The month of Av approaches with the saddest day in the Jewish calendar (aside from Yom HaShoah - Holocaust Remembrance Day), Tisha B’Av (9th of Av) looming. This year as rockets continue to rain down on Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Haifa, Beersheva, Ashkelon, Ashdod, etc., more than ever the words, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem may my right hand wither, let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you…” (Psalm 137:5) seems not only the dirge of the ancient Psalmist but an immediate command upon all our hearts.
On Tisha B’Av our tradition teaches that we mourn not only for the destruction of our Temples, our loss of independence, and our long troubled years of exile, persecution, and the diaspora which followed - but that we mourn the baseless hatred - sinat hinam which led to these events. The history of the destruction of the Second Temple reveals that the zealots believed any action was justified, even if it meant the murder and death of their fellow Jews. So warped were their values that they even burned the food stores inside of Jerusalem to prevent innocent civilians from fleeing the siege. How could it be that our people heirs to the gift of Torah, where God commands us to choose life, sacrifice our children for religious nihilism? Tisha B’Av comes as a stark reminder that hatred and fanaticism are not only destructive to those that hate but, also to those who tolerate and ignore it. Therefore, we fast, mourn, and seek to ingrain in our very DNA this lesson from our past.
Yet, the question we confront in our world today is - What will it take for the Palestinians, Syrians, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghanis, etc. to stop the hate and extremism? When will their peoples rise up and demand - Life & Peace!? There can be no doubt that Hamas's hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews outweigh any thought for the sanctity of innocent life, even their own children. We are witness to the thousand plus rockets launched at Israel by Hamas from civilian areas. Hamas sees no moral problem using hospitals, schools, and mosques, to store and launch missiles indiscriminately at Israeli civilians with the only goal of bringing terror, and killing as many as possible. In contrast, Israel has gone above and beyond to try to spare civilian casualties on both sides. Israel twice has agreed to a cease-fire for the sake of innocent lives, continuously warning civilians by phone and by “roof knocking” to get away from Hamas before bombing a terrorist target. Also thank God for Israeli ingenuity whose passion to save lives fostered the building of the Iron Dome which has shot down countless rockets, early warning sirens, and for the home front command which built a smartphone app to warn citizens when to seek refuge in reinforced bomb shelters. As Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu neatly summed it up,"the difference between us is that we're using missile defense to protect our civilians and they're using their civilians to protect their missiles."
This Tisha B’Av we will once again fast, read Eicha (Book of Lamentations), and sing kinot (dirges) but, I for one will also be mourning that the world has not yet learned what we did so many years ago - that baseless hatred only leads to death and destruction. “Peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” This famous sentence spoken by Golda Meir to the Washington Press Club in 1957, continues to ring hauntingly true and sadly unfulfilled. May we live to see the day when love, peace, and life triumph over hatred, war, and death. And let us all say, Amen.
