Something to cry about

Jerusalem Post ^ | Aug. 3, 2003 | Stewart Weiss

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Tisha Be'av is not just about Temple-building. It is more about nation-building

Within the religious community this is the most difficult week of the year. Already, a state of semi-mourning has begun during which we avoid music and dance, abstain from meat and wine and suspend all kinds of celebratory events, including weddings.

The Nine Days of solemnity culminate later this week on the 9th of Av, when we fast for 25 hours, spending a good part of the day reciting elegies of lament over the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem, destroyed on this date.

While Yom Kippur may be the more popular fast day, it has a starkly different, more upbeat nature than Tisha Be'av. Yom Kippur is known as the white fast - when our souls are cleansed and we anticipate a year of blessing, having successfully petitioned for our atonement. The 9th of Av is the black fast - focusing on the dark side of our history, confronting the hardships and Holocausts which drove us along the tortured path of the Exile.

While many in the non-observant community simply ignore the 9th of Av, there are thinking secularists who argue - out of principle - that there is no good reason to maintain the somber mood and restrictions of the day.

After all, they reason, we have reestablished Jewish sovereignty in Israel; regained control - tenuous as it may be - over all of Jerusalem; and gone a long way toward ingathering the far-flung Jewish communities of the Diaspora. And while the Temple has not yet been rebuilt, Jewish scholarship has achieved a renaissance unmatched since the day the Romans torched the Holy of Holies.

Why look to the past, dwelling only on the negative, they ask, when there is so much of a positive nature in our present condition?

There is much to be said for this argument. Jews do tend to search for the dark lining in every silver cloud and to see the glass half-empty. But Tisha Be'av is not just about Temple-building; it is more about nation-building; it has less to do with where we are, and more to do with who we are.

THE TALMUD traces the roots of Tisha Be'av not to the destruction of the Temples, but to another fateful event much earlier in our history. It was on this date that the biblical spies gathered to present a negative report on the possibility of conquering and settling Israel, advising the people instead to remain in the desert, or return to Egypt.

They cried bitterly at the prospect of entering the Land, say the rabbis, and so God responded, like an angry parent: "You shed tears needlessly on this Ninth of Av; now I shall give you good reason to cry on future anniversaries of this date."

The failure of Jewish leadership at that crucial juncture in history contains potent lessons for today.

The spies were divided into two very different camps: One group was confident, filled with swagger and success. Life was good in the bubble of the desert, they proclaimed, very good indeed. Food fell from heaven, sustenance came easy, all the amenities of day-to-day living were at their fingertips. Why give all that up for what would surely be a life of sweat, exertion and frustration in the hard-scrabble soil of Israel?

The other camp had a much different posture. They were scared, unsure of themselves, filled with self-doubt about their ability to conquer a New World. They referred to themselves as "grasshoppers," and wondered aloud, "How can we compete with and confront our hostile neighbors in the Middle East when we cannot even rule over ourselves?"

This part of the population was pathetically insecure, while their counterparts were too secure for their own good.

In the end, both camps were condemned to wander the desert for 40 more years. They would not live to tread the soil of the Holy Land.

HOW SIMILAR we are today to these two camps. In the Diaspora, by and large, we boast of our amazing success among the non-Jewish populace, our elevated status in every field. We display with unabashed pride our mighty Jewish communities, our lavish synagogues (Temples!) and our kosher restaurants for every taste. Why, we ask you, would we trade all that for the shaky, constricted, pressure-cooker life of Israel?

And the other half of the Jewish world, those living here in Israel, have become a stiff-necked people from too much looking over our shoulders.

Rather than asserting our own personality, our own culture and uniqueness, we are continually playing to the European and American audience, mimicking their mores and trying to be the kind of nation they think we should be. Unsure of our moral rightness we worry to a fault over their critique of our every move, hypersensitive about our treatment in the international press.

By tradition, Tisha Be'av is destined to become a festive and happy event. For that to happen - for black to become white - we will have to stop wandering in the harsh deserts of false pride and weak-willed insecurity. We will have to overcome the spy syndrome.

The writer is director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra'anana.