three prophetic readings of affliction that lead us toward Tisha B'Av. In this Haftorah, Yirmiyahu is charged with a daunting mission. Hashem declares:
רְאֵ֞ה הִפְקַדְתִּ֣יךָ הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֗ה עַל־הַגּוֹיִם֙ וְעַל־הַמַּמְלָכ֔וֹת לִנְת֥וֹשׁ וְלִנְת֖וֹץ וּלְהַאֲבִ֣יד וְלַהֲר֑וֹס לִבְנ֖וֹת וְלִנְטֽוֹעַ:
"See, I appoint you this day over nations and kingdoms: to uproot and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant." (Yirmiyahu 1:10)
The charge includes both destruction and restoration. Yirmiyahu is not only sent to warn, but to begin the slow and painful process of rebuilding. Even in the first breath of prophecy, Hashem places both churban and geulah, both uprooting and replanting, side by side.
This is the story of our people. After the first exile, Torah almost vanished. But we were brought back and rebuilt — not only the walls of Jerusalem, but the spiritual core of our nation. In the second, longer exile, we have endured with Torah in our hands. From Babylon to Poland, from Yemen to Brooklyn, from Vilna to Yerushalayim — the words of Torah have not ceased.
As we begin the Three Weeks, we mourn what was lost. But we also recommit to what was never allowed to disappear. We are the generation Avraham hoped would come — a generation that still learns, still teaches, still clings to the words that have shaped our people since Sinai.
In this season of sorrow, we hold fast to the closing words of Yirmiyahu's first prophecy:
"to build and to plant." Because even now, especially now, the seeds of redemption are being sown.
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