This Year's Tisha B'Av Thoughts

I've been doing a little reading about Tisha B'Av, and some thinking about my approach to the holiday, over the last week or so. It's a difficult holiday to connect with in some ways, partially because no matter how much I try to connect to the Biblical system of worship through sacrifice, I'm fairly sure that if we had not been forced to abandon that system at least in practice and develop a more portable religion, Judaism would most likely not exist today. Therefore while mourning may be appropriate, pure mourning cannot be so: these were painful events that nevertheless led to our existance today. For mourning, I find it easier to turn to the story of Qamtza and Bar-Qamtza and the baseless hatred that aggada has put at the root of the destruction (even though I don't think that we can ascribe such a clear cause-and-effect relationship to G-d's actions: it's too simple and too human, and too blindly vengeful). However, besides mourning and trying to refocus my own energies towards being compassionate and urging others to do the same, there is not much there to be done, or to say.

A more productive perspective for me this year has been a focus on Tisha B'Av and the weeks leading up to it as a transition and a stepping-off point from an old, established system of worship: sacrifice, which was becoming insufficient (whether because of corruption, population spread, preparredness for a form of worship that doesn't involve physical slaughter, or an attempt to maintain Judaism in the future, depending on perspective, or a mix of all the above). Transitions are difficult, and the increasing traditional restrictions on pleasurable behavior (even if I follow only a few of them at least at this point: many of them seem a bit over-enthusiastic for punishment) allows for mourning the old way so that spending the rest of the year involved in modern Judaism can be done without guilt or longing for what we left behind.

THe only problem is that I myself have never felt any guilt or longing for the sacrificial system. A longing for a place where everyone could pray together- certainly. But a real desire to return to that system- no. So I am taking this theology of mine and using it to push me towards a stronger commitment to prayer. A blog I read (http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2004/07/wrestling_with_.html) wrote about seeing Tisha B'Av as the first step towards the High Holy Days, and although the idea didn't quite seem to mesh at first, I can see that- it marks a turning point in the year's focus, where we focus intensely on the past, and also on the far future- and afterwards we move towards Elul and the ramping up towards the new year. One might almost think about the deprivations of Tisha B'Av not only as a way of appeasing guilt or expressing longing for the past, but also as a way of expressing the difficulties of moving forward, and pushing us to do just that. One might almost see it as a birth metaphor, or as a death and rebirth experience all in one.

This Year's Tisha B'Av Thoughts

I've been doing a little reading about Tisha B'Av, and some thinking about my approach to the holiday, over the last week or so. It's a difficult holiday to connect with in some ways, partially because no matter how much I try to connect to the Biblical system of worship through sacrifice, I'm fairly sure that if we had not been forced to abandon that system at least in practice and develop a more portable religion, Judaism would most likely not exist today. Therefore while mourning may be appropriate, pure mourning cannot be so: these were painful events that nevertheless led to our existance today. For mourning, I find it easier to turn to the story of Qamtza and Bar-Qamtza and the baseless hatred that aggada has put at the root of the destruction (even though I don't think that we can ascribe such a clear cause-and-effect relationship to G-d's actions: it's too simple and too human, and too blindly vengeful). However, besides mourning and trying to refocus my own energies towards being compassionate and urging others to do the same, there is not much there to be done, or to say.

A more productive perspective for me this year has been a focus on Tisha B'Av and the weeks leading up to it as a transition and a stepping-off point from an old, established system of worship: sacrifice, which was becoming insufficient (whether because of corruption, population spread, preparredness for a form of worship that doesn't involve physical slaughter, or an attempt to maintain Judaism in the future, depending on perspective, or a mix of all the above). Transitions are difficult, and the increasing traditional restrictions on pleasurable behavior (even if I follow only a few of them at least at this point: many of them seem a bit over-enthusiastic for punishment) allows for mourning the old way so that spending the rest of the year involved in modern Judaism can be done without guilt or longing for what we left behind.

THe only problem is that I myself have never felt any guilt or longing for the sacrificial system. A longing for a place where everyone could pray together- certainly. But a real desire to return to that system- no. So I am taking this theology of mine and using it to push me towards a stronger commitment to prayer. A blog I read (http://velveteenrabbi.blogs.com/blog/2004/07/wrestling_with_.html) wrote about seeing Tisha B'Av as the first step towards the High Holy Days, and although the idea didn't quite seem to mesh at first, I can see that- it marks a turning point in the year's focus, where we focus intensely on the past, and also on the far future- and afterwards we move towards Elul and the ramping up towards the new year. One might almost think about the deprivations of Tisha B'Av not only as a way of appeasing guilt or expressing longing for the past, but also as a way of expressing the difficulties of moving forward, and pushing us to do just that. One might almost see it as a birth metaphor, or as a death and rebirth experience all in one.