Everything this Shabbat, like the days and weeks preceding it, has been informed and connected to the 9th of Av which we will be observing on Sunday. This day, known as Tisha Be’Av, has been a day of mourning and reckoning for the Jewish people for thousands of years. In fact, I am writing this now in the English language instead of the glorious idiom of the Hebrew language, because my ancestors were taken away from this land in handcuffs and chains by a Roman occupation army on that day, 1,951 years ago.
This exile was the second time we had been uprooted and torn from the homeland. Just seven centuries prior, the Babylonians too, led us out of Judea into an uncertain captivity.
At that time, the prophet Jeremiah had warned of the calamity to come. He was plagued by visions of the destruction of the Temple and fall of the state but no one wanted to listen. The religious establishment especially not only turned a deaf ear to Jeremiah but labeled him a blasphemous traitor. The idea that God would destroy His own house was an unthinkable heresy. They too had their prophets assuring the people of the indestructibility of the Temple. These were of course false prophets, but they were not charlatans out to deceive the people. They really truly believed their message, and not only did they believe the message they preached, they believed it was coming from God Himself. (This should of course serve as a warning to our religious leadership.) Jeremiah, though, had not only to declare an unpopular message but had to stand up against a world and religious viewpoint that was against everything he was preaching.
After Jeremiah’s prophecies proved true and the people were being led out into exile, it was at that time the prophecies changed from doom and gloom to return and redemption.
“There shall yet be heard in the cities of Judea and the streets of Jerusalem… the sounds of joy and the sounds of gladness, the voice of a groom and the voice of a bride!’
Some 2,600 years later, these words are sung again and again at every single Jewish wedding; repeated as if like a mantra, serving as both an affirmation of Jeremiah’s prophecies of destruction and our confidence and faith that the prophecies of restoration will be fulfilled as well.
But it wasn’t just our faith alone that allowed us to return. All of rabbinic literature and liturgy prepared us for our eventual return by the proper framing of the story of our exile.
When the rabbis asked why the First Temple was destroyed, they answered that we were guilty of the sins of murder, adultery and idol worship. And why then was the Second Temple destroyed? For that the rabbis tell us that we were guilty of the sin of senseless hatred amongst ourselves. The lesson of course, was that in God’s eyes, senseless hatred was equal to the three cardinal sins.
And while the lesson is profound, it is what the rabbis did not say that speaks volumes. When asked why the Temple fell, they did not answer with a geopolitical assessment of the situation. We are not treated to the relative merits of Babylonian and Roman strategies over Judean tactics. Instead, the blame is completely ours and is a failure of our morality not our military.
A friend of mine named David once brought this point home to me in a Facebook post he had on the “Nakba.” Al-Nakba marks May 15, the day of the end of the British Mandate over Palestine. It was on that date that the State of Israel came into being and is observed by Palestinians as the day of “The Catastrophe.” Instead of accepting the UN’s partition plan, which provided for the establishment of both an Arab and a Jewish state, the Arabs attacked Israel trying to abort the newborn state. In other words, instead of establishing a country of their own, they tried to kill ours. The results were catastrophic for the Arab population of Palestine; 700,000 Arabs fled or were expelled from what would become Israel. The parts of Palestine that did not become Israel were seized by the Egyptians and Jordanians, who took control for themselves and did not establish a Palestinian state.
This complete failure of the Arabs to seize the opportunity to build their state is usually marked by violent protests by the Arab population. On this, my friend David, who is smarter and more astute than I am, observed: “How much better it would be for the Palestinians if instead of spending the day throwing stones and violently protesting, they would sit on the floor mourning their loss and contemplating which of their actions led them to this point.”
We Jews did not return home by blaming the injustice of Babylonian and Roman occupation on our captors, nor did we protest or throw stones. Every single year we spent the 9th Day of Av, the day of our catastrophe, on the floor, fasting and weeping, mourning our loss and blaming ourselves for the consequences. The refrain we heard in yeshiva was that just like the Temple fell because of senseless hatred, it would be restored one day through senseless love.
Perhaps that might provide a way for our neighbors to process their loss and provide a way for them to create a viable future for themselves.
The writer holds a doctorate in Jewish philosophy and teaches in post-high-school yeshivot and midrashot in Jerusalem.