exile

Today is (or perhaps was, by the time this gets posted) Tisha b'Av, the day on which both temples were destroyed (first in 586BCE by the Babylonians, and then in 70CE by the Romans). Other bad stuff happened in later years too. It is a national day of mourning for the Jewish people.

For a couple months (since it came up in torah study) I've been meaning to post about exile, and this seems an appropriate day for it. When the temples were destroyed and Jerusalem was sacked, both times the people were sent into galut, exile. Traditional Judaism considers us to be in galut to this day. (Mostly.)

The thing that's hard for me is this: in the sense of being dispossessed of the land, I don't feel in galut. True, we don't have the temple or the sanhedrin, and the modern deomocratic state is rather different from the kingdom of old, but I can go to Israel now. I can live there. (This was true before 1948; I don't see the creation of the state as relevant.) The surrounding Arabs may try to wipe us all off the face of the earth, but the gates to Jerusalem are not barred as they were when all Jews were expelled long ago.

(There are some who argue that precisely because of that we should remove the prayers asking to return us to the land, that since 1948 we have not been in that kind of galut. I think this is a minority view within Orthodoxy, but it's not something I've looked into all that much so I could be wrong. That's not where I'm going; I just mention it as an aside.)

As I understand it, the traditional take on galut is all about physical distance. I don't feel that kind of galut. Nor do I long for the third temple, so the absence of a temple doesn't cause me to feel in galut either. I'm a 21st-century American who feels pretty free, all things considered (current government notwithstanding).

However, I don't think of galut as physical, based on a location or a structure. I can instead see it as a spiritual state, and being in Israel or even standing in the rebuilt temple wouldn't necessarily change that.

We are in galut when we are distant from God and, secondarily, from the Jewish people. It's not that I feel particularly distant from God, but that I'm aware of how much stronger that connection could be. Ditto with Am Yisrael, the Jewish people. In a few weeks we will enter the month of Elul and, a month later, the high holy days. This is a season when we focus on repairing and improving those relationships. In one sense the results are exhilerating; I come out of Yom Kippur feeling fresh, not drained. (Spiritually fresh, anyway. Physically? Separate issue.) But there is the nagging feeling that no matter how much we do, we could always do more. Eilu d'varim sh'eim lahem shiur, these are the things without measure, the things we can never do enough of. Working on our relationships with God and with each other falls into this category.

I don't mourn the temple, and I don't feel a loss by living in America (though, God willing, I will go to Israel for the first time later this year and have a wonderful experience). I am not waiting for a messiah to come and build the third temple, though I could certainly do with the accompanying peace in the world were that to happen. But, even with all of that, I can interpret galut on a spiritual level, and there I can find a connection to the idea.

Israel

I haven't made a big post about what's going on in Israel. I have the feeling that those of you who know me know how I feel, and those of you who don't know me don't really care. And it's so depressing and draining. So maybe later, but not now.

That said, though, I want to pass on a couple of links. First and most importantly, it seems likely that as with Jenin, Qana is not what it seems. The world sometimes seems to have a hair-trigger-condemn reaction to Israel when it looks like they've done something bad, but that doesn't always make it so. Jenin was a fabrication that most media never followed up on. Look for information on Qana after it ceases to be fashionable. I will. Thanks to psu_jedi for the link. (I haven't personally seen some of the video cited in that link, like the dusty child with clean pacifier. I have seen the video showing the outbound missiles. Likely, not yet certain.)

These photos show a side to the military not often seen. Thanks to kmelion for the link.