If I Forget You, O Jerusalem...

       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.

Tisha B'Av & The Danger of Hatred

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.