Confronting Complacency: Tisha B’Av’s Call to Challenge What We Accept
I was recently traveling back from visiting friends when my flight was cancelled. As expected, the disruption left many fellow passengers frustrated, with some taking their anger out on airline staff, airport employees, hotel concierges, and others who had little control over the situation. In many ways, this reaction was not surprising. The same dynamic plays out constantly: with a waitress who takes a little too long delivering an order, a bus driver delayed by traffic, or a customer service representative who has no control over company policy but bears the brunt of a customer’s frustration. We often come to expect people to behave a certain way depending on the circumstances.
Watching these interactions unfold, I realized how easily we come to accept them as normal. We have grown accustomed to frustration turning into cruelty, inconvenience becoming an excuse for disrespect, and lowered expectations shaping the way we treat one another. That complacency is part of what Tisha B’Av and the connected period challenges us to confront.
Each summer, the Jewish community steps away from the expected, whether for three weeks, the Nine Days, or Tisha B’Av itself. While observance may differ across communities, this departure transcends denomination and ideology, appearing in camps, synagogues, and Jewish communities around the world.
Summer is traditionally associated with joy and relaxation: time spent at pools, listening to music, attending barbecues, and taking trips. Yet these are precisely the activities that are customarily avoided or scaled back during the period leading up to Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, when Jewish tragedy and national calamity converge into one day of mourning. On Tisha B’Av itself, the mourning intensifies further, extending even to eating, greeting others, and sitting in a regular chair.
This dichotomy, between the expected activities and overall joyous nature of summer and the mourning practices we observe, is what enhances the struggle and complexity of this period for many, myself included. But I believe this sharp contrast is precisely the point. The discomfort of stepping away from our routines forces us to confront what we have become accustomed to accepting. Tisha B’Av interrupts our habits so that we might examine not only the tragedies of the past, but also the patterns, behaviors, and assumptions of the present.
The opening words of Eicha capture this idea: “How does the city sit solitary, once full of people?” The book begins by asking us to see familiar realities differently, to pause and confront what has become normalized.
The Talmud famously teaches that the Second Temple was destroyed because of sinat chinam—“baseless hatred” (Yoma 9b). A society does not descend to that point overnight. Rather, people become accustomed to treating one another poorly until behavior that should have been intolerable becomes ordinary. Elsewhere, the Gemara identifies additional societal failures that contributed to Jerusalem’s destruction, including the abandonment of justice and the failure to rebuke wrongdoing (Shabbat 119b). Together, these teachings suggest that the destruction was not merely the result of isolated acts of wrongdoing, but of a society that had grown complacent, a society that tolerated injustice, failed to hold one another accountable, and accepted moral decline as the new normal.
I have long struggled with the emphasis on the word “baseless.” To me, it risks implying that hatred with some perceived justification is somehow more acceptable or less deserving of condemnation. Yet our aspiration cannot simply be to avoid irrational hatred. It must be to cultivate a society that rejects hatred and the mistreatment of others altogether, even when such behavior feels justified, expected, or commonplace. Our responsibility is to resist cruelty, resentment, and moral failure in all their forms, not only when they appear to lack a reason, but especially when we have grown accustomed to excusing them.
Even in moments when we might expect anger, frustration, or poor judgment to emerge, we must challenge ourselves to choose differently.
Perhaps one of the most moving recent examples of refusing to follow the expected came in the wake of the tragic death of eight-year-old Charlotte Herzberg. Charlotte was struck and killed while riding her bicycle by a driver who was also one of her father’s closest friends. Faced with unimaginable grief, her parents made a remarkable decision. Rather than allowing the tragedy to become a source of anger and division, they publicly embraced the driver and launched the Shalom for Charlotte initiative, encouraging people around the world to let go of old grudges, repair broken relationships, and choose forgiveness over resentment.
Their response was remarkable not only because it was compassionate, but because it rejected what many would have considered the inevitable response. In the midst of profound loss, they refused to allow pain to become bitterness and instead transformed their grief into a movement for peace and unity.
Pirkei Avot teaches, “In a place where there are no people, strive to be a person” (2:5). Just because others have accepted a certain way of behaving does not allow us to do the same. On the contrary, we are called upon to resist complacency, challenge lowered expectations, and choose what is right even when no one else seems to.
In This Is Real, and You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Allan Lew, z”l, describes Tisha B’Av as a day of national reckoning, recognition, and responsibility, an idea Rachel Goldberg-Polin discusses in a recent conversation with Dan Senor on Call Me Back. Mourning, in this sense, is not simply about remembering the past. It is about honestly confronting the present and accepting responsibility for the future.
We live in a moment where frustration, disappointment, and cynicism have become almost expected. Yet Tisha B’Av reminds us that we are never permitted to become comfortable with what is broken. While we may not be able to control every circumstance we encounter, we do maintain control over our individual actions and the way we choose to treat others.
Tisha B’Av teaches that societies are not destroyed in a single moment. They decline gradually, as injustice becomes ordinary, resentment becomes routine, and people stop expecting better from themselves and from one another. The same is true in reverse. We may not be able to transform every situation we encounter, but every act of empathy, responsibility, justice, and compassion creates a ripple effect beyond the immediate moment.
If we prioritize kindness, respect, care, and understanding in every interaction, regardless of who we are speaking with or what others might expect from us, we can begin to redefine what is normal. By resisting complacency and refusing to accept what is broken as inevitable, we can transform ourselves, our communities, and ultimately the society we hope to build.
