Starting Wednesday night and continuing through Thursday, we honor Tishah B’Av, the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av, the date which commemorates numerous tragedies over the course of Jewish history, including and especially the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, the focal point of Jewish worship in ancient times, where Jews would bring the best of their flock in an offering they experienced as drawing themselves close to God.
Remarkably, tradition understands both Temples—the first constructed by King Solomon in the 10th century BCE and destroyed by the Neo-Babylonian empire in 586 BCE, and its replacement, for which construction began around 516 BCE under Persian rule and which was refurbished by King Herod around 18 BCE, and which the Romans destroyed in 70 CE—to have been destroyed on the same date, the Ninth of Av, 656 years apart.
Tishah B’Av is commemorated, to this day, through many of the same prohibitions we carry out on Yom Kippur; traditionally, we abstan from food and drink, sexual relations, bathing, and wearing leather shoes—traditional symbols of comfort.
Of course, some of us might wonder, “why?”. Why are we still concerned with events that took place nearly 2000 years ago and more, events which resulted in the cessation of a mode of worship—animal sacrifice—which many of us consider outdated and perhaps barbaric? How do these events carry such a hold on the Jewish psyche, heart, and soul?
The short answer is that Tishah B’Av commemorates not simply the historical events themselves, the destructions of the Temples, but the period of existence those events initiated, a period of existence known by one simple term: exile.
Exile speaks to, yes, a geographic reality: one form of ancient collective punishment, and a geopolitical tactic was that, when a potential vassal state proved unruly, a means of crushing their base of support and undermining their cultural strength was to “exile” the people into the hinterlands, including to the homebase of the oppressive regime, which the Babylonians did.
But, as can be felt in response to today’s political developments in the modern State of Israel, “exile” does not just speak to a political reality. Exile did not end when independence was declared in the State of Israel in 1948, when Jews held some level of political autonomy in the region for the first time since 70 CE.
Rather, and more fundamentally, exile can be understood as a state of being. A sense of displacement and of feeling incomplete and unsettled. All the brokenness we feel, within ourselves and in the world around us, can, under some understandings of the term, fall under the rubric of what is known in Hebrew as galut, exile. It speaks to the notion that something is awry, something is amiss in the world, and something needs to be done about it. The oft- (some would say over-) used phrase “Tikkun Olam,” “repair of the world” speaks to this sense of brokenness. It is the existential condition of exile that we are all in that needs to be repaired.
At the same time, many see the recognition of the condition of exile as an opportunity. Only when we acknowledge what is broken, what is amiss, what is in pain, can we begin to heal. Tishah B’Av serves as a container for that grief and that pain, allowing us to lean into it, to give voice to it, to exhale in it, so that it serves not as a dead end but as a doorway to a new chapter of existence.
Tradition understands God to have journeyed with us into exile; we are not alone, and in fact, our recognition of the state of exile can be seen as an invitation to experience the closeness to God our ancestors felt when they brought their offerings to the Temple.
To the extent we see exile in the warming of the planet, in the undermining of democracy at home and abroad and in the State of Israel, in the condition of migrants around the world, and more, that recognition can serve as an invitation to heal, in the presence of the Divine and through our sacred tradition, ourselves and the world around us.
Here at Society Hill Synagogue, we’ll be holding a simple, traditional, candlelit Tishah B’av service at 8:30 pm Wednesday night, July 26, in our social hall to hold space for this experience. We hope you’ll join us.
