This was my D’var Torah for Parashat Ki Tavo, and specifically the haftarah from Yeshayahu (Isaiah) chapter 60. I shared it on Shabbat morning, September 15, 2025.
This is my very favorite Haftarah. I remember the first time I heard it, not in a synagogue but at the Twin Cities performance of the Hasidic Song Festival around 1976. Which took place at an arena where hockey games and rock concerts would happen, and I think we left from the Jewish Community Center on buses, so the kids – I was about 10 – could go together and sit in the balcony while the parents sat on the main level.
I didn’t know at the time where this song came from, sung that night by Tzvi Bums and Ruchama Raz, it’s on the album of the Ninth Chasidic Song Festival, which was in regular circulation on the Friday night record player at my home along with Debbie Friedman albums and later on songs of Jerusalem.
The particular melody for Kumi Ori starts slow and quiet with a little piano behind it – Kumi ori, ki va oreich, u’chvod Adoshem, alayich zarach. Then it picks up and speeds up with a thumping bass and horns – Ki hi… neh, hachoshech y’chaseh, eretz, v’arafel l’umim, v’alaaaa-yich yizrach Adoshem uch’vodo alayich ye’ra’eh, uch’vodo alayich ye’ra’eh.
And the tempo of the two pieces of the song are completely opposite of what you would think, because the first line says: Kumi ori, Get up and shine, for your light is coming, and the presence of the Divine is spotlighting you! That’s the slow line, then the fast one begins: For look, the darkness covers the earth and a deep darkness the nations.
If I had an easy wish, after the week that has been in the world, it would be no darkness – and if I can’t have that one, my next wish would be to face the darkness of the world knowing that there is a persistent light, which is the spotlight of the first verse, and the glow, the noga, of the continuation of the Haftarah. And that light and that glow are from us. Se’i saviv aynayich u’ri, kulam nik’b’tzu va’u lach – lift up your eyes, and see, all of them are gathering and coming toward you. You might know those words also from a modern song accompanied by pounding on a table, called Sisu et Yerushalayim.
How can this be more than a cliché for us, to be light amidst darkness?
Some of the work of the month of Elul is to think hard about what we can do to generate light, whether it’s the bright spotlight of inspiration and knowledge or the persistent glow of loyalty and wisdom. Where are these in ourselves. Where have we seen them, especially where we have seen them lately. The answers are not in our texts, but in what Heschel called our textpeople. Our texts teach us how to know light when we see it. Our texts remind us what is possible in the world because the Divine has already imagined it, told it to us and charged us to create it.
In the Haftarah, the prophet is speaking to people who are adrift, who know only that their society fell apart from within and because of that they could not protect each other, and so they were exiled. The prophet speaks to people who long for steady ground, for the home and foundation they recognize, and who are not sure they can return.
It is to such people, off-kilter to say the least, that the prophet says Kumi Ori, Get up because you are shining. Though darkness covers the land and may yet cover it for a while, alayich yizrach Adonai – the Divine light is shining, and it’s on you. V’halchu goyim l’oreich, u’mlachim l’noga zar’chaych – Nations will go toward your light, and rulers to the glow that shines from you. You are not simply a small people, trying to get back to a familiar place. You are more than that, you are the anchor the world is looking for.
The people the prophet was speaking to were astonished to hear that. They couldn’t believe it. They didn’t see it as an obvious description of their reality. And we too, Jews today, might be astonished to hear such a message, in a world that is not broadcasting to us that it sees us as that kind of light.
So this Elul part of our work is to train ourselves not to look so much at those messages of discouragement coming from voices that are not prophetic at all. To stop the self-fulfilling prophecies of our doom, and replace them with these prophecies of hope. We may not be shining with light all the time, living up to all our ideals — but the Divine sees that we could be.
That vision of ourselves is what needs to sustain us. As we do our Elul work of becoming the people who are or lagoyim, light to all peoples.
It is work, spiritual work, and it’s not done by reading and listening but by reflecting and thinking, on our own and with others.
It’s done in our small groups, the ones we have and the ones that need still to be created.
And by gathering spiritually, as we do every Shabbat. Shabbat begins when it gets dark, and we create spotlights, and it lasts until the very last little glow is still in the sky. We come in here and see each other with light shining in on us, spotlighting through these beautiful windows colored by Torah. We celebrate the best parts of us – the parts that want to be close up to Torah, the parts that can recognize mitzvot and the people who do them. Lingering together not in a hurry, delighting in each other’s company, getting away from the clock of productivity. Laughing and smiling in this microcosm world, the light joy and the deeper-down simcha which shine out against the darkness covering out there too much.
All this, even when we are profoundly off-kilter. All of this helps inoculate us against discouragement. All of this helps us radiate out, that our glow goes out far more than the darkness creeps in.
Shabbat replenishes us, in ways we need as much as ever.
The year ahead needs us to believe that we are greater light than the darkness surrounding. That’s what it is going to mean to be a Jew in the new year – in this country, in Israel. This is hard spiritual work. And it starts with a self-image. Ki hinei hachoshech y’chaseh eretz, v’arafel l’umim — the darkness may be covering the earth – va’alayich yizrach Adonai, uchvodo alayich ye’ra’eh– but the Divine shines on you, God’s glory is seen on you. As loud as that first part sounds today, sing the last part even louder.
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