Thoughts during Eicha

I'm home from Israel now, but here and there I might continue to use this blog to post Judaism and Israel related musings. On that note, here's something I wrote yesterday during the fast day of Tisha B'Av, commemorating the destruction of the 1st and 2nd Temples.

I’ve never really connected to Tisha B’Av. The first time I observed it was the summer in high school when I was in Jerusalem. I sat listening to Eicha with my bare feet on the Jerusalem stones at the Kotel, and I thought, “Here we all are, a giant community at the Kotel, what are we crying about?” That same year, my Haredi cousin Yaakov gave a d’var on why we mourn for the Temple—it’s not the just the physical Beis HaMigdash we mourn and want to return to, he said, but the harmonious community and perfect observance that existed in the times of the Temple. But I knew that things weren’t so great during Temple times, like Yaakov described—weren’t Jews participating in idol worship and sacrificing their children to Molech? The most I ever related to Tisha B’Av was the summer I was in Tanzania, the only Jew in a place where most people didn’t even know what a Jew was.

So this year, I was surprised that as I sat on the floor to listen to Eicha last night, I suddenly connected on a powerful level. Maybe it’s because of Israel’s growing international isolation, or because I just spent a year in Israel becoming acutely aware of intrareligious tensions and the frictions and fissures in Jewish society, I don’t know. I’m pretty skeptical of mashiach and the rebuilding of the Temple—but if there is a mashiach, I don’t think we’ll merit his or her visit any time soon. Imagine the Temple rebuilt—what sort of prayer service would we hold there? (The mechitza question barely scratches the surface.) The idea of all Jews coming to worship in the same place sounds like a joke, a recipe for fighting and violence.

While I don’t believe that my cousin’s picture-perfect description of Temple times ever existed, I realized last night that it represents the ideal, God’s original vision for what could have happened. And so Tisha B’Av became, for me, a way of mourning just how far we’ve fallen short.

Our tradition teaches us that Jerusalem was destroyed because of sinat chinam (baseless hatred) among Jews. This Tisha B’Av, when I think about sinat chinam and the destruction of Jerusalem, I fast because:

· a conversion bill is currently under consideration in Israel that delegitimizes thousands of Jews-by-choice and non-Orthodox Jews, denies them rights in Israel, and threatens to alienate Diaspora Jewry

· a woman was attacked in a Tel Aviv bus station this past May by another Jew for having marks from tefillin on her arm

· of all of the women (and men) who are victims of mevasseret get (agunot)

· 30% of Jews and over 60% of Arabs in Jerusalem live under the poverty line

· 2 women have been arrested for carrying a Torah at the Kotel, and women praying out loud as a group at the Kotel have met verbal abuse and chairs thrown at them

· of the increasing isolation and criticism of Israel from the rest of the world, and Israel’s actions which have led to that isolation and criticism

· some Jews think it’s ok to kick Palestinians out of their homes in Sheikh Jarrah in Jerusalem

· of all of the frustrations my Peace and Conflict classmates expressed on Yom Yerushalayim; how even as we celebrate a “united Jerusalem,” it is so far from being reunited (there’s segregated bus lines, only half of the city gets trash pickup, residents of different faiths don’t interact, etc etc…)

· Jews in Hebron can teach their children to throw rocks at non-Jewish children, and be respected by some other Jews

· Israel is a top participant in human tracking and sex trade

· many Jews today reject Judaism without learning enough to know what they’re rejecting—not that I think every Jew should embrace Judaism necessarily, but I do believe people should make informed decisions

· of the amount of scorn, anger, and hatred expressed by Jews of all denominations towards Jews of other denominations

No religion or people is perfect, but there are a lot of places we as the Jewish people need to improve. I’m sure you may have more issues to add to my list. So last night, when I said the words, “Turn toward us, O Lord, and we will turn to you; Renew our days as in days of old” at the end of Eicha, I thought not of returning to the times of the Temple, but of working to improve the shortcomings of our own communities and the Jewish people as a whole.