Tisha B'Av, Once Again

[debka_notion]

I always struggle with Tisha B'Av. I try to get into the right mood, but I feel so ambivalently about the Temple in any number of respects that I rarely get there, and when I do, it doesn't last very long. Last year's Tisha B'Av was a mixture of anger and misery- anger at some of the way the holiday was handled at camp, and misery in working in the kitchen making sandwiches nearly all day while fasting and working with a room full of unhappy fasting people- and yet not being able to simply serve the kids the nearest equivalent to peanut butter sandwiches or yogurt, but instead having to do a rather annoying hot lunch. Children are supposed to be learning to fast- wouldn't a simple, cold lunch be a good step on that path?

Regardless, this year has been rather different thus far. Fasting has been challenging in different ways, but at least while praying, I've had a few thoughts actually relevant to the holiday. I suppose that my primary association for this year has been a metaphor of growing up and the pain of losing one's childhood. It is particularly relevant for some of the things that I have been thinking about with my own life right now, and it seems like a very accurate metaphor for the destruction of the Temple and the exile. The destructions led to the transformation that changed Judaism from a local, ethnic religion into one that could travel across the globe, and which would have a structure and backbone that would be able to deal with changing situations. Change of that sort rarely can happen without some sort of trauma to begin it.

That paints a rather positive picture to be using for this intentionally depressing holiday. Instead, I would take that response as the way I might approach the destruction of the Temple in general- and make today the one day when we are allowed to mourn the lost childhood of our people, when things were simpler and we had fewer responsibilities, and different sorts of challenges. Just because adulthood is overall the way we are intended to be, once we are ready, does not mean that we can't occasionally yearn for a more bounded, and therefore easier world- and the same would go for our relationship with our divine Parent.

At least, this is what's working for me this year, right now. It's certainly better than nothing.

Comments

[flintknappy.livejournal.com]

That's rather interesting and deep. I haven't really heard that approach before. Eloquent.

[margavriel.livejournal.com]

9 Av is one of the two three most intense days on the religious calendar for me -- probably THE most intense.

I had a new understanding this year of the prohibition on lernen Torah: Not just to keep one's mind focussed on the Destruction (for if so, it would be forbidden to lern Torah on Pesach, to keep one's mind focussed on the Exodus), and not even just to prevent joy, but rather -- because Torah is a search for answers, and when one is dealing with a tragedy as huge as the Destruction of the Temple (effectively, the destruction of the Jewish religion), there are no answers. The world is a cold, impossible place.

[tovah623.livejournal.com]

[hotshot2000.livejournal.com]

Very nice vort, one I recently heard echoed as a general theological approach to the maturation of relationship with God. My discomfort with the approach lies with the notion that the destruction itself caused a change in Judaism from a local, ethnic religion into one that would be able to deal with changing situations. It seems to me that Judaic culture already had within it the resources to deal with changing situations (as had happened after the first exile, and as was evident in the presence of an ongoing Babylonian Jewish community that did not return with Ezra & Nehemia, and, closer to "home", in the presence of early local synagogues outside of Beit haMikdash), and that destruction was merely the catalyst that necessitated activating those resources to a degree that had thentofore been unnecessary. But all that might be nitpicking or linguistic semantics -- we agree that trauma acts as some form of catalyst. (What I really don't like about the maturation model in general is how uncharitable it is to generations past -- effectively painting them as unsophisticated [= childlike] in their cultural modes. I think it's more edifying to see us as fulfilling the exact same needs in different forms.)

(This idea of transformative destruction is also echoed in Rav Hutner's ma'amar on shevirat haluhot -- that the destruction of the first set of Tablets was ultimately positive because it allowed for a subsequent proliferation of Torah in the course of rebuilding the Tablets -- hiddush.)

[debka-notion.livejournal.com]

I might argue that if I'm using a maturation metaphor, then that change was already latent within the earlier form of Judaism- as the adult is latent in the developing child's DNA. And just as maturation is a slow process, with multiple growth spurts- so too Judaism, with perhaps the first exile being the beginnings of puberty, say, and the second exile a later step towards adulthood- both dramatic, both necessary, both of a necessity traumatic as well (at least I know that I've found the parallels to be so)- but neither one sufficient on its own, nor the be-all-and-End-all of maturation.

You only see a maturation model as uncharitable to past generations because you see a lack of sophistication as an inherent negative, which I'm not sure that I do. Furthermore, you also don't seem to be taking into account that life was potentially less sophisticated overall, and that a modern religious mode might not fit into that world at all- to spin off of the 'sacrifice was more needed by b'nai yisrael than by G-d' line of thinking.