cellio | Entries tagged with tisha b'av

Tisha b'Av, commemorating the destruction of the temple, is this weekend. (Shabbat is the actual date, but we don't mourn on Shabbat so the fast and other observances are pushed off to Sunday.) The talmud in tractate Gittin is relevant, so today we'll cover that instead of the usual daf.

The g'mara starting on 55b says that the destruction of Jerusalem came through a Kamtza and a Bar Kamtza. How so? A certain man had a friend Kamtza and an enemy Bar Kamtza. He made a party and told his servant to bring Kamtza, but instead the servant brought Bar Kamtza. When the man saw his enemy he said "what are you doing here? Get out!" Bar Kamtza replied, "since I am here, let me stay and I'll pay for whatever I eat and drink", but the man said no. "Then let me give you half the cost of the party" -- no. "Then let me pay for the whole party" -- and still the man said no, and took him by the hand and put him out. Bar Kamtza then reasoned: the rabbis were there as guests and saw all this but did not stop him, so they must agree with him. I will go and inform against them.

So he went and said to the emperor: the Jews are rebelling against you. "How can I tell?" the emperor asked. Bar Kamtza said: send them an offering and see if they will offer it on the altar. So the emperor sent a fine calf, but on the way Bar Kamtza made a small blemish on it so it would not be an acceptable offering under Jewish law. The rabbis were inclined to offer it anyway to avoid giving offense, but R. Zechariah b. Abkulas said this could mislead Jews about proper offerings. They then proposed killing Bar Kamtza so he couldn't inform against them, but R. Zechariah asked: is making a blemish a capital offense? R' Yochanan then said: through the scruplulousness of R' Zechariah our House has been destroyed, our Temple burnt, and we have been exiled from our land. (55b-56a)

The rabbis say that the second temple (the one being talked about here) was destroyed because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred within Yisrael. This episode with Bar Kamtza illustrates the problem; it's not that the temple was destroyed because of this specific incident, but that this behavior was considered normal and acceptable -- none of the witnesses acted. If we can't treat each other decently, maybe we don't deserve the temple and the land.

(Today's daf is Zevachim 97.)

For Jews who are tuned in to the season we are now in, culminating Tuesday, listen to the audio file first.

Everybody else may still be interested in the explanation.

Thanks to Seth in the Mi Yodeya chat room for sharing these with me.

For those who are observing Tisha b'Av in a couple days, may you have an easy fast.

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.

One of the mini-classes tonight was well-done in terms of technique. (This is the rabbi I particularly liked, the one who just moved here.)

He said he was going to talk about Tisha b'Av, since it's timely, but first he wanted to talk a little about something else that's timely: the conflict in the middle east. After a minute or so he mentioned the custom of leaving notes (containing prayers) in the wall in Jerusalem, and then handed out paper and asked us to write whatever prayers felt appropriate as if we were there. (He said no one else would see them.) He collected the folded papers and set them aside.

After writing "Tisha b'Av" on the board in Hebrew and deconstructing it for those who don't know the language, he talked about all the bad things that have happened on that day throughout history -- the destruction of the temple (both times), and more recent events continuing into the 20th century. The latest thing he had was Iraq walking out of talks over Kuwait (IIRC); he asked if that spooked anyone else. A couple people nodded and he asked why, and someone said "makes you wonder what's going to happen on Thursday" (Tisha b'Av this year). Some in the room were thinking of that from a "theology" perspective (what does God have in store for us?); I found myself thinking that Jews aren't the only ones who know about Tisha b'Av and if I were a terrorist who wanted to wipe out Jews, I'd plan something impressive for that particular day. But I digress.

He showed a short (3-minute?) video depicting the destruction of the second temple (obviously this is a reconstruction), and asked how we think we would have felt if we were living through it. He got "depressed", "angry", and "scared" out of the class pretty easily, and also a comment about losing faith.

Then he gathered up those papers (remember the papers?), took one, and set it on fire. To drive the point home about how crushing this must have been.

So, in 15 minutes, we had lecture, video, discussion, a class activity, and a "non-traditional" way of making a point, and it all worked. I'd like to see more of what this rabbi has to offer.

I gave the d'var torah on Friday. My rabbi specifically asked me to talk about Tisha b'Av and to promote the service we're having for that holiday next week. (This is our first itme doing this.) It's kind of a challenging subject.

( Read more... )

I chanted the Torah portion for my rabbi today. It's in good shape (needs polish), and he pointed out a couple tricks to make some parts easier. What surprised me is that I was nervous while doing this -- enough that he noticed it in my breathing. I hope that problem disappears as I get the challenging bits nailed down more. I'd hate to sound nervous in front of the congregation.

(I was not nervous for the so-called "adult b'nei mitzvah" a few years ago. I was a little nervous the first time I chanted at Tree of Life but not the second. I don't think I was nervous when I chanted for the morning minyan the one time. And I was definitely nervous for the women's service a couple months ago, though the scroll calligraphy on that one was weird. So it's a mixed bag -- sometimes I am and sometimes I'm not, and it's not strongly tied to anything.)

In addition to this service (July 25, for any locals who care), I needed to find a couple people to help with the following week, because the rabbis will still be gone. I mentioned that I was having trouble finding someone to give the d'var torah (sermon, sort of), and he told me to do it myself and to talk about Tisha b'Av, which will be the following week. Ok, I can do that; I'd been trying to give the opportunity to someone else, but a lot of people seem to be intimidated by the idea. (Note for after the fall holidays: get someone to give a class or something in how to write a d'var torah.)

I was kind of surprised by the topic request, because while my rabbi personally observes Tisha b'Av and usually mentions it beforehand, the Reform movement in general doesn't observe this day and our congregation doesn't have special services for it. This year, he said, we're having services. It's a pity I'll be at Pennsic then; I'm kind of curious. Probably not curious enough to make the round trip, though.

Last week when my rabbi and I met, he asked me if I fast for Tisha b'Av. (I forget how this came up. It wasn't him being nosy.) I said "not any more" and explained my reasons (I wrote about this a few months ago). He agrees with me about (not) mourning the Temple but he sees it as broader than that, a day when we commemorate all of the calamities that have happened through the years. (Though the Shoah, the Holocaust, has its own day.) I thought about that, but I ended up deciding that I can appropriately commemorate the day without necessarily "afflicting myself" in the prescribed manner. I will give it more thought before next year.

My rabbi told me that he didn't fast on this day and then one year, completely by accident, he found he had gone most of the day without eating so he decided to finish it. Since then he has done a proper 25-hour fast every year.

( services and stuff )

One thing that stood out in today's services is the amount of petitionary prayer. Most of our prayer, most of the time, is not especially petitionary; this stood out as different. One of the topics in my queue is the problems of a God who intervenes in individual affairs, so maybe I'll tackle that soon now that I've gone and brought it up. But not tonight.

This entry grew out of a conversation here.

Last spring someone asked me if I fast on Tisha b'Av and I automatically said "yes" (which was accurate). Then I thought about it. I don't pray for the restoration of the Temple; do I really mourn its destruction? The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I do not in fact mourn it. The destruction of the Temple was a necessary transition point for us to move forward, just as entering into slavery in Egypt was necessary for us to ultimately move forward at Sinai. We celebrate the exodus, but we don't mourn the slavery. Why then would I mourn the Temple?

Last summer I did not fast on Tisha b'Av, and now I can say with confidence that I do not fast on that day. I do not believe I am sinning in this; quite the opposite. Rather, it would be a sin for me to falsely mourn.

Monica

daf bit: Tisha b'Av (Gittin 55-56)

timely (on the Hebrew calendar) and chilling

exile

interesting teacher

Friday's sermon

upcoming services

Tisha b'Av

Tisha b'Av

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