Rethinking Shabbat Nachamu

Each year on Tisha B'av, I struggle with the same question: Should I, or can I even recite the full version of Nachem – the additional insertion recited at Minchah on Tisha B'av? In the traditional text we pray,

נחם ה' אלהינו את אבלי ציון ואת אבלי ירושלים, ואת העיר האבלה והחֳרבה והבזויה והשוממה. האבלה מבלי בניה, והחריבה ממעונותיה, והבזויה מכבודה, והשוממה מאין יושב. והיא יושבת וראשה חפוי כאישה עקרה שלא ילדה.

Console, Hashem our God, the mourners of Zion and the mourners of Yerushalayim, and the destroyed, mournful, degraded and desolate city; mournful without her sons, destroyed without her stations, degraded from her honor desolate without any inhabitants. And her head is bowed like a barren woman who cannot bear children.

After Minchah this past Sunday (on Tisha B'av), the gentleman who sits behind me in shul asked me, "How can we say this? Have you seen Yerushalayim recently? Can we really honestly complain to God that Yerushalayim is 'desolate and destroyed…barren without inhabitants'"?

"So," I asked him, "what did you say? Did you say the Tefillah?"

"Yes," he answered, "but I focused on Har Habayit."

His is the classic answer. We can't change the text, so when we recite the same, age-old text, we give it new meaning. And, of course, Har Habayit is desolate and degraded, without a doubt.

But his solution doesn't really answer the question. The prayer is about the City of Jerusalem. It's about Zion. It's about the entirety of the Land of Israel. And, for centuries, it accurately described the situation in the Land of Israel, which did indeed lay barren, waiting for her nation to return.

Yet, walking the thriving, bustling streets of Yerushalayim, busy with students and tourists, brimming with attractions and unending construction, the prayer really does not accurately describe the true reality of modern-day Jerusalem. It's just not true anymore, and we struggle to find a context in which was can apply words that no longer seem accurate.

This conundrum about Nachem represents, to me, a small sliver of a much larger issue. It's not just about Nachem and the words that we say. Rather, the entire Tisha B'av observance and experience for all Jews today is fundamentally different than it was for the past two millennia.

Throughout our wanderings in the exile, Jews have suffered the terrible burdens of persecution and exile. Galut was, for the most part, a daily experience. Jews were restricted in where they could live, what they could do for a living, and suffered daily indignities from the surrounding non-Jewish neighbors. Sure, there were good times, but for the most part, Jews felt the ugly, painful sting anti-Semitism throughout their lives. It wasn't usually the overt shock of pogrom and forced exile. Rather, it was the more mundane indignity of groveling for the right to earn a living; the daily curse or the small taunt, and the knowledge that Jews would rarely receive a fair hearing in a secular court. 

When I think about it, I find this life difficult to imagine. I thank God every day that I have to wonder what life was like for my grandfather, growing up in Poland, or his parents, and their parents. It's almost too much to bear. How do you suffer in silence each and every day without crying out?

First of all, Jews did cry out. We cried out to God for redemption and salvation three times a day. Rabbi Yaakov ibn Habin writes in a powerful comment in his Ein Yaakov commentary (on Brachot 3a) that the blessing of Re'eh, in which we plead from God,

ראה נא בעניינו, וריבה ריבנו, וגאלנו גאולה שלמה לפניך

See us in our povery, and fight our fights, and redeem us a complete redemption before You…

has nothing to with Moshiach or the End of Days. (We ask for that as well, just not in that brachah). Rather,

We should pray before God for the existence of our nation during this long exile, and for this reason the Men of the Great Assembly established the blessing of ראה נא בעניינו. And the intention of this blessing is not for the ultimate Redemption, but rather for our salvation from the travails of the exile.

Jews lived with suffering every day. We lived with persecution every day. And we cried out to God about it every day.

But that's not enough. You cannot suffer indignities and persecutions and not react and express your grief and your anguish. And we did indeed express that pain, on one day a year. On Tisha B'av.

For most of the year, we suffered in silence, keeping our pain to ourselves. But, on one day in the Jewish calendar, we allowed ourselves to feel and express the pain, the powerlessness and even the rage of constant persecution.

I believe that for the vast majority of Jewish history, Tisha B'av wasn’t primarily about the future and a yearned-for Redemption. Rather, it was about the present; the taunts in the street and the inability to earn a living a support one's family with a head held high. We didn't need to conjure a sense of pain and suffering or think about terrorists or attacks against Israel in the United Nations. Galut was part of the daily Jewish experience.

Thank God, that's simply not the case today. Life is good. I cannot think of a single time in my life when I suffered an overt act of anti-Semitism. Jews work where they want, live where they wish, and enjoy the protection – both physically and emotionally – of a Homeland that represents their national aspirations. So we struggle to give Tisha B'av a new meaning, when the old meaning no longer resonates with our daily life.

Moreover, what's true for Tisha B'av is equally true for Shabbat Nachamu – and perhaps more so. After the fasting and sitting on the ground of Tisha B'av, on the Shabbat that follows we have for generations read the prophetic words of Yishayahu (Chapter 40) who declared,

נחמו נחמו, עמי--יאמר, אלוהיכם.  ב דברו על-לב ירושלים, וקראו אליה--כי מלאה צבאה, כי נרצה עוונה:  כי לקחה מיד ה', כפליים בכל-חטאותיה

Be comforted, be comforted My people, said God. Bid Jerusalem take heart, and proclaim to her that her time of service is accomplished, that her guilt is paid off; that she has received from God double for all her sins.

Throughout two thousand years of exile, we would read this Haftarah longingly, hopefully, looking to the future. "One day," we would tell ourselves, "we will indeed be consoled, because we will have suffered enough."

But today, we read the words of Yishayahu with a very different perspective. We can and do take consolation because we are witnessing the rebirth of Zion. This isn't something that we only hope and yearn for. Rather, it's an event we're watching unfold, in real-time, with our very eyes.

We must still mourn on Tisha B'av. There is much to yearn for, and the exile continues to drag us down.

But, at the same time, Shabbat Nachamu gives us greater hope than at any time in the last two thousand years. Jews have, by the millions, returned home. The Land of Milk and Honey is just that, once again. The words of Torah reverberate throughout the Land, and the Nation of Israel has grown strong, vibrant and energetic.

Nachamu, Nachamu Ami, indeed.

Summertime: Meaningful Jewish Mourning - A Tisha B'av Primer

Summer means different things to different people. Kids enjoy their vacation from school; parents don’t. Some of us take vacations. Others enjoy the cool summer evenings at home with family and friends. But, no matter how we spend the summer, the Jewish calendar reminds us that it has historically been a difficult period in for the Jewish people.
Historically, we have suffered terrible losses during the month of Av. On the ninth of Av, after seeing the people worship the Golden Calf, Moshe destroyed the לוחות הברית – the Tablets of the Covenant. On this day, invading armies destroyed both בתי מקדש – Holy Temples. So, we commemorate this important time period by observing a period of mourning in number of ways.

The Three Weeks (17th of Tammuz – Rosh Chodesh Av)
In their attack on Jerusalem, the Romans breached the walls of the city on the 17th of Tammuz. As that breach marked the beginning of the end of the Jewish kindom, the rabbis instituted a public fast on that day. While the true period of mourning begins in the month of Av, Jews have accepted the custom to begin mourning on the 17th of Tammuz. We refrain from making weddings, parties and other joyous celebrations. In addition, we refrain from taking haircuts for the entire three week period.

The Nine Days (1st of Av – 9th of Av)
The nine days mark the classical mourning period for the destruction of the Temples. In the words of the גמרא, “when Av enters, we reduce our joy.” This entails re
fraining from purchasing significant new items, such as expensive clothes or anything that would require making a שהחיינו, conducting home improvement projects, such as painting or remodeling, and even engaging in avoidable litigation. It’s just not a good time to start new projects.
When we refrain from common practices of comfort, we demonstrate our mourning for the destruction of Jerusalem in yet another way. Therefore, we don’t wear freshly laundered or pressed clothing during the Nine Days (so wear your clean clothes at least one time beforehand – underwear not included). We don’t bathe for pleasure, so we don’t go swimming in a pool or lake. When we bathe and shower, to ensure that we’re only showering to get clean, we only take quick, lukewarm or cold showers. It’s not about being dirty; it’s about refraining from activities that make us feel good. Therefore, we also don’t eat meat or drink wine on weekdays (we don’t mourn on Shabbos) during the Nine Days.

Erev Tisha B’av (August 6th)
In order to prepare for the long fast, it’s a good idea to drink plenty of water throughout the day. We call the final meal before Tisha B’av the סעודה המפסקת – concluding meal. Because this meal takes on many elements of mourning, before this final meal, we eat a full, normal meal to prepare ourselves for the fast, finishing a short time before the onset of Tisha B’av. (It’s a good idea to eat a meal rich in starch.) Following that meal, we wash again, and eat bread and hard-boiled eggs, both dipped in ashes, while sitting on the ground. We eat this meal as individuals, and not together as a family, so we don’t bentch together.

Tisha B’av
Chazal designated Tisha B’av as the Jewish day to remember all the calamities that have befallen the Jewish people throughout history. We mark the day by reading Megillat Eichah, Kinos (Lamentations), and focusing on tragedies that have devastated us for so many years, from the destruction of the Temples, to the Crusades and massacres of the Middle Ages, up to and including the Holocaust of European Jewry and Arab terrorism in the Middle East. On Tisha B’av we refrain a number of different behaviors:
1.    Eating and drinking, from sunset on Erev Tisha B’av until nightfall of Tisha B’av
2.    Washing and bathing, except for hand-washing in the morning and cleaning soiled hands
3.    Wearing leather shoes (canvas sneakers are fine)
4.    Marital relations
5.    Study of Torah (other than the calamitous and sad aspects that we learn on Tisha B’av)
6.    Anointing oneself (Actually, I’ve never seen anyone pour oil over himself, but they used to do it during the times of the Talmud, and apparently, it feels good. So don’t do it. Please DO use deodorant.)
7.    If you can take the day off and focus on the sad nature of the day, do it. It’s a very good thing to do, and will better sensitize you to the meaning of the day.
We also sit on the ground (or on low chairs) for the first half of the day, until chatzos – midday.

One of the most difficult aspects of Tisha B’av is the challenge of making it meaningful. Somehow, after shul in the morning we find ourselves engaged in our normal daily activities. How do we make the day meaningful in the mournful spirit that we know Tisha B’av is supposed to be?
It’s not a day for shopping or pleasure trips. If you can, read a book or watch a film about the Holocaust. Write letters to victims of terrorism in Israel. Make the day meaningful in a constructive manner. Have your children create a project about the Beis Hamikdash. Don’t give them candy or ice cream; tell them that it’s a sad day, a fast day, and that they should feel that sadness as well. Have them draw pictures of Moshe breaking the לוחות הברית – the two tablets. Teach your children through your demeanor and the day’s activities that this is not a normal day – it’s a day of sadness and lamentations to allow us to feel the pain of our fellow Jews.

The Gemara tells us that כל המתאבל על ירושלים זוכה ורואה בשמחתה – anyone who mourns for the destruction of Jerusalem will merit seeing it in its glory. Let’s make the Three Weeks, the Nine Days, and Tisha B’av meaningful, in the prayer that God transforms our sincere sadness into joy, gladness and celebration.

My Notes for Kinot - A Free Download

As is the custom in many shuls today, each year at YIOP, we would not recite each and every kinah, but instead chose a few to recite together, and I would offer some commentary on each kinah beforehand, to give people a sense of the richness and depth of the poetry, language and meaning.

I never recorded the kinnot (and there are many good online resources for those looking to the web for Tisha B'av), but if you're interested, here are my notes about the Kinot (including page numbers from the Artscroll Kinot) with some source sheets at the end. I hope that you find them useful and meaningful.

If You Could Ask for Only One Thing

If you could only ask for one thing from God, what would you ask for? Health? Prosperity? Success? It's an important question, because when we boil down our hopes and yearnings to one specific request, it says a lot about who we are.
Throughout the Torah, Moshe Rabbeinu asks God for many things: for guidance, assistance, forgiveness, support. It's a long list. Yet, when we examine his requests carefully we notice that Moshe never really asks for anything for himself. Throughout the Torah, Moshe never makes a personal request for anything – except once. And then when he asks, he doesn't just ask. He begs. He pleads.

וָאֶתְחַנַּן, אֶל-ה', בָּעֵת הַהִוא, לֵאמֹר.... אֶעְבְּרָה-נָּא, וְאֶרְאֶה אֶת-הָאָרֶץ הַטּוֹבָה, אֲשֶׁר, בְּעֵבֶר הַיַּרְדֵּן:  הָהָר הַטּוֹב הַזֶּה, וְהַלְּבָנֹן. (דברים ג:כג-כה)

And I pleaded with God at that time saying…Let me go over, I pray to You, and see the good land that is beyond the Jordan, that goodly hill-country, and Lebanon.' (Devarim 3:23-25)

Moshe pleaded with God for one thing: Please allow me to enter into the Land of Israel.
I've recently become reacquainted with the Me'am Loez, and find myself taken both by its simplicity, but also by its powerful honesty. What is Me'am Loez? According to Wikipedia,

Me'am Lo'ez, initiated by Rabbi Yaakov Culi in 1730, is a widely studied commentary on the Tanakh written in Ladino - it is perhaps the best known publication in that language. In Rabbi Culi's time, many individuals in Turkey were not sufficiently fluent in the Hebrew language to study the Torah and its commentaries in the original. Rabbi Culi thus undertook the "colossal task" of writing a compendium of the major fields of Torah study. The commentary was to be user-friendly and was thus written in Ladino, the Jewish language spoken by the Jews in Turkey. The book was divided according to the weekly Torah portion (Parashat hashevua); Rabbi Culi explains each chapter in detail according to the Midrash and Talmud. In his introduction Rabbi Culi personally guarantees that "everyone who reads the Me'am Loez every day will be able to answer in Heaven that he has learned the whole Torah, because all aspects of the Torah are covered on it".

I guess you could say that Meam Lo'ez was the world's first Artscroll – an attempt to adapt Torah to everyday people in an easy, readable way. And it power and simplicity offer timeless messages that resonate, especially today.
In answering why Moshe so badly wanted to enter into Eretz Yisrael, Me'am Loez gives ten answers. Here's number six (from Rabbi Kaplan's translation of the Me'am Loez):

As long as the Israelites are in the land of Israel they are called God's children, as it is written, "You are children to God your Lord" (Deut. 14:1). Just as a son can find all his father's hidden treasures and can enter any place he wishes, similarly the Israelites can discover all the mysteries of the Torah when they are in the Holy Land.
However, when the Israelites are outside the land of Israel they are called slaves, and a slave may not know all the hidden secrets that his master has.
We thus find that when Moses pleaded before God he called himself a servant, as it is written, "You have begun to show Your servant" (Deut. 3:23). Moses pleaded with God in order to reach the level of a son. God said to him, "You already reached this level when I told you to make the Tabernacle. At that time I called you and revealed to you all My secrets."

It's worthwhile to take some time to study the words of the Me'am Loez. I've copied the relevant sections from Parshat Va'atchanan, both in Hebrew and in English.
Reading these powerful words today, one might get the feeling that they were written by someone from the Religious Zionist movement trying to convince Jews in America to move to Israel. But in truth, they were actually written in the mid-1700's before there even was a Religious Zionist movement. Or, to be more accurate, they were written when all of Orthodox Judaism was a religious Zionist movement. Somehow, we've lost that collective sense of the unique special nature of the Land of Israel and the close connection that it brings between God and His people.
Each year, when Tisha B'av comes around, I find myself struggling for a reason to mourn. Of course, I know that we're mourning the past and the tremendous suffering that the Jewish people have endured. I also know that we yearn for the Beit Hamikdash. But it sometimes seems so abstract. What does that really mean for the Jewish people? Me'am Loez writes,

When the Temple existed and we were in our own land, all blessing and bounty came from God's hand, while the other nations only had what was left over, like a slave dependent on his master. However, now, due to our sins, this has changed. God gives all good to the nations and we can only hope for what they leave over. However, even now when the Temple is destroyed and the land is desolate, through the merit of the land of Israel all the world is fed.

Today these words continue to ring true. Israel depends on the generosity and assistance of the nations of the world for financial and military assistance as well as for its national and political security. We haven't reached true independence, and certainly don't serve as a source of sustenance for others yet. We mourn the fact that as much as we have achieved, we have not come close to reaching our true national potential.
As much as Tisha B'av is about focusing on what happened in the past, we must also utilize the day to consider just how great we can be – and how far we must go to finally reach that great goal.

Parshat Devarim - The Disturbing Original Plan

Audio Shiur:
Parshat Devarim - The Disturbing Original Plan

Each year, as we read in the end of Bamidbar about the desire of Reuven and Gad to settle on the East Bank of the Jordan River, I always have one over-arching question: Why didn't Moshe say "No"? He could have. And it really seems like he should have, and that if he had, Jewish history would have been fundamentally different. So why didn't he? By looking at a difficult text in our parshah, we can begin to understand that Moshe realized that things might not be up to him.

Click here to download the shiur, or here to navigate to the shiur on YUTorah.org.

Now you can subscribe to this shiur as a podcast, directly from iTunes! To subscribe, click here.

Why Am I Fasting? Thoughts on Tisha B'av

This week on my way out of Orot, I stopped and picked up a couple of students who were headed my way. I try not to chat up the girls - they're often tired and just want a quiet ride and seem quite happy not listening to the English podcasts I enjoy. But this girl did want to talk, especially when she heard my Hebrew (and immediately realized that I'm from the U.S.). She had a problem with her relatives who were visiting from Passaic. She wanted to try and convince them that they should live in Israel, but somehow she kept coming up short. After all, they're religious, devoted to a Torah lifestyle, keep the mitzvot. What could she possibly say to them? Truth be told, she herself was struggling with the same question: why struggle here when it seems so easy over there.
Upon further reflection, it seems like a perfect Tisha B'av question.
Living in Israel, fasting on Tisha B'av presents its own unique challenges. While we mourn the destruction(s) of the past and lament the absence of a Temple and a Divine Presence in the world, many of the Kinot fail to resonate with me. How can I yearn for Zion while sitting on the ground in my shul - in Zion? We do not cower under the angry fist of other nations. Sure, there are people who hate us, and nations that wish to destroy us. But it's hard to cry about our subjugation to the nations during the reading of Eichah last night, as I hear helicopters and jets from our Air Force, protecting us, whiz by on their way to and from the nearby air base.
What then do we mourn today? Of course we mourn the absence of the Beit Hamikdash (a well-kept Orthodox secret. We don't want people to know what we really think, because then we might be considered radical and dangerous. Update: Kudos to former Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau for telling it like it is.). But that seems abstract, difficult to quantify. What does the lack of a Beit Hamikdash really mean?
Let's go back to my inquisitive tremper. (To tremp means to hitchhike in Israel, so a tremper is a hitchhiker.) What I first should have told her is that it's a mitzvah to live here. God wants us to live here. So, as frum as you can be in Passaic, that's not where Hakadosh Baruch Hu wants us to be. Period. But I didn't say that. I aimed higher.
Ultimately we must ask ourselves what we want to be. What aspirations do we have - not just individually, but nationally? What is our role supposed to be in the world? The Torah teaches us that God aspires for us to bring His word to the world - to be what Moshe called a ממלכת כהנים וגוי קדוש - "a nation of priests and a holy people." Through our achievements, greatness, spirituality and holiness we have the power and potential to bring Godliness - and God Himself, back into the world. But no individual, no community, has that power. Only a nation has that ability to influence on a global scale. In order to have a chance to make that difference, first we need to have a nation, and only then can we think about step two - transforming that nation into something greater.
Does that nation exist today? Kind of. The Land is there. The army is there. But the desire to sanctify God's name is not. We still haven't figured out what type of nation we want to be. If you think about it, every major debate that takes place in Israel, hinges on this question: what kind of nation are we? We have - since our inception - denied the holiness of the Jewish State, instead preferring to paint ourselves as a western country, with the same goals and aspirations as every other: freedom, peace and prosperity.
These are not the ultimate Jewish goals. Ultimately, we wish to build a nation upon the strong foundations of the Torah. But we don't know how to get there.
Do we wait until the secular society, fed up with the religious coercion, leaves Israel once and for all, so that we're left to do as we please? That would be a tragedy.
Do we work to convince the country to return to the path of Torah, so that the country unites in the lofty goals of redemption and national repentance? That sounds amazing, but it would take a miracle.
I guess that's what I cry about today: our inability to allow our Jewishness to carry the day. That we fast and mourn, but have not yet mustered the courage or inspiration to take this nation to the next level - to become the ממלכת כהנים that we can and one day will be.
That deserves a day of fasting. At least I think it does.
But if that's not good enough for you, why are you fasting today?

Quick Pre-Tisha B'av Thoughts

1. The husband of a dear co-worker of mine suffered a stroke this week, and needs our prayers. Please pray for the Refuah Sheleimah of Shmuel Zvi ben Pnina. Not that this matters, but he's a really good guy, also great giving directions to new Israelis.
This would also be a good time to remind all of my faithful readers to get your blood pressure checked. And exercise regularly. Really.

2. I've been reducing my caffeine intake over the past few days in preparation for the fast. Last week it was half-and-half (half real beans, half decaf), and on Sunday I made the full switchover. Which leads me to my next comment: decaf tastes terrible. Is there something about caffeine that makes it taste good? (As an aside, this could also be why people like Pepsi Max, which has twice the caffeine of regular Diet Pepsi.)

3. There's a prohibition against doing laundry during the Nine Days that dates back to the times of the Mishnah. It seems clear that this was legislated to prevent people from enjoying the benefits of freshly laundered clothing. Of course, this prohibition was far more meaningful when it meant that we actually wore dirty clothes, as opposed to today when we just take another outfit out of the closet. Moreover, the prohibition against doing laundry seems counter intuitive: who likes doing laundry? What emerges is a kind of laundry amnesty period for (mainly) women, where they by religious prohibition are forbidden from doing normal housework. This is supposed to make them sad?
The only suggestion I can make is that while they do enjoy the break, the growing pile of laundry haunts them, as the Nine Days progress and it grows bigger....


and bigger....



and bigger....
...until the 10th of Av, the day when most of the Beit Hamikdash burned, and women must symbolically destroy their own "Temple" of dirty clothes that has self-generated itself to about the size of Neptune.
Or larger.
Have an easy fast.

A New, Beautiful Kinot. Is it Too Beautiful?

Someone recently asked me, "Is there a minhag to use junky Kinot on Tisha B'av?" I had never heard of such a minhag, but I had heard of a different custom - to throw away our kinot each year after we use them.
The discussion begins with a comment of the Levush (on Orach Chayim 559:1)

וכל ימיי תמהתי: כיון שנוהגים לקרות איכה בציבור ולברך 'על מקרא מגילה', מדוע לא נהגו לכתוב מגילת איכה כמו מגילת אסתר על קלף וספר בפני עצמו כדין כל הספרים שצריכים לצאת בהם ידי חובתם בציבור? ואפשר שנהגו כן מפני שלא היה מצוי להם, מפני שהסופרים לא נהגו לכותבם משום שאנו מחכים ומצפים בכל יום שיהפוך לנו יום זה לששון ולשמחה ולמועד. ואם היו כותבים מגילת איכה, היו נראים כמתייאשים מן הגאולה חלילה. מה שאין כן במגילת פורים כי ימי הפורים לא יהיו מבוטלים לעולם. ולפיכך על-ידי הדחק נהגו לקרות איכה מתוך החומשים ואחר-כך אומרים הקינות

I always wondered: Since we have the custom to read Eichah communally and recite the blessing of "al mikra megillah", why did we not have the custom to write a complete Megillat Eichah like Megillat Esther on a klaf, as a unique whole book, like all the other books that have this requirement in order to fulfill the requirement of a public reading? Perhaps they had this custom [to read out of the Chumash] because [a whole Megillat Eichah] was not available to them, because the scribes didn't want to write any because we wait and expect each day that the day [of Tisha B'av] will be transformed for us into a day day of joy and rejoicing and holiday. And if they would write a Megillat Eichah, they would seem to be abandoning hope of the redemption, God forbid, something that is not true about Megillat Esther, for Purim will never be annulled (even after the Redemption). For this reason, we are forced to recite Megillat Eichah out of Chumashing, and then we recite the Kinot.

This comment formed the basis for a limited custom (found mostly in Chassidic circles) to throw away the Book of Kinot each year. Indeed, most people can remember a time in shul when we recited the Kinot out of cheap booklets (that were as hard to read as they were to understand). How the times have changed.
Artscroll, of course, published a very popular version of Kinot that helps most people at least understand what they're saying during the service. Now the OU and Koren Publishing have published a new, beautiful version of Kinot complete with an updated translation and commentary from Rav Soloveitchik. It's a wonderful resource I'm sure (I haven't seen it yet), and an important way to find greater meaning on Tisha B'av.
But, along the lines of the Levush's thinking, I am forced to wonder: with these beautiful hardcover versions of Kinot, are we "abandoning hope of the redemption, God forbid"? If we really thought that we'd need to throw them away, would we invest in purchasing such nice volumes of Kinot in the first place?

A List of Names: Thoughts on Parshat Masei

Jewish Communities

The opening sectioning of Masei chronicles the travels of the Jewish people as they traversed the desert. As we read through the list of places we don't recognize, we begin to wonder: who cares about all these places? Why did the Torah include them? The anonymous places carry a chilling message for the Jewish people as we contemplate Tisha B'av.

To download a pdf version of the d'var Torah, click here. Otherwise, continue reading.

When my children grow up, I imagine that one day we’ll look at the old photos and tell them about the places where we lived. “Well, we got married and lived in the Washington Heights. Then we moved to Linden, NJ, and then to West Hartford, CT. From there we moved to Oak Park, MI (We moved around a lot.). Then we made aliyah to Yad Binyamin.”
What will my children think about these different places? What could Linden, New Jersey or a small city in Connecticut mean to them? What about their children? To us the names of these cities bring back memories of small homes, early married life, friends and relationships from an earlier time in our lives. But to our children – and especially to their children (God willing!) the names of these places will probably mean nothing. They’re just names of places, no different than any other place to which they’ve never been and will probably never visit.
I think about these names of places when I read the first section of Parashat Masei. The first section of the parashah lists a number of places, most of which we’ve never heard of and could never locate on a map. Did you know that the Jewish people traveled from Livnah to Risah to Keheilatah to Har Shafer? It’s right there in the Chumash; (33:21-23) the list goes on and on, a litany of places that I neither remember nor care about.
Chazal too wondered about this long list of names. Rashi and Ramban suggest that the list is surprisingly short to teach us just how much God loved the Jewish people. He loved them so much that He only forced them to uproot the camp a relatively small number of times over a forty-year period. Ramban also quotes Rambam who suggests in Moreh Nevuchim that one day people might claim that the Jews never really traveled in the desert. (Can you imagine?) Therefore, the Torah meticulously chronicles their travels to affirm that the nation really did survive miraculously in the desert. Yet, even after quoting Rambam’s long explanation, Ramban adds,

והנה מכתב המסעות מצות ה' היא מן הטעמים הנזכרים או מזולטן, ענין לא נתגלה לנו סודו...

Behold, the writing of these travels is a commandment of God, either due to the reasons mentioned or without them; this is a matter whose secret is not revealed to us…

In essence, says Ramban, we don’t know why Moshe wrote down the names of the places, other than the fact that God commanded him to do so. God wanted us to have this long list, and didn’t tell us why.
Yet, while I don’t know precisely why God commanded Moshe to record the list, I can tell you how reading the list of these places makes me feel: I feel like I’m reading a list of Jewish communities destroyed by the Nazis in the Holocaust.
Have you ever tried to look at map of Jewish Poland, and just read through the names of the communities? Just Google “shtetels in Poland”. I recognized perhaps five – of more than fifty! The names are foreign, strange. Have you ever heard of Kanczuga, Kiernozia, Kleczew, Konin, Korczyna, Krasnosielc, or Kurzelow? And those are just the K’s that have websites. Have you ever visited the Valley of Communities at Yad Vashem? It’s a haunting canyon that simply lists the names of destroyed Jewish communities during the Holocaust. If I would ask you how many communities are on the list, how many would you guess? 500? 1,000? Would you believe that over 5,000 names of communities are engraved on the walls of the Valley of Communities?
They don’t even feel real to me. And despite this feeling I know that each name not represents not just a place, but tens or hundreds or thousands of Jews who built families, communities, shuls and schools. And now they’re gone. How many thriving Jewish communities from Northern Africa are now just names on a list? What about the former Soviet Union? Ukraine? The Middle East? The list goes on and on.
This is the mournful message of Massei. The travels of the Jewish people outside the land of Israel are fleeting, temporary, and anonymous. We might stop at one location for a shorter time, and another for longer – perhaps much longer. But in the end, each place will be forgotten, just a memory of its former self, a name on a list, but nothing more.
Can it be a coincidence that we always read Massei during the Three Weeks, the period of time when we recall the destruction of Jewish communities from around the world? We know that as they traveled through the desert, the Midrash teaches us that each Tisha B’av, every Jew who reached the age of sixty that year died. How many Jewish graveyards were lost in the sands of the Sinai desert? Maybe this list is both a lament and a foreshadowing; a kinah of God for the lost time and the destroyed Jewish community which perished in the desert - a lamentation for the tens of thousands of Jews who died needlessly in the desert, and the tens of millions who would perish after them in the desert of the exile.
And what about America? To me names like Baltimore and Akron and St. Louis and Lawrence and Oceanside and Brooklyn seem natural. I’ve been to those places. I know people who live there. But do we have any illusion that they will always be known as Jewish places? (Is that something we even want?) How long will it be before those cities also become anonymous names on a meaningless list, foreign and alien and hard to imagine?
I’m sorry to be so depressing. Tisha B’av is coming.

Mourning for the Kotel on Tisha B'av

Over the weekend, I read an article in Mekor Rishon about the kotel. (they have a funny web system, so I can't link to the piece.) The author lamented the fact that over the past few years he had grown increasingly distant from the Kotel. In past years, before any wedding the chatan and kallah would have pictures taken in front of the Kotel. You see less and less of that nowadays. We recently went to the Kotel for the Bar Mitzvah of the son of friends. Instead of davening at the kotel, I intentionally davened early at shul in Yad Binyamin to avoid having to daven at the Kotel. I did this so that I wouldn't feel pressured to make it to the Bar Mitzvah on time primarily. But there was also a part of me that doesn't really like davening at the Kotel. It's too much of a production. People are always bugging you for money. It's such a scene. And some part of me recoils at a sort of Kotel worship that I sense in so many Americans. The Kotel makes me sad, as I think it should. Instead of running to the kotel, sometimes I avoid it. I'm not entirely sure, but I feel that this might be a healthy feeling.

I wasn't alive for the capture of the Kotel during the Six-day war. I never felt that personal powerful sense of euphoria that's so evident when watching the old black and white video of the capture of the Kotel and Rav Goren blowing the shofar. But it's clear that the Kotel became a sign not of mourning, but of redemption. It became the symbol not of destruction and loss, but of redemption and rebirth.

I've never had that feeling. Every time I visit the Kotel, especially when I approach the site from the Jewish Quarter where I have to descend from the city to the Har Habayit, I feel a powerful sense of loss. How can you not, knowing that the Kotel was simply the outer retaining wall of the larger Beit Hamikdash structure. I find it at times difficult even to pray there, knowing how close - but how far we really are from where we should be. And I often feel that our celebration of the Kotel - our willingness to accept the Kotel as "good enough" - gives us a sense that we don't really need the Beit Hamikdash. After all, we have the Kotel. Do we really need more than that?

We do. The fact that we settle for the site "down below" while the Arabs occupy the holiest location in Judaism in the world should and must be a cause for mourning. I find it difficult to celebrate anything at the Kotel - because that celebration seems to fly in the face of God's House, lying in ruins, occupied by strangers.

And that, by itself, should give us pause on Tisha B'av.

Tisha B’av and Ganei Tal

I started noticing the small signs just a few days after I arrived. In truth, they were unmistakable. A note in a car here; a comment there. But only over the last few weeks has it begun to sink in to me. Today, on Tisha b’Av, the day we set aside to commemorate and mourn Jewish tragedy and loss, I find myself focused on the evacuees from Gush Katif, specifically the citizens of Ganei Tal. Three years ago, almost to the day, the government of Israel evicted the citizens of the twenty-one communities that comprised the Jewish towns throughout the Gaza strip. Then it destroyed their homes, one by one, until the lives that they had spent the last three decades building were nothing but piles of rubble.
In truth, my new life rests firmly on their tragedy, giving me a small, vague sense of guilt. Personally, I had nothing to do with the expulsion from Gush Katif. Politically, I opposed the plan. So then why do I feel guilty? I’ll explain.
Because the residents of Gush Katif refused, under any circumstances to believe and accept that their government would actually carry out the eviction plan, they made almost no plans for the day after. Following the disengagement, they found themselves dazed, homeless, and bereft of their possessions and livelihoods. After spending three months in temporary lodging, the government sent the people of Ganei Tal, en masse, to a small caravilla-city on the outskirts of a small yishuv called Yad Binyamin, found in the Sorek region about twenty miles west of Jerusalem. In addition, the Torat Chaim Yeshiva, formerly located in Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gaza, relocated to a new home in a formerly closed school in Yad Binyamin. Almost instantly, a small, lazy town of thirty families found itself host to a community several times its size with a yeshiva to boot. The residents of Ganei Tal settled into their new, albeit tiny homes, tried to find jobs, and rebuild their lives following their eviction from the only home that they had known.
This being Israel, someone realized that there might be money to make in Yad Binyamin. And he – actually they -- were right. Yad Binyamin presented a wonderful real estate opportunity. Just a forty-minute drive from Jerusalem, thirty from Tel Aviv and sitting right on the brand new Highway 6, Yad Binyamin could offer large, spacious homes within reasonable commuting distance of good jobs. Moreover, with the yeshiva anchoring the community and the Israeli residents of Ganei Tal serving as a base, the community would attract Torah oriented religious Zionists looking to buy new homes outside of the regular overpopulated areas. Two years ago the building began, and Yad Binyamin has experienced a tremendous period of growth and expansion – as well as skyrocketing home values for those lucky enough to have bought their homes on paper at the beginning.
Today, Yad Binyamin continues to expand at a breathtaking pace. New families move into their homes weekly. I watch from my back porch as the construction on our new shul continues apace, hopefully to be completed in time for Rosh Hashanah. Today, the residents of Ganei Tal find themselves not on the outskirts of Yad Binyamin, but in the heart of town. Their arrival marked the beginning of the explosive growth of Yad Binyamin. Without their presence, I have no doubt that I would not be living here either.
Having just moved into my new home – large by Israeli standards, I walked to shul one morning through the caravilla-town of the residents of Ganei Tal, and realized that these residents lived not in nice homes, of brick and concrete like mine, but temporary small homes made from converted trailers. This past Shabbat my son said to me, again while walking to shul, that it was a good thing that we didn’t live in one of those houses. “Why?” I asked him. “Because our lift container was almost as big as those houses. There’s no way that we would have been able to fit our stuff into one.” Of course he was right. Our lift (a forty-footer, holding way too much stuff) was indeed almost as big as a trailer. And these people have lived in these trailers, every day of the year for the past three years, still waiting for their government to approve the construction of their new homes.
Last night, after reading Eichah, I visited the exhibit just put on display by the residents of Ganei Tal about their yishuv. I found myself unexpectedly, but profoundly moved. The exhibit graphically describes the birth of their yishuv in 1970, literally out of the sands of Gaza. They displaced no one. They took no unclaimed land. The Arabs of the area, they told me, informed them that the last people to plant successfully in the sands of Gaza were Abraham and Isaac. And yet they planted – and the earth, at least in their hothouses – sprouted forth. Every progressive photo documents the growth of the yishuv, the construction of even more and larger hothouses, to accommodate their ever-expanding agricultural industry.
Of course, on tables lie burnt shells and rockets; mortars that landed within the yishuv, fired at the residents for the crime of living in Gaza. And finally, the wall of the fallen; men and women who died in terrorist attacks, living their daily lives, traveling to work or walking near their homes. There aren’t many – five or six. But that’s five or six too many.
I learned about some of daily life in Ganei Tal; the community center, the makolet (small store); the municipal building and the shul. Another wall simply presents pictures of houses – beautiful homes, large even by American standards. The homes were surrounded by green grass, plants, trees – an oasis in the desert.
And as I looked at those pictures – those magnificent, gorgeous homes, I thougt of the homes the very same residents occupy today, a fraction of the size, stuck in the center of a town, as nice as it is, that they did not choose. And I turned to the next wall – a wall of Ganei Tal today – to find pictures of piles of rubble where homes once stood, and the shul – the only building left standing by the Israelis - now a shell of concrete, looted of any material that might be of any value.
Today, on Tisha B’av, I find my mind filled with thought of the people of Ganei Tal. My feelings are not really political. While I realize that many Israelis seethe with anger over the disengagement and even dream of returning to Gaza when the army inevitably reenters Gaza, I’m not so sure. In some ways, we’re far better off without the responsibility and demographic obligations of a million and a half Arabs who hate us. But Tisha B’av isn’t about politics. It’s about national and personal suffering. And as a nation – as a people, we suffered for two reasons: we suffered because the government of Israel felt that we needed to destroy Jewish communities, for whatever reason; and we suffered because we caused wonderful people, our Jewish brothers and sisters – immeasurable pain, pain that they still feel to this day, and probably will feel for the rest of their lives.
In America, I never gave them a second thought. Tsk, tsk – a terrible thing, the evacuation from Gaza. But these are real people, with real challenges and problems, struggling to make a life for themselves each and every day. And on Tisha B’av we need to ask the important questions: what did we do to cause their suffering? How did our behavior fail to save them, and us, from their fate? And, perhaps most importantly of all, what will we change to ensure that what happened to the people - the mothers and fathers and children of Ganei Tal, never happens again?