Tears of Tikvah

Judaism is meant to be a joyous faith. 334 days, 94% of the year, it is a spiritual duty to be besimcha, spiritually joyous.

And then there are 21 days, 6% of our calendar, when we are not. From the 17th of Tammuz through Tisha B’Av which begins this Wednesday night, the Jewish calendar asks us to cultivate sadness. Which means sadness is not something to get through. It is something to actively cultivate. The halacha does not merely permit us to feel sad; it demands that we do things to feel it.

The Chassidic masters insisted that these three weeks are not merely an accident or a scar on the calendar. The sadness has purpose. The Me’or VaShemesh teaches that the 21 days between the 17th of Tammuz and the ninth of Av are the mekor v’shoresh, the source and root, of the 21 days of festival in the Jewish year: Shabbat, Rosh Chodesh, the seven days of Pesach, Shavuot, the two days of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the eight days of Sukkot… 21 days of somehow feeding 21 days of joy. The Netivot Shalom takes it a step further – he writes that just as Sukkot is the source of joy for the entire year that follows, the Three Weeks are the wellspring of sadness for the entire year.

Sadness, true, sadness, is not easy. 

By sad, I don’t mean depressed, and I don’t mean angry. Those are easier. 

I mean sad. 

I am very uncomfortable with being sad. Maybe you are too. 

Three weeks of rage would be much easier! Anger is exciting, and can even be kind of fun. Anger gives energy. Anger is much easier to fuel than sadness. But anger is a dead end. Anger offers almost no possibility of change unless the thing you’re angry at is completely transformed or completely destroyed, which almost never happens. So anger leaves us stuck, or makes things worse. Judaism doesn’t do weeks, or days of rage. We do Jewish sadness.

Of course, there is so much to be sad about. There’s the sadness in our history – the exile from the land, the pogroms, the Crusades, the Holocaust, 10/7. There’s so much to be sad about right now in the news, in our smoky skies. 

But the Jewish calendar points us deeper than current events and demands that we, yes we, should be sad about the loss of the Beit HaMikdash – the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. 

This is, of course, very difficult. Sad about a building from 2,000 years ago? Sad about the loss of ancient religious practices that feel very foreign, or even antithetical to the way we practice spiritually today? Sad about an institution that became corrupt and distorted?

But yes, we absolutely should feel sad about the Beit Hamikdash. We should mourn the korbanot: not “sacrifices,” but korbanot in their root meaning, from karov, to come close. We should be sad that once, there was once a system, available to anyone, for drawing near to God, for feeling forgiveness, for expressing the deepest joy. It was destroyed, and now we mumble our lips and hope it works. 

We should mourn Yerushalayim as it was: one place where the Jewish people gathered, whatever their tribe, whatever their stream, and united one people, with one God. And we should mourn Yeshayahu’s unfulfilled vision: Beiti beit tefillah yikarei l’chol ha’amim, a Temple that would be a house of prayer for all nations, a gathering place of universal love and brotherhood, instead of a world where the Israel, Jerusalem, the Temple Mount itself are universally known for violence and division between peoples. El eleh ani bochiyah – for these we weep!

But what kind of weeping? What is the nature of this sadness, of these tears?

The Netivot Shalom offers the most beautiful insight. He shares the story of baby Moshe floating on the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter opens the basket, sees a boy crying, and declares: mi’yaldei ha’ivrim zeh — this is a Hebrew child. How did she know? From the crying itself. She saw that this was not bechi shel ye’ush, a cry of despair, but bechi shel tikvah, a cry of hope. That is how you recognize a Hebrew cry. Moshe Rabbeinu’s first act in the Torah is to weep with hope.

Because true sadness, unlike anger and unlike despair, is actually full of possibility. Sadness means you feel. And what is worse than feeling sad? Feeling nothing. Sadness means you have a heart of flesh, not of stone. Sadness invites reflection: this situation is terrible, maybe it doesn’t have to be this way, maybe I had some part in it, maybe it can be different? Sadness is an opening. Rebbe Nachman taught: if you believe in breaking, you must believe in fixing. Psalms teachers: Hazorim b’dimah b’rinah yiktzoru – those who sow in tears will reap in joy. There is no guarantee of when or how. But this is why we teach that on the ninth of Av, on the saddest day of the year, the Moshiach is born, redemption itself is born.

Last week, I visited one of Skokie Valley’s newest members. Her name is Magda and she is 98 and a half years old. She survived Auschwitz as a child, but lost half her family in the Holocaust. She was injured by a bomb, survived death marches… and more that she couldn’t tell me because it was too painful. She married in a DP camp, raised children, and, in 1968, her husband was murdered in his clothing store on the South Side of Chicago. She literally lived the 3 Weeks. How much suffering, how many tears. And yet – Magda raised a beautiful family, with children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. A family full of joy and pride and blessing. I asked her: Magda, what is the secret? She looked me straight in the eye and without a moment’s hesitation said “The secret is hope.”

So this Tisha B’Av, try. Allow yourself to break a little bit. To cry. Be grateful you have a heart that is alive and not of stone. And trust that Moshe’s tears, Magda’s tears, your tears, even when they are so full of suffering, bitterness and pain, are ultimately not tears of despair. They are tears of hope. They are ultimately tears of tikvah.