Tisha B’av is not yom kippur. We are assured neither atonement nor redemption on Tisha B’av.
Tisha B’av is not the day that we beat our chests and promise to do better.
Tisha B’av is the day that we force ourselves to look into the heart of darkness, the darkness that we have created, the ways in which we are complicit in the evils of the world and we must be overwhelmed and distraught and paralyzed. There is no ray of hope on Tisha B’av.
Tisha B’av is the day of reckoning.
Tisha B’av is Isaiah standing in Jerusalem on the way to the Temple in sackcloth and ashes screaming that we are the heirs to Sodom and Gomorrah – that God is so sick of our worship service that the smell of the sweet incense nauseates her.
Tisha B’av is Isaiah standing outside the AME church in Charleston telling us, the nice right-minded liberal white community – God is sick of your weeping for dead black people. First wipe the blood off your hands. Your hands drip with the blood of slavery and slave profits.
Tisha B’av is Jeremiah standing at the checkpoint in Kalandia and outside the gates of Kiryat Arba telling all the the nice liberal Zionist American Jews – I am sick of your empathy and sympathy. Your handwringing and whining that there is no good solution. Your hands are dripping with blood. Jerusalem, the city in which once dwelt justice and righteousness is now the home to murderers.
Tisha B’av is not the day for the nostalgic fog of victimhood. We are the most powerful Jewish community that ever lived on the face of this planet and look what we have wrought.
Tisha B’av is Isaiah standing at the Women of the Wall Rosh Chodesh service screaming: you are protestinginequality while praying on the ruins of a Palestinian neighborhood destroyed by the Israeli army on the night they captured Jerusalem.
Tisha B’av does not have a happy ending.
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Aryeh Cohen, professor of Rabbinics at the American Jewish University, is a contributing editor to Tikkun Magazine.
Rabbi Cohen: “Tisha B’av is Isaiah standing at the Women of the Wall Rosh Chodesh service screaming: you are protestinginequality while praying on the ruins of a Palestinian neighborhood destroyed by the Israeli army on the night they captured Jerusalem.”
or Tisha B’Av when Palestinians ended the continuous Jewish presence in Hebron in 1929 and the ancient walls of Jerusalem in1948
Tisha B’Av when the Jordanian authorities destroyed ancient synagogues east Jerusalem after 1948
Tisha B’Av when Israeli Druze officers were gunned on the foot of the Temple Mount
I support a 2 state solution and do not support the current Israeli government, but I mourn your ant Israel bias as we approach Tisha B’Av
Most of these famous and now reverently quoted prophets were despised and persecuted in their days, and certainly rarely, if ever, heeded.
Your tone and exclamations here are strongly reminiscent of those prophets: full of pain, outrage and searing criticism of strong present day popular movements. It smacks of the tragic, often heard quote about Jerusalem having been destroyed because of hateful infighting and corruption in the government and priesthood.
Our present day newspapers overflow with such reports to the point that most people try to avoid them or at least avoid discussing them in depth. Others use that news to feed the fires of the raging conflicts among different factions, sects, religious and political parties.
Not at all encouraging…….a sense of history once again repeating its most terrifying messages.
And, one question I have: When ever was there a period when justice and righteousness actually thrived in Jerusalem?
“And, one question I have: When ever was there a period when justice and righteousness actually thrived in Jerusalem?”
Under Mayor Teddy Kollok