The haftarah for parashat Pinchas, when read during the period of the Three Weeks between the fast days of 17 Tamuz and Tisha B’Av, opens not with comfort but with calling.
Drawn from Jeremiah (1:1-2:3), it introduces one of the most reluctant and courageous prophets in Jewish history. Jeremiah does not seek influence or acclaim. On the contrary, when God summons him, he recoils.
“Ah, Lord God,” Jeremiah says, “behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am but a youth” (Jeremiah 1:6). Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, 1040-1105) explains that Jeremiah is saying that he is not worthy to offer rebuke to the people of Israel.
It is a deeply human response. Faced with an overwhelming mission, Jeremiah sees only his inadequacy. He is young. He is inexperienced. How can he stand before a king, priests, and an entire nation and deliver words they do not wish to hear?
But God’s answer is immediate: “Do not say, ‘I am but a youth,’ for wherever I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak” (ibid. 1:7).
In that exchange lies one of the great lessons of Jewish leadership. The question is not whether Jeremiah feels ready. The question is whether he is willing to be faithful.
This is an especially fitting message for the Three Weeks, when we mourn the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile that followed. These days force us to look honestly at Jewish history. Nations do not collapse overnight. Spiritual decay precedes political ruin. Moral confusion weakens a people long before its walls are breached.
Jeremiah’s task was to say this aloud.
He was not sent to flatter the people or reassure them that all would be well. He was sent to awaken them, warn them, and call them back to God before disaster struck.
And yet the haftarah does not begin with anger. It begins with destiny.
Beginning with destiny
“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” God tells Jeremiah. “Before you emerged from the womb, I sanctified you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (ibid. 1:5).
This is not merely a statement about Jeremiah. It is a statement about purpose. Every generation needs people who must speak when silence would be easier, stand when others retreat, and remind the Jewish people who we are when we are tempted to forget.
The haftarah then presents two visions. First, Jeremiah sees a branch of an almond tree. God explains that He is “watchful” about His word to fulfill it. The Hebrew word for almond, “shaked,” is linked to the word “shoked,” watchful. History is not random. God sees. God remembers.
The second vision is more ominous: a boiling pot tilted from the north, warning of the calamity that will come upon Judah because the people have forsaken God and bowed to the works of their own hands.
The message is uncomfortable, but it is necessary. Judaism does not believe in denial masquerading as optimism. It does not teach us to ignore danger, excuse wrongdoing, or pretend that all paths lead to blessing. True faith requires moral clarity.
AND THEN, after the warnings, comes one of the most tender verses in Tanach.
At the end of the haftarah, God remembers the earliest love between Himself and Israel: “I remember for you the kindness of your youth, your bridal love, your following Me into the wilderness into an unsown land” (ibid. 2:2).
After the rebuke, after the visions of destruction, after the call to repentance, God speaks of love.
That is the essence of the Three Weeks. We mourn because we love. We grieve over Jerusalem because it is not a relic of the past but the beating heart of our people. We remember the Temple because its absence still matters.
Jeremiah teaches us that rebuke is not the opposite of love. Indifference is.
A prophet who warns Israel is not an enemy of Israel. He is a defender of its soul. He refuses to allow the Jewish people to drift into disaster without protest. He refuses to let it confuse survival with purpose or national existence with spiritual greatness.
That is why this haftarah speaks so powerfully to our own time.
The Jewish people has returned to history with astonishing strength. Yet strength alone is not enough. Sovereignty must be matched by sanctity. Power must be guided by purpose. A Jewish state must remember that it is not merely another country with another flag, but the vessel of an ancient destiny.
The Three Weeks do not ask us to despair. They ask us to remember what we lost, why we lost it, and, above all, that God has never stopped remembering us.
Even in rebuke, there is love. Even in exile, there is longing. And even in the darkest chapters of Jewish history, the Almighty continues to call His people back home. ■