This past Monday evening, the 9th of Av, Jews all over the world gathered as we remembered the destruction of the two great Temples in Jerusalem and the loss of sovereignty in our homeland, and heard these words from Lamentations chanted in their haunting trope:
אֵיכָ֣ה ׀ יָשְׁבָ֣ה בָדָ֗ד הָעִיר֙
Alas! Lonely sits the city, Once great with people! She that was great among nations, Is become like a widow; The princess among states, Is become a thrall. Bitterly she weeps in the night, Her cheek wet with tears, There is none to comfort her, Of all her friends. All her allies have betrayed her; They have become her foes. (Lamentations 1:1-2)
Tonight we gather at an interesting moment in Jewish time, bookended on one side by the three weeks of spiritual preparation up to and the 9th of Av - and on the other by this Shabbat that will soon enter known as Shabbat Nachamu - the Sabbath of Comfort - referencing the first of seven hafatarot of consolation that will lead us into Rosh Hashana - named for the first words of the reading:
נַחֲמ֥וּ נַחֲמ֖וּ עַמִּ֑י יֹאמַ֖ר אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶֽם
Comfort, oh comfort My people, Says your God… Behold, my Sovereign GOD comes in might— Whose arm wins triumph; See, [God] has brought along the reward, The recompense is in view. Like a shepherd who pastures the flock, [God] gathers up the lambs And carries them in the divine bosom, While gently driving the mother sheep. (Isaiah 40:1,10-11)
In Jewish time, as we gather this evening, we are suspended between destruction, expulsion, loss on one side - comfort, shelter, and redemption on the other.
How fitting, then, how hauntingly fitting that we gather together tonight in this moment in which we are similarly suspended - suspended somewhere between destruction and redemption. Our Israeli sisters and brothers - and so many of us through them - living from headline to headline as we await a possible Iranian attack and, God forbid, an expanded and even more destructive war. In this moment, our sisters and brother who languish in captivity live suspended in time, suspended between life and death, between a possible cease-fire and hostage exchange agreement and between continued hostilities.
As we find ourselves suspended between these two vastly divergent possibilities, we can turn to the texts of our people, written in similarly critical moments in our past, for inspiration and guidance of how we can be partners in ushering in this transition from destruction to comfort. Other nations faced tragedy and destruction in their past, and they often looked for the source of blame, almost uniformly placing it at the feet of some outside force. But, unique to our tradition, in the wake of destruction we turned our gaze inward. In the Talmud, tractate Gittin, there are six stories that explain why the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed. Not a single one of them blames the outside threat - and this was no small threat, this is the Roman Empire we’re talking about, the most powerful empire in human history until the modern era. No, our tradition looks inward, pointing to our own shortcomings, focusing on what we failed to do that brought about our destruction.
I want to briefly share two of these stories, the lessons they teach, their evergreen message that feels all the more relevant today as we find ourselves suspended once again between destruction and deliverance.
The first story, like so many do, begins with a party. Many of the important Jews of Jerusalem of their time 2000 years ago were invited to this event. In a case of ancient mail services being not much better than what we have today - a man named Bar Kamtza showed up to the party mistakenly, having received an invitation instead of the intended Kamtza. The host, who loathed Bar Kamtza, approached him and told him to leave. Bar Kamtza said listen, I’m here already, let me pay for my food and drink, just don’t embarrass me by sending me away. The host refused his offer. Bar Kamtza then offered to pay for half of the party, the host refused - finally Bar Kamtza said I will pay for the entire party, far above and beyond anything he was required to do. Unmoved and uninterested, the host took Bar Kamtza by the hand, dragged him to his feet, and chucked him out of the party. This one act of cruelty, as the story goes, set off an entire chain of events that lead to the destruction of the Temple. BUT, significantly, the Talmud does not blame others, does not shirk responsibility - rather, it is the rabbis who were present at the party and said nothing as they looked on and saw the mistreatment of the innocent and blameless Bar Kamtza, no doubt preferring to enjoy their wine and passed appetizers rather than to make a scene. The blame, ultimately, lies with them. The rabbis, the leaders, had every opportunity to intervene on his behalf, to save him from being mistreated, but they instead stood by in silence. (BT Gittin 55b-56a)
In the Mishnah it is taught that mitzvah goreret mitzvah - that one good deed leads to another - but the inverse is also taught as true, that averah goreret averah - that one transgression leads to another. As leadership stood silently by, preferring their own comfort and peace over the moral responsibility to intervene when they saw their fellow humans mistreated, their averah of silence paved the way for a terrible series of events that brought about calamity greater than could ever have imagined. (Mishnah Avot 4:2)
The second story, that of the three wealthy men of Jerusalem, is said to have taken place some time after that of Bar Kamtza. It occurred three years into the Roman siege of the city. For those of you who know Jerusalem, and particularly its ancient form, it was a formidable city. In spite of the siege, life went on in the city practically as normal. This was mostly because of the generosity of the three wealthy men who opened their well-stocked store houses of essential goods, food, oil, and wood, for public use. The story suggests the city could have survived under siege quite a bit longer until a solution was found. The Talmud then tells us that, during the siege, there was a disagreement between two groups of Jews within the city. The Sages, the rabbis, who favored making peace with the Romans in order to break the siege and the Zealots, who favored war. The two parties were at an impasse, neither allowing the other to implement their strategy. Then, the Zealots decided they had had enough and, in order to force the residents to have to go to war with the most powerful army in the world, in the middle of the night a group gathered, marched on the storehouses, and burned them to the ground. As a result, a great famine spread quickly through the city. Yochanan ben Zakai, one of the great rabbis of the time, called to his nephew, a leader of the zealots and asked him - why did you all do such a thing? Will you let everyone starve? The nephew, the leader of the zealots responded, ‘what can I do? For if I say something they will kill me.” The zealotry had spiraled out of control and brought disaster to the city. (BT Gittin 56a)
As we meet here suspended both in Jewish time and in our reality between Tisha b’Av and nachamu - between destruction and comfort, we have the opportunity to listen to the lessons that our tradition has been teaching us for nearly 2,000 years. Ultimately, we cannot control what the Romans do - in our day Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Iranians - but we can, and must, be thoughtful and responsible in what we do.
We can hold ourselves and our leaders to the highest standards, we can speak up and demand our leaders speak up whenever there is mistreatment of others, friend or foe alike, because when they do not, those who engage in mistreatment will be empowered to do so again.
We must also keep the zealots from our storehouses, keeping those who would purposely put the Jewish people into a situation from which there is no escape far from the levers of power. We know this because, picking up from our earlier stories, some of those same zealots who caused famine in Jerusalem in ancient times managed to escape the destruction of the city and fled south to Masada, only to once again be besieged by the Romans and, finally, meeting a brutal end at the point of their own swords. The classic Zionist lesson of Masada is that, ‘Masada, jewish sovereignty, will not fall again.’ But my teacher Rabbi David Wilfond teaches us that the true lesson of Masada is that the Jewish people cannot allow themselves to be led by extremists so that the path to, and from Masada, is the only one left to us.
My friends, I am not suggesting that we are on Masada, or that Masada is just around the corner - but our tradition and history shows us that it is never far away. It is up to us, to all of us, in our own small ways to make sure that we are never led there again. In this week’s Torah portion, as Moses continues to deliver his parting sermons to the Israelites, he tells us that:
“See, I have imparted to you laws and rules, as the ETERNAL my God has commanded me, for you to abide by in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. Observe them faithfully, for that will be proof of your wisdom and discernment to other peoples, who on hearing of all these laws will say, “Surely, that great nation is a wise and discerning people.” (Deuteronomy 4:5-6)
In other words, our more than 2,000 year-old tradition has the wisdom to guide us through these terribly complex moments, it offers deep insight into humanity and the human condition that can guide us even today. That by no means makes the implementation easy. It takes courage, it takes chutzpah, it takes wisdom and discernment, it will demand compromise from many who do not wish to do so.
But if we aspire to the promise of this Shabbat of nechama - of comfort and consolation, and I believe that the vast majority of the Jewish people want and so badly need it at this time, we have the wisdom and knowledge to do our part to make it come to pass.
May we, and may those with the power to make it so, be blessed with the strength and conviction to do the hard part to make the comfort we so badly seek a reality. Shabbat Shalom.
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