Lonely sits the city once great with people!

I have escaped! 

I have temporarily sought refuge on the outwash plain of my favorite forked-ended island where it's hot and sticky and feels just about right. We don't need no stinkin' air conditioning!

Yeah, it was a little plane, but I gotta admit, I have no idea how the flight was; I fell asleep before we finished backing up and I really didn't wake up until we landed. I missed the traditional waving as I fly over the cemetery. I never miss flying over the cemetery. I think I was tired. It was a pretty busy few days getting ready to split the scene for two weeks while the kiddies camped out at my house. I think they'll have fun...mostly because we have a pool and this weather makes having a pool a pretty big plus.

But before I left town, I went to be part of the first in-person audience for CHUTZPOD, a podcast with Josh Malina and Rabbi Shira Stutman. They are well paired and well suited. I'd listened to them before, but being in the audience for their first one was actually pretty fun. Their intention is to talk Torah, specifically the parashat ha'shevuah, the section of Torah read in a synagogue on Shabbat morning, but they incorporate events of interest into the conversation. So it was no surprise when the chat turned to the January 6th hearing. And something was said that I found not merely interesting, but rather surprisingly insightful.

Okay, they were talking about Jewish holiday cycle and why Tisha b'Av, the 9th of Av,  is different. It's really a second level major holiday. Shabbat, of course, is every seven days, and occupies its own space.  First tier consists of the Days of Awe: Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, followed by the second tier with the three pilgrimage festivals: Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot.  Everything else comes after that. Tisha b'Av, however, sorta stands on its own. It's unique in a whole bunch of ways in that it commemorates the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem, and it is said, somewhat apocryphally, that many other tragedies befell the Jewish people on that date, including the start of the Spanish Inquisition. So they kept talking about how to celebrate Tisha b'Av...and frankly, I took issue with the word celebrate. 

Celebrating death and destruction seems antithetical to me. It's a day of sadness, mourning, and ultimately, hope. But that's not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how one commemorates a day of sadness and despair, like Tisha b'Av or January 6th.

Yes. January 6th. Like November 22nd, or December 7th, January 6th was a watershed moment in American history. Was it an insurrection? Was it a protest march? What exactly was it? Semantics matter here. IF it was a successful insurrection and they had succeeded in taking the Capitol, then those people would have celebrated. But if you view it as a watershed moment in the history of this country that could have gone either way, then you're probably not gonna celebrate it. That's what had me stymied: how do we label the events of January 6th?

In talking about Tisha b'Av, one is really marking the destruction of two Temples. That's the genesis of the fast day. One cannot ignore the reasons for those destructions; they are two very different reasons:

Why was the First Temple destroyed? Because of three evils in it: idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed . . . But why was the Second Temple destroyed, seeing that during the time it stood people occupied themselves with Torah, with observance of precepts, and with the practice of charity? Because during the time it stood, hatred without rightful cause prevailed. This is to teach you that hatred without rightful cause is deemed as grave as all the three sins of idolatry, sexual immorality and bloodshed together.

Babylonian Talmud Book III: Yoma 9b
circa 500 CE

Hold that thought.

When Malina and Stutman talked about January 6th, they proposed calling it a National Day of Reckoning. I kinda like that title. I also like the questions they posed about how we see ourselves when we are the other. Any civil separation is going to cause the perception of the enemy to morph into something unexpected. Is the recognition of the destruction about the loss of a physical space...or is it really about the internal fracturing of a community? Is the absence of that physical space more or less important than retaining that physical space under any and all circumstances?

Rabbi Stutman also pointed out the importance of horizontal memory. The idea that we are standing on the shoulders of others is probably overlooked way too much. We do stand on the accomplishments of others; it becomes our responsibility to not simply protect the base, but to insure upward growth. 

Since We, the People have indeed fractured the pedestal of civic community all by ourselves, admitting to and recognizing we are living in a time of fomented hatred means we cannot turn away or pretend damage has not been done. We have an obligation to shore up the base as we reach for the sky. The Book of Lamentations, read on Tisha b'Av, opens with great sadness: Lonely sits the city once great with people! I suspect this will be an all too familiar phrase. 

The Wifely Person's Tip o'the Week

Shabbat outranks all holidays except Yom Kippur...therefore

Tisha b'Av observed begins at sundown, August 6th 

and ends Sunday, August 7th at sundown.

If that also just happens to be your 41st birthday, bummer.

Have an easy fast and break it with ice cream and cake.