This posting will be broadcast on WDEL located at 1190 on your AM dial this Sunday, August 14 at 9:05 a.m.
This past Tuesday, thirteen million Jews all around the world were in total synch with the more than one billion Moslems all around the world. For more than twelve hours both groups adhered to a solemn fast. During this time the religious among these two peoples neither drank any beverage, nor ate any food. For Moslems, they were honoring the holy month of Ramadan, a time for reflection and self-improvement. The fast, this year began on the first day of the Hebrew month of Av, and goes from sunrise to sundown every day for a month. As the Moslem calendar, like the Jewish calendar, is lunar, Ramadan floats backwards through our solar-based secular calendar. During the summer, the fast is particularly arduous. For Jews, our fast lasted a full 25 hours, from sundown on Monday night to the appearance of three stars on Tuesday night.
Our fast day was called Tisha b’Av, literally, the Ninth Day of the Hebrew month, Av. It is the national day of mourning for the Jewish people. It usually occurs sometime in August although somewhat like the Moslem calendar, the date floats from year to year. We have only one other full 24-hour fast day in the Jewish religion: Yom Kippur. While on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, we fast because we are sorry for the bad things we may have done to others, to a large extent, the meaning of fasting on Tisha B’Av is quite different. Rather than being sorry for the bad things we have done to others, on Tisha B’Av, we fast because we are sorry for the bad things others have done to us, as a Jewish people.
On this day, the Ninth of Av, in the year 586 BCE, Before the Common Era, the mighty Babylonian King, Nebucadnezzar, destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusualem. His destruction of the Temple, along with the entire city of Jerusalem, is documented in the biblical Book of Lamentations, called Eicha, in Hebrew. Its reputed author is the prophet Jeremiah, who experienced, first-hand, the starvation of his people, the rape and murder of women and children by the Babylonian army, and the exile of the survivors to Babylonia – current day Iraq. On Tisha B’Av, by candle light, sitting on the floor in a sign of mourning, Jews listen to the entire Book of Eicha chanted in a unique, mournful melody to make the Hebrew words come alive to the listener.
Almost 600 years later, the Second Temple of Jerusalem, rebuilt by the returnees from Babylonian Exile, was again destroyed, this time by the Romans, again on the Ninth of Av, in the year 70 of the common era. Christians will identify this time as occurring right on the heels of the crucifixion of Jesus. It was a time of great suffering for not just Jesus, but for all his fellow Jews. With Roman destruction came the exile of the Jewish people out of their ancient homeland, dispersed to the four corners of the vast Roman Empire – an empire which would become Christian under the rule of Constantine in the fourth century.
Under Christian Rule, the Ninth Day of Av, continued to be associated with disaster. In the year 1198, the Jewish community was thrown out of France on the Ninth Day of Av, accused of the false charge of ritual blood letting of Christian children in order to make matzahs for Passover. Almost one hundred years later, in the year 1290, the Jewish community was thrown out of England, under similar charges. A little more than two hundred years later, in 1492, as Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, expelled the remaining Jews from Spain. I say “remaining Jews,” because so many had already perished or converted to Christianity under duress during the many abuses of the Spanish Inquisition.
I would like to fast forward to the modern era. Since the birth of the Modern State of Israel in 1948, some secular Zionists might wonder if it is appropriate to continue a full-day fast given the modern miracle of Israel. And I would like to conclude this broadcast by sharing a story of Ethiopian Jews, whose Judaism was in tact from the time of King Solomon, when a Temple still stood in Jerusalem. Now repatriated to Israel, school teacher and then-Israeli army soldier Keren Gottleib shares a story of the true meaning of Tisha B’Av. She encountered her Ethiopian school children’s parents in an unlikely confrontation before the springtime celebration of Passover:
It was on the first day of Nissan. One of the adults whose Hebrew was on a higher level, asked me: “Are you our children’s teacher.” “Yes,” I answered. “What is the matter, sir?” “Our children came home yesterday and told us that their teacher taught them that the Temple in Jerusalem no longer exists. Who would tell them such a thing?” He looked at me in anger.
“I told them that. We were discussing the Temple and I felt that they were a bit confused. So I explained to them that the Temple had been burned down thousands of years ago and that today, we no longer have a Temple. That’s all. What’s all the fuss about?”
He was incredulous. “What? What are you talking about?” I was more confused that ever. “I don’t understand. What are you all so angry about? I simply reminded them of the fact that the Temple was destroyed and that it no longer exists today.” Another uproar – this was louder than before. The representative quieted the others down, and again turned to me. “Are you sure?” “Am I sure the Temple was destroyed?” “Of course I’m sure!” I couldn’t hide my smile. What a strange scene.
The man turned to his friends and in a dramatic tone translated what I had told him. At this point, things seemed to be finally sinking in. Now, however, a different scene commenced: one woman fell to the ground, a second broke down in tears. A man standing by them just stared at me in disbelief. A group of men began quietly talking among themselves, very fast, in confusion and disbelief. The children stood on the side, looking on in great puzzlement. Another women suddenly broke in a heart-rending cry. Her husband came over to her to hug her.
A few months later it was Tisha B’Av. I had already been discharged from the army, on my way to college, and my military service seemed as if it had been such a very long time ago. As I did every year, I went to synagogue. Everyone was already seated on the floor, as is customary for mourners, and I was waiting to hear the Book of Lamentations. I had expected, as in previous years, for this to be a time for some daydreaming and hoped I wouldn’t get too hungry.
The Lamentations megillah reading began, and I started reading the first two verses: “Alas, she sits in solitude, like a widow, she weeps bitterly in the night and her tear is on her cheek. She has no comforter from all her paramours; all her friends have betrayed her, they have become her enemies.”
Suddenly that first day of Nissan began replaying in my mind. The angry looks of those children. The parents’ screams. The mother’s crying. The men’s pitiful silence. At that moment I understood that this was exactly how we are supposed to mourn the Temple on Tisha B’Av. We are supposed to cry over the loss of the unity and peace throughout the entire world. We are supposed to lament the disappearance of the Divine Presence and holiness from our lives…We’re supposed to feel as if something very precious has been taken away from us forever. Here ends Karen Gottleib’s story.
Our challenge as peoples of faith, Jewish, Moslem, Christian, is to use our respective religions, and its traditions, as inspiration to bring God back into our daily lives, and to build bridges of understanding between us. And perhaps we can use our fast days to inspire us to give more generously to ease the famine gripping the 12 million hungry living in the Horn of Africa, after all, as Isaiah asks: “what does your fast days mean to Me when My children go begging for food?”
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