This year, I'm in Jerusalem for Tisha b'Av. For those of you who don't know what that means, Tisha b'Av is considered the saddest day of the year in Judaism; it commemorates all of the tragedies that befell the Jewish people, mainly the destruction of the First and Second Temple, or Beit Hamikdash. There are many people who still, two thousand years after the last destruction, take on the observances of mourning. For twenty-five hours, people do not eat or drink. They don't bath. They don't wear leather shoes. They don't greet each other. They don't learn Torah. They don't apply ointments or deodorant. They don't have marital relations. Now the obvious question that one would and should ask is that after two millenia, why go through all this trouble? People die, cities are besieged and conquered, civilizations fall; this is the nature of things. Even if I am a Jew and my ancestors were among those slain or exiled, why should I inconvenience myself over something that happened to the distant generations long since passed? Here I am in the 21st century, a free-thinking member of society; any feeling that I experience from the events of Tisha b'Av are unnoticable, unpercieved; a faint ripple spread out by the fallen stones in the recesses of history. Why Care? I would venture to say that you a very good reason to.
Every year during the Passover seder, Jews around the world recount the story of the Exodus from Egypt, another event from an almost forgotten past. At the seder, we say that in every generation, each person must feel as if they themselves emerged just now from Egypt. How is this so? We are all slaves in the desert of our minds, a psychological prison enforced by the brutal task master of our addictions, habits, fears, and anxieties. When we come together as one people to celebrate our redemption, we are celebrating the transcendence that we could achieve through dedication, perserverance, and the grace of G-d today. At Shavuot, the holiday commemorating the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai, we stand at the recitation of the ten commandments from the Torah. By doing this, we symbolically recognize that these laws are not some fossilized remains of a dead culture, but the thriving and vivifying force ever-present in our lives as human beings today. On Shabbat, we take a day of rest to not only remember G-d's resting from creation, but also to recognize the constant and ongoing creation of the universe today . In short, by keep these traditions alive, we are personally recognizing the same presence found behind the letter of the law in our very lives.
Tisha b'Av, however, is somewhat different. Instead of commemorating a miraculous event through celebration and feasting, we commemorate a tremendous tragedy through mourning and contemplation. How is the destruction relevent in our lives? Because we recognize that it could happen again. We know that the kohanim (priests) of the second Temple observed Tisha b'Av in commemoration of the first Temple; how could this be so? The Temple was already rebuilt in all it's glory! They observed the day as a time of prayer, recognizing that the destruction hadn't even been one hundred years earlier and that it could happen again. Sadly, it certainly did happen again, a pattern of repetitive destruction found as a theme throughout Jewish history. The Holocaust wasn't so long ago, not even seventy-five years ago, yet sadly, even that is becoming a forgotten memory. Living in America, one might not be able to see or feel the present possibility of physical destruction, but in Israel, the threat of annhilation from nations that want you wiped off the map is present everyday. As I said before, though, this only deals with the physical annhilation. The destruction of the Temple was much more than just the razing of a building, it was the dismemberment of a way of life, a near collapse of the Jewish soul. What is to be said about the threat of spiritual annhilation?
Many Jews that I've come into contact with are ashamed of being Jewish, simply put. They're either ashamed or they are forgetting what it means to be a Jew. Being Jewish is so much more than just receving present on Hanukkah or eating matzah ball soup on Passover, it's a hidden mystical beauty, an abstract complex of emotions and devotion, a passionate and involved relationship with the infinite and unfathomable Divine. Many people don't know this, nor care to know this; they have become comfortable in this illusory facade of materialism that we call "reality". We go through our lives a puppet in a pantomime, looking to the magazines, T.V. screens, and celebrities to follow by example in what we percieve as life. One need only to take the first step out of the candle-lit cave to see the blazing, brilliant light of the sun.
This is also why we observe Tisha b'Av; because in the future, it will no longer be an observance of mourning, but a celebration of life, the arrival of something much bigger than iphones and realty show break-ups, a transcendence of the physical and an immersion in the hidden spiritual realty; in short, an awakening in global consciousness. One need only look around with the right lens to see the destruction present all around us. If by setting aside one day out of the year to recognize that personal destruction, then imagine how much creative power we could be capable of. So whoever or wherever you are, let's try to rebuild what we've lost, let's come together to bring the beauty and glory of the past here into the present. It is only then that we'll see time as merely a barrier through which belief can break.
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