How To Make Tisha B’Av More Relevant

No longer “desolate” and in ruins, Jerusalem is flourishing. But we’ve failed to absorb the fast day’s deepest lesson.

The saddest day of the year: Some sages write that when the Messiah comes, Tisha B’Av will be a day of celebration.

On Saturday night, observant Jews around the world will enter a darkened synagogue, remove their shoes, sit on the floor or on low chairs and chant in a mournful melody the Book of Lamentations, which describes the wrenching eyewitness account of how Jerusalem was ravaged in ancient times.  The ritual marks the beginning of a 25-hour fast, observed each year on Tisha B’Av (the 9th of Av), the saddest day on the Jewish calendar. It is the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples and a number of other tragedies throughout Jewish history.

There are those who say that at a time when Jerusalem, described in Lamentations as “desolate” and “in ruins,” is now a vibrant, flourishing metropolis, Tisha B’Av is passe, outdated. I believe there are two reasons why this is not so. 

The first is that the day memorializes the anniversary of historical tragedies that took place in the holy city by reliving them, at least symbolically. Those who observe the holiday – a clear minority of American Jewry – have faithfully preserved it experientially, taking to heart the loss of the one place on earth where, we are told, God’s presence was palpable.

But the second message of Tisha B’Av – a meaningful, vital and always timely warning – is tragically ignored: It’s the Talmudic teaching of our sages that though our enemies ravaged Jerusalem, the devastation occurred because of sinat chinam, or baseless hatred, when fellow Jews turned against each other, to the point of bloodshed.

Thousands of years later, we haven’t made much progress in getting along. We are witness each day to the bitter and widening internal conflicts within Israeli and American Jewish societies over who is a patriot and who a traitor when it comes to religion, national politics, Jewish identity and the future of Israel and the Jewish people. 

Social media allows us to amplify our disdain for those who disagree with our views, convinced that only we have the authentic truth. And the stakes are so high that the methods we use to deter, if not demonize, our opponents are justified in our minds. Such attitudes and behavior can only lead to disaster.

Here at home, the gap between the Orthodox and the rest of American Jewry is growing in many ways, not just religiously. Demographic trends show a significant increase of Orthodox (particularly charedi) Jews on the political and religious right, and more and more Jews under 30 distancing themselves from the organized community and leaning further left in their politics, including on Israel. So we have one group that makes Israel issue No. 1, even ahead of democratic values, and another group whose priorities are the opposite. 

In Israel, citizens are bracing themselves for a fifth national election in less than four years, and this one is expected to be the nastiest of all. If Benjamin Netanyahu prevails in forming a coalition, it almost certainly will be the most right-wing in Israel’s history and include the once-respected and now far-right Religious Zionist party. Its leaders include MK Itamar Ben Gvir, an ideological successor to the late militant Rabbi Meir Kahane and admirer of Baruch Goldstein, who killed 29 Muslims at prayer in Hebron in 1994.

AIPAC has labeled Ben Gvir’s party as “racist and reprehensible” for its rhetoric of violence and anti-democratic views, including calls to expel Israeli Arabs. But those on the right insist it is imperative to prevent another government that might include an Arab among its leadership, as did the coalition led by Naftali Bennett.

Both the Israeli national election and the midterm U.S. elections are set for November. Between now and then, the decibel level of invective among political combatants among us will grow louder by the day, with each contest essentially a referendum on one key, deeply controversial figure: Donad Trump in the U.S, and Bibi Netanyahu in Israel.

Is there any way we can avoid the kind of “sinat chinam” that brought down Jewish societies in the past? Tisha B’Av gives us the history, incentive and framework to confront the crisis.

The most recent segment of “For Heaven’s Sake,” a consistently thoughtful and informative podcast sponsored by the Shalom Hartman Institute, offers a path toward understanding why, in its hosts’ view, Tisha B’Av “isn’t working” as a day of national reckoning, and what can be done about it.  Donniel Hartman, president of the institute, and Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow, discussed how to “encourage a culture of collective introspection” in Israel’s “increasingly polarized society.” (https://www.hartman.org.il/why-isnt-tisha-bav-working) Among their observations was that political zealotry has returned to our contemporary societies in the U.S. and Israel. 

Indeed, it appears that in both countries a fanaticism that begins with certainty has taken hold among increasingly emboldened extremists, and it is being tolerated by the rest of us even as we denounce their actions.

Hartman and Klein Halevi call for each political group to set internal red lines of acceptable behavior from within, and ban those who exceed those limits. And they espouse humility, missing among so many activists; they note that admitting mistakes is not a sign of weakness, but the opposite. (Kudos to the New York Times columnists who wrote on the theme “What I Got Wrong” in their July 24 essays.)

“Tisha B’Av needs to be the day of embracing uncertainty,” Klein Halevi asserted, “making space for the legitimacy of doubt.”

Along those lines, the annual three week period of mourning culminating in Tisha B’Av could be a time for public conversations encouraging both personal and collective self-reflection in discussing the most contentious issues of the day. That could put us on the path toward following the directive of Rabbi Abraham Isaac HaKohen Kook, the beloved scholar, mystic and first Chief Rabbi of pre-state Israel who taught that sinat chinam must be countered with ahavat chinam, baseless love.

It’s a beautiful aspiration. At this moment, though, no doubt most of us would settle for basic decency and respectful debate.

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