This coming Saturday night and Sunday the Jewish community will be observing the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, also known as Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish year. Rabbi, you ask, how can a day marking the destruction of the first and second Temples be anything but tragic? Countless lives were lost, our people enslaved, and our way of life imperiled, and you call this joyous?
As Book of Lamentations, the central text of the day, tells us: “Alas! Lonely sits the city once great with people! She that was great among nations has become like a widow; the princess among states has become a thrall.”
Look in both the Reform and Reconstructionist prayer books and you will find nary a mention of Tisha B’Av. This is not by accident. For, as awful as the three historical calamities were for our people, they helped move us from a Temple based religion whose central activity was animal sacrifice, to the Judaism of the rabbis centered on prayer and study that we observe today. None of this would have been possible without the Babylonians and Romans destroying the very edifices that gave life to our biblical ancestors.
For Jews in the Reform and Reconstructionist worlds, this has always put us in an unusual position regarding Tisha B’Av. We can appreciate the sheer horror our ancestors experienced at the hands of their tormenters. We can even shed tears in the description of the destruction contained in Lamentations. But, do we ever really desire to ever go back to the Judaism of Temple times?
This Sunday, as I pick my daughter up from Jewish overnight camp, I will be thinking of the life that emerged out of those hard times, and of the brave souls that helped rebuild our faith from the ashes of history. Yes, there is indeed joy on Tisha B’Av.