Why can’t we learn! In the year 70 CE the Romans destroyed the Temple, throwing down the stones and burning the rest. What remained was the retaining platform of which the Western Wall is a part. Even as smoke still rose from the destroyed Temple, our Sages realized that the destruction was not merely the power of Rome but, at its core the baseless hatred among our own Jewish people that led had led to this tragedy and God’s wrath. The Talmud retells the story of two Jews (Kamsa and Bar-Kamsa)who so despised each other that one of them provokes the Romans and convinces them that the Jews are plotting a revolt, and need to be subdued. Hatred among Jews, the Rabbis teach is the reason the Temple was destroyed.
Fast forward to the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Prime Minister of Israel. Who was so vilified in right wing extreme circles by “rabbis” (I use that term lightly) who called for anything to stop peace talks. Sadly those hateful words became the marching orders for Yigal Amir to murder Rabin at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. Could we learn from this tragedy again the danger of hate? Could we ratchet down the rhetoric of demonization in favor of dialogue and mutual respect for a pluralism of opinions and practices? Could we take from this that violence and coercion do not strengthen us but instead weaken us? After all we already have enough enemies from without who dream of how to destroy us. Maybe, just maybe we could learn and change.
Now fast forward to May 10th of this year. Women gather to pray at the Western Wall, the remnant of our holiest site, the place which reminds us of both God’s glory and our history - joyful and sad. As the women gathered to pray on Rosh Hodesh (welcoming the new month)on the women’s side, with talitot and tefillin, reading Torah, not forcing others to pray as they do, but wishing to express their own religious connection to God and our tradition, they are spat on, bombarded by water bottles, coffee cups, rocks, and a chair while hundreds of men shout curses at them. Israeli riot police have to hold back hundreds of screaming men who are trying to break through to harass them. Encouraged by their Ultra-Orthodox haredi rabbis, these men and women are at the Wall to demean, diminish, and “wipe away the evil plots of the wicked.” Have we not learned!!! How can Jews treat each other with such hatred and bigotry after so many were led to gas chambers?!
The holiday of Tisha B’Av (9th of Av)was created by our Rabbis to remind us precisely of the destruction hatred can do to our people and the sanctity of God’s name in the world. We mourn, fast, and sing the dirges of the book of Lamentations to remind ourselves of this great failing and the consequence of hatred of Jew against Jew. Those who profess to be “most observant” should certainly know this. It is sadly a shame on all of us, on the Jewish people, and a definitive perversion of God’s Torah. We are after all commanded to “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Sadly we have not yet internalized the meaning of Tisha B’Av. Woe to us, if the generation who has witnessed the rebirth of Jewish independence in our homeland, have forgotten what hatred destroyed and what it has the capacity to destroy.
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