Three Weeks; Three Rocks

This is the time of the year when the calendar and halacha draws our attention to the historic and theological reality that we are in exile. There were many years when it was work to try and feel that. But this year, not so much. I doubt I’m adding much to the conversation by saying that this year you have to be more delusional that an Ivy League college president to not feel the existential precariousness of Jewish existence. This topsy turvy year, I wonder if these three weeks of sadness can be a source of hope. But first, let me tell you about a rock.

It’s not a particularly large rock. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to call it a pebble. And it’s not a particularly interesting pebble. It’s pebble colored and pebble shaped and it weighs about as much as you would expect a pebble to weigh. Perhaps the only interesting thing about it is that I keep it in my [weekday] tallis bag. Truth is, I have three pebbles in that tallis bag.

This spring I travelled with 48 of our seniors on the annual trip to Poland and Israel. It was a small miracle that we were able to go at all and it was a slightly larger miracle that so many of the students and families were so committed to Israel and this experience that they went on this trip. (And it’s a much larger miracle that they trusted me to be in charge.) On our third day in Poland we were making our way around Auschwitz-Birkenau. The students’ experiences were immensely varied. Some were having a deep, raw, emotional moment. Some were experiencing the day as if we were at a Holocaust museum, very curious about facts and numbers. We listened to our guide’s stories and we imagined the horrors. We thought of the victims and we thought about spiritual and physical resilience. And at some moment, at the urging of our guide, I bent down and picked up a pebble. Now, I know that is not an “original” pebble from the Holocaust. I know it’s a piece of the gravel that they must put down every year or two. But still, it’s a tangible memory of that place.

We were in Poland for 4 days but we were in Israel for almost two weeks. Our trip was shorter than usual but we still managed to squeeze in a good mix of fun things and meaningful things. One moment stands out in my mind as incredibly poignant, at least in part because (of reasons too complicated to explain here) it felt like the Divine Hand had guided us to that place at that moment. Late one afternoon we came to Har Hertzl, Israel’s national cemetery. It’s a place filled with young men and women who gave up their lives so Jewish people can live in the Jewish homeland. The religious and secular lay side by side. My students were all 17 or 18 years old and it was not lost on them that the holy young people who gave up their lives for us were in many, many cases not much older. Our guide Ariel took us here and there to tell us stories of the brave and selfless, until we came to a certain section where many of the graves are from soldiers that gave their lives on and since October 7^th. There was a mother and grandmother sitting next to the grave of their son/grandson. Ariel asked the mom if she would be willing to share a few words. She told us that he was one of those people that wasn’t even on duty that day; he heard he was needed and grabbed his gun and drove off. He loved music and he loved curating playlists with the perfect songs. He had a loving heart and everyone liked him. As I listened to his mother tell the story of his life, and I saw the tattoos of Jewish symbols and pesukim from Tanach on her arms, it occurred to me, that maybe this family is so secular that no one said kaddish for this boy. At the end of her remarks, I asked for permission, and then I said a quick perek of Tehillim and a Kaddish. The mom cried. The kids cried. I felt like we had been called to that moment and that space. I picked up a little pebble I saw in some shrubbery. It felt like an important place to have a tangible memory of.

Our time in Israel is about things that are big and meaningful but like many trips for teens, it is also about things that are just about enjoying the time together.  There was Aqua Kef, sand surfing (which I was much better at than anyone expected and also I did not die doing it), and playing in the water at Ain Gedi. One of the very, very first things we did in Israel was to go on a Segway tour in Yerushalayim. There was no great theological or nationalistic reason for this activity. It was just a fun way to start our time in Israel, with a nod to the fact that we really didn’t sleep the night before. We were able to see some sights and enjoy time together in the holy city, but in the City that is Miraculously Uphill in Both Directions, this was a cheat code. That said, there is a deep holiness in the ordinary-ness of that experience. We had been standing together crying at a mass grave of children in Zbylitowska Gora 15 hours earlier and now we were zipping around Jerusalem taking pictures with Har Habayit in the background. I can’t help but feel that in that most ordinary of activities there is an incredible spark of holiness. And I thought that might be an important place to have a tangible memory of, so I picked up some random little, Jerusalem stone colored pebble.

Just to make sure you’ve followed the advanced math here, there are three pebbles in my tallis bag. One is from Auschwitz-Birkenau, one is from Har Hertzl, and one is from some random parking lot in Jerusalem. Each stone tells a different, and incredibly important story. But it’s the totality of them that stirs me in the last days of Tamuz, 5784.

One well known, if surprising little quirk of Tisha B’Av is that we don’t say Tachanun. If it were up to me to explain this, I would have said, that just like we don’t say Tachanun in a “shiva house”, we also don’t say Tachanun on Tisha B’Av, when we’re all sitting on the floor in mourning. But I’m wrong. That’s not the reason. The halacha says that we don’t say Tachanun because the Navi calls the day a “Moed”, a holiday. Colloquially, Moed is a holiday, but technically it means a day to gather or a designated day. The idea is that the 9^th of Av was designated as a day of punishment for our nation since the Sin of the Spies in Moshe’s time. But the halacha is drawing significance from the idea that Tisha B’av with all it’s elegies and all it’s mourning, is still, somehow, a holiday. What’s that about?

At the Pesach Seder we say, בכל דור ודור עומדים עלינו לכלותינו, והקב”ה מצילנו מידם, in every generation they rise against us to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed is He, saves us from their hand. At the seder, the focus is certainly on the idea that in each generation He saves us from their hand. And on a regular Tisha B’Av we could focus our attention on “in each generation”, as we read kinot about biblical times, the crusades, the Holocaust and every bloody, horrific, nightmare in between them. But this year, the idea of Tisha B’Av as a Moed calls to me saying that we’re not just mourning the innumerable deaths, we’re also celebrating our national eternity. It’s the fullness of this phrase that is the whole story of Tisha B’Av – In every generation there is violence, both planned and actualized, against us AND Hashem saves our nation to continue on toward the inevitable Geulah. It’s the commemoration of destruction and a holiday. It’s both things.

It’s the story of ALL three rocks.