Tisha b’Av isn’t about mourning the past
Why it is time to leave behind the exilic conception of the fast day and towards a national day of political action
(First published on the Times of Israel)
For thousands of years – since the Babylonians destroyed the first Temple in Judea – the Jewish People have marked the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, calling it Tisha b’Av. Even as a new, second, Temple was built by the grace of the Persian emperor Cyrus in Jerusalem, the Jews who returned to the land from their Babylonian exile understood from the prophet Zekharia that they should continue to mark the memorial day as a means to remember to avoid behaviors that led to earlier downfall and scattering.
Unfortunately, Temple after Temple, State after State, we failed to heed Zekharia’s call to “Execute true justice; deal loyally and compassionately with one another. Do not defraud the widow, the orphan, the stranger, and the poor,” and to “not plot evil against one another.” Each time we ultimately broke and splintered and tore.
In response, as we grew accustomed to powerlessness, the Sages personalized the lessons of the downfall and highlighted the hubris and lack of generosity precipitating it. Yet, as history and the prophets emphasized, the Temples fell for collective, not interpersonal, reasons: because one faction of Jews invited the Romans in to settle an inter-dynastic dispute, and another group of messianic zealots worked to accelerate the apocalypse hoping the Eternal would fight on their side. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now as then we are destroying ourselves. Looking at the 9th through the prism of the 4th (of January, 2023, Yariv Levin’s launch of the Judicial Overhaul) and the 7th (of October, 2023, the darkest day since the Shoah), I believe we can better understand Zekharia: the fast is pointless unless it serves as a reminder to act justly as a collective. Fasting does not make up for the perversion of justice, the abandonment of compassionate care, the brutality of zealotry. If Zekharia were around today, I’d imagine he direct us towards keeping the following three things in mind on this year’s Tisha b’Av:
The perversion of justice: For many years we’ve seen our leadership flaunt the law. Setting aside pending legal cases, Benjamin Netanyahu has been found personally responsible for the mass death at Mount Meron and for harming national security in the submarine affair. He has worked diligently to delay his day of judgment in those other pending cases of fraud and breaches of public trust. Even if he is found innocent in those pending cases and exonerated by the judges in Jerusalem – many of whom appointed by his governments over the past two decades – the interim period in which justice has been delayed, manipulated, and disregarded, has torn our people apart. If we want to execute true justice, we cannot allow such injustice to persist.
The abandonment of compassionate care: Zekharia’s call to care for the widow, the orphan, the stranger, is not qualified by the word “Jews.” Our prophets conveyed the commandment to treat the non-Jew as we would treat ourselves, since we were once strangers in strange lands and felt the jackboot of injustice. The fact that the residents of Judea and Samaria have lived under a different law than those within the Green Line has been a perversion of justice we’ve allowed to persist for too long. If we want to deal compassionately, if we want to ensure the widow, the orphan, the stranger are not defrauded, we must take advantage of the current circumstance to craft a more just region.
The brutality of zealotry: The thing that is accelerating our demise more than anything else, however, is zealotry, the very same thing our Sages reminded us not to forget. And it is now resurgent. Triumphant. Orit Struck’s talk of little miracles, Betzalel Smotrich’s belief that the Holy One will manage the economy. Itamar Ben Gvir. That we allow zealotry’s passion to burn and burn and burn has proven more than anything else that we’ve failed to remember that Tisha b’Av is focused not on mourning the past but on working to prevent tragedy in our future. Our future will be no brighter than that of the second Temple unless we expunge zealotry from our midst.
On this Tisha b’Av, whether you fast or pray or protest, I hope you agree with me that the wisdom in Zekharia’s insight is especially timely: returning to the land and rebuilding our State did not lessen the need to mark the dark day, to reckon with our national trajectory, to take responsibility for mistakes made and the work required to fix them. To remember to reject corruption, to extend compassion, to defang and delegitimize zealotry in all of its forms. To dedicate a day to remembering that every generation bears responsibility for its fate and for the fate of those generations that will come after.