Sometimes, living on “Jewish time” can feel discordant with the world around us. Sure, when Rosh Hashanah aligns with the start of the school year, or when we cut through the darkness of December with the lights of Chanukah, our Jewish holidays and their themes can seem right in sync with the natural world and the flow of the secular year. Tisha b’Av, for me, has often been the exception to that. Tisha b’Av (the 9th of Av), which begins next week on Monday evening, is a fast day that marks the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem, and the culmination of a period of mourning in our Jewish calendar. It’s observed not only with fasting, but with refraining from many types of Torah study, the reading of Eicha (Lamentations), and with the recitation of special elegiac poems called kinnot. While Tisha b’Av was originally a day to remember the destruction of the 2 Temples, it has since become a day to remember many of the atrocities, genocides, and expulsions that have been part of our people’s journey through history. In the middle of the summer, filled with joy, fun, being outdoors – we’re supposed to be in a mode of mourning and remembering the atrocities that have befallen the Jewish people over the last 2000+ years? That doesn’t seem right! And indeed, over the decades, many Reform Jews have downplayed the importance of Tisha b’Av, noting that our theology maybe doesn’t pray for a rebuilding of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and that in this day and age when an independent, sovereign Jewish state exists in the Land of Israel, perhaps the themes of Tisha b’Av are less resonant.
And then there’s this year, the year when everything has been flipped upside down since we first interrupted the joy of Simchat Torah with the horrors of October 7. This year, I welcome Tisha b’Av, as a moment to ritualize the heaviness, the grief, the anxiety, the worry that we are all holding as we watch the news, check in with loved ones in Israel who are stocking their bomb shelters with extra bottled water and food, as we, somehow, have marked 10 months without our hostages returning home. On Monday night and Tuesday, I will be fasting, and attending Hadar’s online day of prayer and learning, studying the themes and texts of the day. (Maybe you’ll join me there!)
In every generation, we have recast Tisha b’Av in light of the experience of our people. This year, we cry out for the tragedy that we are still in, the tragedy that is not yet history, but is our present. Below is a kinah, written by Nurit Hirschfeld-Skupinsky, a survivor of October 7, published this week by the Times of Israel. She writes this poem as a midrashic text, drawing on the language and themes of the biblical book of Lamentations. I hope you will find it a meaningful part of your own Tisha b’Av observance this year.
O How She Sat Alone: A Lamentation
Nurit Hirschfeld-Skupinsky,
survivor of the slaughter in Kibbutz Nahal Oz
O How She Sat Alone
Nir Oz, full of blood
Sderot, was like a widow
A city stunned, and who is faithful to her?
O How They Sat Alone
In the shelter room
One family, and another,
And another, and another one.
O How They Sat Alone
The many-eyed women at the observation posts
And there was no listening,
And deliverance – none.
O How They Sat Alone
Young women and young men
Hiding in pits and shrubs.
Their dancing halted,
And who will rescue them?
O How They Sat Alone
Captive women and captive men
And sitting there, still:
120 men, women, elders and children.
Crying, they are crying at night
Tears on their cheeks
And there is no one who comforts.
קִינָה: אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָּדָד
נורית הירשפלד סקופינסקי,
שורדת הטבח בקיבוץ נחל עוז
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָּדָד
נִיר עֹז רַבָּתִי דָּם.
שְׂדֵרוֹת הָיְתָה כְּאַלְמָנָה,
קִרְיָה הֲלוּמָה, וּמִי נֶאֱמָנָהּ?
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבָה בָּדָד
בַּמָּמָ”ד
מִשְׁפָּחָה, וְעוֹד אַחַת,
וְעוֹד, וְעוֹד אַחַת.
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבוּ בָּדָד
תַּצְפִּיתָנִיּוֹת רַבָּתִי עַיִן,
וְלֹא הָיְתָה הַקְשָׁבָה,
וִישׁוּעָה – אָיִן.
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבוּ בָּדָד
צְעִירוֹת וּצְעִירִים
בְּמִסְתּוֹרֵי שׁוֹּחוֹת וְשִׂיחִים.
פָּסְקוּ רִקּוּדֵיהֶם,
וּמִי יְחַלְּצֵם?
אֵיכָה יָשְׁבוּ בָּדָד
חֲטוּפוֹת וַחֲטוּפִים,
וַעֲדַיִן יוֹשְׁבִים:
120 גְּבָרִים, נָשִׁים, קְשִׁישִׁים וִילָדִים.
בָּכוֹ בּוֹכִים בַּלַּיְלָה,
דְּמָעוֹת עַל לְחָיֵיהֶם,
וְאֵין מְנַחֵם.
