The Cotel, the Western Wall of the destroyed Temple is essentially a symbol of Jewish tragedy – the destruction of the Temple, the centre for Jewish worship in Jerusalem for many hundreds of years reduced to one of its supporting walls and if you have the chance to go around the South side of that wall, to some shattered steps and Mikvaot. But yet it is also the Jewish meeting place of the world to this day and so it is a place of joy. It is a place where people celebrate b’nei Mitzvahs. It is a place where many Jews feel a deep connection to their history and a spiritual connection (as long as there are not too many shnorrers plaguing you while you are there).
For me as well the Cotel has a been a place to make contact with the parts of Judaism which I find it difficult to connect with – the ultra-Orthodox community. This is because if you go down to the Cotel not too long before Shabbat and sort of lurk about in the Plaza you can be assured of an invitation back to the home of a Mea Shearim family to enjoy Shabbat dinner with them. I took advantage of the Shabbat dinner matchmaking abilities of the representatives of the Yeshivot who come to plaza to pick up interested Jewish youths a couple of times when I was in Jerusalem as a younger man. I found myself taken back to Mea Shearim to enjoy hospitality that was thoroughly impressive. For me that destroyed Temple was a sign not of tragedy but of the hope of Jewish unity at a time of need. Not of sinat chinam – the groundless hatred that destroyed it but of ahavat chinam – the causeless love of a fellow Jew.
Every year the Torah portion on the Shabbat before Tisha B’av is the first portion of the Book of Deuteronomy – Devarim. It is a hopeful portion – leading us towards the Promised Land as Moses reviews the history of the Exodus up until the point where we left the Israelites last Shabbat. The Israelites had been able to win some notable battles and even to begin to settle some of their people. But Tisha b’Av, the fast day that will be commemorated here in the synagogue tonight from 8, is the opposite of hopeful. It is the time to think of Jewish tragedies ancient and contemporary. The events that have made us be seen and see ourselves as a persecuted people.
The Midrash Eichah or Lamentations Rabbah tells us why the two come together – the Torah portion Devarim and Tisha b’Av. The first word of the Book of Lamenations, which we will read and chant tonight, is Eichah meaning how – how lonely sits the destroyed city. The Midrash notes that this word also appears in the Torah for the first time in our portion this week as Moses recalls how he felt when the Children of Israel moaned at him – “How can I bear this people and their troubles by myself” (Deut. 1:12).
The remainder of the Devarim portion provides a catalogue of the journey taken by the Children of Israel as they struggled across the wilderness. We hear about the peoples who would not allow the Children of Israel to get to their promised land but also about the history of these peoples themselves and how they had come to take over he land of others – as if we are hearing the unfolding of a Divine plan though history – of who will be where and in what strength.
The last words of the portion are an exhortation to Joshua – saying – do not fear the people who are ranked against you for God will be with you. (Deuteronomy 3:22).
Strange words to hear just before Tisha b’av. The fast commemorates many events which suggest that we have been abandoned, that there is always reason to Jews to live in fear. Tisha b’av traditionally (Taanit 29a) commemorates the weeping of the children of Israel when they heard the reports of the Spies who had scouted out the Land of Israel and found it in unconquerable, the first and second temple destroyed, the resistance against the persecutions of Hadrian at Betar vanquished followed three years later by the levelling of Jerusalem. It has also come to commemorate contemporary events dated as occurring on Tisha b’Av – the edict signed by King Edward 1 to expel the Jews from England in 1290, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, the first shots of the first world war in 1914.
The Devarim Torah portion is a celebration of our joy of coming towards our Promised Land. Tishah b’Av is a sad commemoration of the times when joy has been snatched away from us. In the past decades of Reform Judaism the commemoration of Tisha b’Av was called into question. Few Reform or Liberal Synagogues made much of Tisha b’Av. We stand for religious progress and what could be more antithetical to progress than a day to remember the loss of the Temple, which we knew had been permanently replaced by the Synagogue. But with each passing year of the past decade or two more and more of Reform Synagogues have been recapturing the spirit of Tisha b’Av – and I believe that EHRS in both its EDRS and HRS incarnations always held onto it – because we know that humankind does not progress on a linear path to a better future. There will be awful setbacks to our progress to a world of peace and unity. These past 20 months in Israel and Gaza being an obvious case in point.
We need to find times to come together to deal with the troubles and disappointments of Jewish history and the Jewish present and Tisha b’Av offers that opportunity. Moses said, using the word Eichah from the Megilah read on Tisha b’Av – Eicah Lamentations- eichah esa l’vadi – “How can I bear your troubles alone?” The point of being a community is that we need not do so. We can come together in the ritualised form of Tisha b’av to share the troubles that have beset us in the past- we come together now for the troubles that beset us now. Through togetherness the troubles that beset the world can be shared.
The exisstence of Hamas today means that we experience a threat not to the idea of a greater Israel or a lesser Israel but to the idea of there being an Israel at all. Hamas’s aim is that there will be no Jewish state. Israel’s defence of herself against Hamas attacks and the way in which the war has been prosecuted in Gaza has been terrible to witness – and far worse of course to endure first hand. That it has been bearable by Israelis has been through the coming together of people to endure the troubles that they have suffered, national solidarity with the hostage families, providing communal places for entire kibbutzim in the Gaza envelope for example to decamp to. People have not had to bear it alone.
What Tisha B’av represents as a sign of hope is that despite the tragedies that we see in the world we do not give up on Jewish values. That is what I see as so important in the statements put out by our Movement for Reform Judaism this week – urging the government of Israel to live by Jewish values of compassion, justice, equality and peace, so clear in the Isaiah Haftarah portion that we read: ‘Learn to do well, seek justice, relieve the oppressed, be just towards the orphan, defend the widow.’ Whether they are Jews or Palestinians whose oppressors are Hamas.
The CEO of World Jewish Relief, Paul Anticoni OBE, spoke here at EHRS on Wednesday on Humanitarian Aid in a Fractured World. He reminded us that the Jewish in World Jewish Relief’s name means to care for ourselves and for the stranger. So on WJR’s website, as well as the very necessary help which they give to the Jews of Ukraine, you can donate to help a maternity hospital in Gaza, where you can make a difference to Palestinians who are in their first minutes of life. So too our Movement continues to support the dream that speedily in our days there will a secure, democratic State of Israel alongside a viable, sovereign State of Palestine, with the hostages all released and Hamas playing no part in it.
The togetherness that I experienced as a young man being taken home for Shabbat dinner from the Cotel, once the site of such tragedy, and the togetherness that makes the Jewish community what it can be proud of in times of trouble should be the mark of this year’s Tisha b’Av. Perhaps this Shabbat we can see no end to the crisis – but we can ensure that the peoples of Israel are not alone in the struggle.
