Last month, a young man from Las Vegas celebrated a Jewish rite of passage that countless others have performed over the years: After months of preparation, he traveled to Israel to become a Bar Mitzvah. Like so many other Jewish 13 year-olds, his family arranged a ceremony that culminated with chanting from the Torah at the Kotel Ha-Ma’aravi, the Western Wall.
Ultimately, Tisha B’Av is about hope. But it’s hope born from shared experience and loss, from realizing the danger of violent zealotry left unchecked. It’s hope that comes from a recognition that a society does have the ability to change its direction, and share responsibility for its destructive patterns.
The celebration took place at the space that was created by the Israeli government after years of tireless efforts by the non-Orthodox Jewish movements. Set alongside the traditional Western Wall plaza, the space beneath Robinson’s Arch was carved out for egalitarian Jewish worship.
But this seemingly innocuous event was a flashpoint for radical Jewish elements of the far right. Dozens of Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) zealots converged on Seth Mann’s bar mitzvah ceremony, blaring airhorns and screaming vulgar epithets to disrupt the service. They howled that Sam and his guests were “animals,” “Christians,” and—wait for it—“Nazis.” They violently seized the siddurim from which Sam’s family were praying—the Jewish prayerbooks containing the sacred name of G-d—and ripped them to shreds.
And the ineffectual Israeli police stood by, silently and uselessly and refusing to intervene.
Tragically, this scene was predictable. It happened again last week. A teen from Seattle, Lucia da Silva, went to the women’s section of the Wall to celebrate becoming a bat mitzvah. She and her family and guests were met by 100 Haredi thugs who shrieked, blew whistles, and screamed obscenities. Again, the police, as well as the security hired by the Western Wall Heritage Foundation which controls the site, did nothing.
The mindset of the Zealots allows for no alternative expressions of Judaism. Women are forbidden from leading ritual; men and women praying together are heretics. And for those who are threatened by egalitarian expressions of Judaism (which the large majority of American Jews embrace), no expression of opposition, it seems, is beyond the pale. After all, their rabbis condone it.
The time and place of these disasters couldn’t be more painfully ironic: At the remains of the Beit HaMikdash, on the cusp of our most solemn season.
The 9th of Av is the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. The Rabbis maintained that that on this very date both Temples in Jerusalem were destroyed, six hundred years apart: the First by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Second by the Romans in 70 CE. Each time the Temple was destroyed, it marked Exile from Jerusalem and a period of political powerlessness, when Jewish communities were forced to live under the authority of others.The Kotel and the contemporary excavations around it are all that remain.
The Rabbis sought to give these historical calamities a spiritual dimension. How could it be, they pondered, that a people who has a covenant with G-d could find themselves in a such a dire and shattered space?
Their answer was not a cosmic one, but an utterly human one. שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם / sinnat chinam they explained: senseless hatred for one another:
לְלַמֶּדְךָ שֶׁשְּׁקוּלָה שִׂנְאַת חִנָּם כְּנֶגֶד שָׁלֹשׁ עֲבֵירוֹת
עֲבוֹדָה זָרָה, גִּלּוּי עֲרָיוֹת, וּשְׁפִיכוּת דָּמִים
This should teach you that sinnat chinam is equal in weight to three other sins:
idol worship, illicit sexual acts, and shedding blood. (Talmud, Yoma 9b)
How burning the irony, how painful the awareness, that today, more than ever, the Western Wall has become the focal point of the hate that percolates within the Jewish world. The snarling faces of the opponents at Lucia’s bat mitzvah and Seth’s bar mitzvah—and the hands that shredded the words of the siddurim—couldn’t be more visceral examples of this.
All this in the days leading up to Tisha B’Av.
I have no doubt in my mind that if the authorities refuse to take a stand, there is a disaster in the making. It is clear to me that the hatred exposed by the most extremist elements of Israeli society is as vicious as it was in the days leading up to the destruction of the Second Temple, when the moral and communal leaders of the community also failed to take a stand against Zealots.
Have we not learned any of the lessons of any of the Tisha B’Avs of our lifetime? The essential message of Tisha B’Av is: Hate kills; unchecked, it inevitably wreaks destruction and forces the Shekhinah into exile.
Ultimately, Tisha B’Av is about hope. But it’s hope born from shared experience and loss, from realizing the danger of violent zealotry left unchecked. It’s hope that comes from a recognition that a society does have the ability to change its direction, and share responsibility for its destructive patterns.
How should we respond this Tisha B’Av? In four ways:
(1) Fast and pray with special intensity, for the religious imperative of the day is more important than ever.
(2) Support those who are in the trenches of the work for religious freedom in Israel, including Hiddush—For Religious Freedom and Equality, the Israel Religious Action Center, ARZA, Women of the Wall, and the local communities and congregations of the Israel Movement for Reform and Progressive Judaism and the Masorti movement.
(3) Demand that the Jewish Federations (CJP here in Massachusetts), AIPAC, and other organizations that purport to be big-tent Jewish or Zionist organizations take a firm stand on this issue, which threatens Jewish unity and Israeli security.
(4) Rav Kook taught that the only true antidote for sinnat chinam/senseless hatred is ahavat chinam/senseless love. Not really “senseless,” of course; but loving other people precisely because of every person’s inherent value, having been made in the Image of G-d. Be part of the solution; live the opposite of hate.
We’ll need to have Tisha B’Av again this year. Let’s pray that one of these years we can get it right.
The Tisha B’Av fast in 2022 is Sunday, August 7, delayed one day (to the 10th of Av) because the fast cannot fall on Shabbat.
A Tree with Roots will be hosting a special online Tisha B’Av study at 11:00 am on Sunday. All are welcome: Register here to receive the Zoom link.