Tisha B’Av: Cosmic Exile
This year there is indeed a lot to mourn. Even as we have come physically home to the land of Israel, the recent upheavals can hardly feel to us like Micah’s utopian vision of ‘each person under his tree and fig tree’(4:4), a vision of peace and tranquility. When we mourned last year, we mourned the vicious destruction that we experienced almost two years ago at the hands of a nihilistic death cult. We were still standing over the charred remains of the kibbutzim and moshavim. We were (and are) still waiting for our beloved family to return from their captivity. The dead were still in front of us, and we absorbed the shock of the situation.
In recent months, I have begun to reflect on a different, almost invisible mourning that we experience, both in Israel and in the Diaspora. Even as we thank the Divine for our physical salvation and we continue to tell stories of resilience and strength, on a deeper level each of us in different ways have felt moments of terror and doubts.
Of course, we might feel an anxiety about the future; our people have experienced both triumph and tragedy. Our people are the center of the news daily, and not in a good way. Many in the world have already forgotten the devastating events of October 7. Some incredibly blame the Israelis- and by extension the Jewish people- of being the perpetrators of violence and destruction, an incredible act of mass psychological projection and traumatic invalidation that leads even many of our co-religionists to doubt our moral legitimacy at all. As a people we feel more alone than ever before. [1]
While some may have fantastic and messianic (de)illusions that things will be set aright, many more feel a general sense of gnawing uncertainty as to what the future holds, not simply politically and strategically, but morally and spiritually- for our foundational values as a ‘kingdom of priests and holy nation.’ At our core we are merciful and righteous people; we aspire to be ‘a light unto the nations,’ And yet, the trauma we have faced daily threatens to unravel our very humanity; we have been unwillingly thrust into a maelstrom in which it is often hard to know how to navigate our lives in such a way that we maintain our values, even as we see the hypocrisy of the world around us. What to do with this deep-seated angst, and does this angst have any theological relevance? The mourning we feel perhaps is the mourning of our hopes and dreams, of what we thought things might be for us and the world. Pauline Boss, the psychotherapist, has called this type of grief ‘ambiguous loss,’ a loss in which is indeterminate and unclear, and therefore difficult to grieve. [2] We know how to grieve the death of a loved one, or on a national level October 7. We have people to comfort us, and rituals to carry us. It is much harder for a parent suffering infertility to grieve a child that never was and never will be, or on a national level a narrative that ends not in the promised land we had hoped for but remains in the wilderness.
I am reminded of the tragic end of the book of Deuteronomy, in which Moses dies on Mount Nebo. He gazes on the promise land but cannot enter it. Furthermore, in his final oration to the people he tells them that while they enter the land, they too will ultimately fail, destined to be banished from the land (Deut.32). The people buried Moses and mourned him for forty days, but they were unable to mourn for themselves, that in entering the land, that they would ultimately fail- as the book of Lamentations tells us.
Tisha B’Av marks the beginning of galut (exile), with the destruction of the two Temples in Jerusalem. In speaking of galut, some people tend to look at it as merely a physical dislocation of the Jewish people from their land.[3] If we frame Jewish history this way, then in fact galut has ended. We were exiled from Israel and now have come home. If so, why the mourning, why the fasting, why read Lamentations? In truth, something deeper, more existential is at play. Tisha B’Av, while linked to a historical event, in truth is a day in which we ultimately mourn an unredeemed world.[4] When we mourn for what could have been but was not, in theological terms we actually mourn an imagined past that is irreparably lost. That is the contemporary meaning of mourning for the Temple.
To reflect upon this, we must first consider our own lives. We begin our lives in the womb; we are part of a whole, connected to the entire universe. We feel safe and embraced, or at least we imagine it to be. In truth, the physical dislocation of the destruction of the Temple is not the first dislocation. The first exile is the moment of birth, emerging into a strange and foreign world. This is the cry of the infant emerging from the womb:
Finally, [the fetus] must go forth into the world. The angel appears and says to the spirit, “It is time to go forth into the world.” The spirit: “Why do you want to take me out into the world?” The angel: My son, know that you were formed against your will, now you will be born against your will, you will die against your will and against your will you will give an accounting before the King who is the King of Kings, the Holy One.” The spirit refuses to leave until the angel strikes him… and brings him forth into the world. Instantly, the infant forgets all that he had seen and all that he had known. Why does the infant weep at birth? Because he lost a place of comfort and ease- [he weeps] for the world that he was forced to leave.[5]
In essence, human beings are thrust into this world, seeking for a way to return to that which they cannot even remember. In essence, on the deepest of levels, to be exiled means to be banished into a strange world, thereby not understanding ones place in this world. To return is not simply to physically relocate, but to remember what was and what could have been. Thus, even at the moment of the greatest joy there is a tragic quality, the quality of separation and estrangement from the whole. When we feel the interconnectedness of all being, we understand ourselves and our place. The banishment from the womb is in the midrash a metaphor for the journey of life, trying to reclaim the deep connection that has been lost.
In fact, in mystical thought the physical dislocation is a cosmic dislocation. While we cannot really know that prenatal universe, in the religious imagination we could momentarily experience that connection in the Temple, a place in which humanity and the Divine connected, this world and the supernal realm. Paradoxically, the four walls of the Temple were to contain intimations of the Infinite.[6] “You shall build me a Sanctuary and I shall dwell within you.”(Exodus 25:8) Note it does not say ‘in it’, but ‘in you,’ for the project of the building God’s sanctuary in this world is the audacious process of rebuilding and restoring what was lost in the universe. It is an attempt to ennoble our own lives by living our lives in light of the Eternal.
Like the Garden of Eden or the womb, the Temple did not allow death or degeneration; it is as if the world of suffering and doubt as we know it does not exist.[7] In the light of the Temple, we were in constant dialogue with the Infinite, as if the Infinite was revealed to us at every moment. We knew who we were, as we ultimately shared in the light of the Divine. I am not saying this actually happened in practice historically[8], but the building of the Temple is reflective of the deepest religious aspiration of humanity to restore the holistic balance of the universe.
Consider what our lives and the world would look like today if we realized that the Divine, the ultimate source of vitality and life, flows throughout the world. Could we abuse and debase our fellow human beings? Could we imagine a world in which we destroy one another in the most horrific of ways? Could we imagine a world pulsating with hatred? Could we imagine a world in which language has been debased to almost lose all meaning?
The second to last verse of Lamentations, read on the evening of Tisha B’Av, encapsulates what was ultimately lost. “Restore us to yourself, Lord, that we may return; renew our days as of old.” (5:21) On the day the Temple was destroyed, we did not simply lose a building, or even a country. The physical banishment in the cosmic sense is the banishment of the Jewish people, and by extension humanity, from the fellowship with God. We forget the place from where we came, and therefore we ultimately forget who we were. In times of great upheaval, in a world in which the Divine seems to be particularly eclipsed, the gnawing anxiety of the meaning of it all weighs heavier. We tend to wander aimlessly, not knowing where we are going. We want to go home, but we don’t know what home looks like anymore and do not know how to return. The story of our lives which we have been writing until now does not seem to reveal the next chapter. At least for me, these feelings are very real, specifically at this historical juncture.
The late Israeli thinker Rav Shagar in one of his discourses on Tisha B’Av quotes a striking image, comparing the destruction of the Temple to the destruction of the family home, what he calls ‘at homeness.’ In a healthy family, people remember fondly the love, the feeling of belonging, the sense of place. Then the kids leave the house, the parents grow older and ultimately die. One can return to the house, but one cannot return home. The warmth of the home, the smells emanating from the kitchen, the hum of the conversation can only be imagined in the recesses of the mind. In essence, home resides in the fleeting memory of the remembered, and they too will soon vanish in the course of time. The intimacy is gone.
This is not only a crisis for man, but also a crisis for God. He quotes Proverbs 27:8. “Like a bird wandering from its nest, so is a man who wanders from his home.” He offers us a mystical explanation of this verse, based upon the introduction of the Tikkunei HaZohar. The text laments the disruption of the Divine vitality from the upper realms (the transcendent Divine masculine, referred to as ‘the Holy One’/ kudsha berich hoo) and the lower realms (the immanent Divine feminine, referred to as the shekhina). The bird is sent away from the nest, which the text associates with the feminine Divine shekhina. The ‘man’ compared to the bird in the verse is associated with the masculine kudsha berich hoo; who strikingly also goes into exile. The intimacy of the relationship is torn asunder, and now both wander and suffer. In time they will seek one another, trying to restore what was before the crisis [9] For our purposes the rich mystical language is secondary. At the core exile is the destruction of the unity and intimacy of the cosmic home. The unity that once was is now torn apart. Both have fled the nest.[10]
This cosmic vision perhaps informs the rabbinic adage that states that when the Temple was destroyed and the Jewish people went into exile, God went into exile as well.[11] When the home is destroyed (The Temple), God loses God’s own sense of place in this world. God is, as it were, eclipsed and hidden. During the three weeks we are asked to focus on this dimension of existence as well, on the hiddenness of the Divine. While during transcendent moments of time like the Shabbat, or through the study of Torah we do recreate moments of transcendence, of ‘the world to come,’ we know the moments are fleeting. “We exist in a state of wandering. Our reality is a secularized reality of the destruction characterized by a deep sense of abandonment and mourning.”[12]
In coming back to Zion, many had hoped that our long-awaited utopia would be achieved. There is clearly, even now, much to celebrate. We must celebrate the ‘voices of joy and voices happiness, the voice of the groom and voice of the bride’[13] However, while for some who insist recent events portend the ‘birth pangs of the messiah,’ perhaps recent events demonstrate the very opposite. There were other times in Jewish history when people insisted we were at the cusp of a messianic age, only to experience disaster and catastrophe. For me, interpreting God’s hand in history is a fool’s errand. We look around us, at all the havoc and destruction, and we realize that indeed, the messiah has not yet come. God is still eclipsed, still hidden in our world. Unlike some extremists, we do not need to build a Third Temple, but to build a world in which God would want to dwell in a Third Temple.
Like the mystics and Chasidic masters, redemption unfolds not only in the realm of history, but in the inner heart of humanity. We still have a long way to go. Is this not something to mourn?
However, in conclusion, I cannot end with words of despair. We always end on words of hope. The prophet Zechariah references Tisha B’Av in his prophecy (chapter 8). He was speaking to a tired and dispersed people following the destruction of the First Temple, a people that may not have had the ability to hear his message. He spoke to a small and impoverished remnant returning to Jerusalem. He assures them that Jerusalem will rise up again. The old and young will crowd the squares, and the fields will yield abundant produce, the enemies of Israel will be vanquished, and the nations of the world will come to worship in Jerusalem. If you speak truth and justice, practice kindness and love to one another, Zechariah states that the fast of the fifth month (i.e. Tisha B’Av), will be ‘occasions for joy and gladness, happy festivals.’ They will become a moed, a holiday like Passover. Following the ashes of the Holocaust and our return to Zion, perhaps we hear it differently. We have witnessed terrible tragedies in the past two years, terrible suffering for us and others caught in the midst of battle. Yet we also have seen great miracles and salvation like the war on Iran, the degrading of Hezbollah and the release of hostages. (May we see the rest return now.) Zechariah teaches us that history is indeterminate, that things do change. May all of us mourn and grieve appropriately and receive the consolation of a better future for us and the world, something we all seek.
Ken Yehi Ratzon. May this be God’s will.
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[1] For more on this phenomenon, see Miri Bar-Halpern & Jaclyn Wolfman (13 May 2025): Traumatic invalidation in the Jewish community after October 7, Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, DOI: 10.1080/10911359.2025.2503441
[2] See Pauline Boss, The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change, (USA: Norton and Co., 2021)
[3] This is how some Zionist thinkers understood the goals of the Jewish national movement, ‘a rejection of exile.’ Perhaps the most extreme proponent of this idea was A.B. Yehoshua, who saw no redeeming value in exile.
[4] The rabbinic and later traditions associate many events with the day of Tisha B’Av for this reason. Many rabbinic authorities did not accept – and still do not accept- Yom HaShoah as it own day of commemoration. Rather, one should mourn the Holocaust on Tisha B’Av.
[5] Tanchuma, Pekudei 3. Translation Nancy Berg and Marc Saperstein, Exile and the Jews: Literature History and Identity, (Philadelphia: JPS, 2024):3-4
[6] See Kings 1, ch. 8
[7] One who has had contact with a dead body or other objects connoting death and disintegration are ritually impure and forbidden to enter the Temple precincts. See Rabbi Irving (Yitz) Greenberg, The Triumph of Life: A Narrative Theology of Judaism, (Philadelphia:JPS, 2024)
[8] Indeed, both Jewish and Christian texts critique the corruption of the institution.
[10] The shekhina often is seen in mystical thought as the hypostasis of the collective of the Jewish people. Thus, the sefirotic crisis can be mapped onto the human turmoil as well, as they are banished from God’s home, i.e. the Temple.
[11] Eg, B.T. Megilah 29a
[12] See Rav Shagar, Living Time: Festival Discourses for the Present Age, (USA:Maggid, 2024):290
[13] Jeremiah 33:10-13 . See the words of R. Yehudah Amital in the year 2000. “Again There Shall Be Heard … in the Streets of Jerusalem” | Yeshivat Har Etzion
