It’s Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Tisha B’Av
July in the Wisconsin countryside can be bucolically beautiful. For Jews, July in Wisconsin, in certain years, can also mean the advent of Tisha B’Av, the somber day commemorating the destruction of both Temples in Jerusalem. A day of fasting, chanting the book of Lamentations, and mourning.
On such a certain July I was running a special arts program for young teens in a Jewish summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, with my colleague, Ohad Shaaltiel, a wonderful visual artist and a brilliant teacher. Tisha B’Av was upon us and Ohad and I wanted to create a special program for the gifted young students – something that would make the somber day meaningful and relevant to them. Something they would, hopefully, remember for years to come.
We asked the campers to write down their highest aspirations, their most sacred principles, their most cherished values. We then asked each one of them to give artistic expression to what they had committed to paper and create a painting, a structure, a sculpture, or an installation piece that embodied what they had written.
Three hours later, when the task was completed, we asked the campers to bring their creations to the center of our main hall. Each camper then shared with all of us what was the source of their creation, what they had expressed in writing, and why it had taken the shape it had.
Over the next hour, we assembled, very carefully, all the works of art the students had produced, and formed an extraordinary structure out of them. We stood there in silence for a good ten minutes staring at it, examining it from different angles and marveling at how this structure had been created by so many different students with such diverse personalities and talents, and yet somehow the piece seemed totally cohesive in a strangely wonderful way.
We took many pictures of the structure and then we asked the students to sit down around their creation and we played some music and sang a few songs. Finally, the faculty rose, walked up to the structure and kicked it violently, stomping on the pieces and destroying what had taken half a day to envision, create, and assemble.
There were gasps of horror and even a couple of tears. The students were visibly shaken by what had just happened. We sat down and talked with the students about the Temple in Jerusalem and what it had meant for the Jewish people. How the Temple had embodied their highest aspirations and beliefs and how it was destroyed twice by brutal conquerors. We asked them if they could understand what the people must have felt as they watched the Temple go up in flames and crumble to the ground.
From that day on, we said, the Jewish people could only carry with them the memory of the Temple and what it had stood for. From that day on the people could only imagine its glory and try and transmit to the next generation what it had meant. From that day on sorrow and loss would be the constant companions of the people throughout their lives, intermingled with their celebrations and commemorations, their mundane activities and their sacred moments.
Tisha B’Av was meant to teach us not only the meaning of loss and destruction but also to contemplate how such devastation can come about. How it is that the noblest aspirations and achievements of a people can come to ruin.
The Temple does not have to be destroyed by fire and brimstone. It can be dismantled brick by brick by corruption, by incompetence, by malevolent schemers. The Temple can be toppled by greed, by leaders deaf to the real needs of their people, by leaders devoid of empathy and compassion.
The Temple need not be a religious edifice. The Temple need not even be a physical structure – it can be the sum-total of the political and social wisdom gathered by a people over decades or even centuries and enshrined in laws, regulations, norms and practices that are reflected in their government and social institutions.
We are now living in a world of crumbling Temples. Small factions with exquisite self-interest, oblivious to the values and needs of the majority, have been tearing our countries apart and pitting citizen against citizen. They attack the legal system, the social institutions and the very foundational ideals of our nations. They stomp on our political, legal, governmental, and social institutions with the glee of a Caligula set loose in a drunken stupor throughout a paralyzed Rome.
We have the benefit of history and the endless commentary gifted to us by wise observers over the millennia. We have no excuses. We have our souls, our hearts, and our minds to sift through the wisdom texts we have been handed and to respond to what we know to be utterly wrong and fatally destructive.
It’s beginning to feel a lot like Tisha B’Av. The question is – will we act to prevent it from happening again?