When Shabbat ends, Jews will begin the 9th of Av, our annual day of grief for the many destructions that befell our people. And surely our history warrants a day of fasting and dirges for all the suffering Jews have endured.
But this year, let us add a healthy dose of grief over the suffering Jews have caused. This Tisha B’Av, it would be wrong to mourn only Jewish pain.
The people of Gaza are almost unimaginably devastated. They are homeless, starving, and sick. And Israel is responsible for all too much destruction. We might wish to, but we must not avert our eyes from this reality. We must stare at it and bring it into our hearts with a spirit of moral accountability.
Hamas is a vicious enemy whose military might, thank God and the IDF, is in smithereens. They triggered the war and want it to continue. They exploit their own people. They manipulate the media and steal humanitarian aid. That’s all true.
But on Tisha B’Av, that is all beside the point. This is not a day for strategic analysis or fine legalistic distinctions over whether to use the G word. This is the day of Jeremiah’s lament, used in a famous Tisha B’Av poem: Mi yiten roshi mayim, “may my head melt in tears.”
I stand with the vast majority of Israelis who believe this horrifying war should have ended months ago. Its cause began fully justified, but its tactics on the ground have become indefensible. After 665 days, it is long past time to end the war, bring home our hostages, alive and dead, and feed the Gazans.
In our community, I speak to considerable numbers who feel profoundly alienated from Israel and the Jewish national project. I understand and respect, even kind of admire, but do not concur. I fear this war will scar the Israeli body politic and the Jewish soul for years to come. But because the stakes are almost infinitely high, that only intensifies my resolve to fight for what Israel and the Jewish people must yet become. I feel, more intensely than ever, bound with my people and our capacity for good. At the same time, more intensely than ever, I feel bound to reckon with our capacity to destroy.
God forbid, I do not impute wrongdoing to every IDF soldier or even every Israeli commander or political leader. They bear weighty burdens I can only dimly imagine. Modesty is in order before blaming others who face enormous danger, while we live safe and secure.
But as for the international Jewish people, I think we’ve fallen short in accepting moral accountability for this wreckage. We witness all too much self-justifying: “If only the world understood Hamas, they would understand we have been right all along. Hamas could end this today if they would free the hostages. We’ve done nothing wrong. It’s all their fault.”
Truly, Hamas is awful. But I am not talking to them. I address a Jewish community. One of our people’s greatest moral instincts is to respond to chaos and suffering by asking ourselves: Where did we go wrong? How did we worsen this mess? No one is ever spiritually or morally ennobled by deflecting responsibility, by congratulating themselves, saying: it’s all their fault. When the first Temple was destroyed, we examined ourselves and saw idol worship and bloodshed. When the second Temple was destroyed, we examined ourselves and saw pointless hatred. What do we see in ourselves through the prism of the wreckage of Gaza?
On Tisha B’Av, the mournful holiday of dirge and lament, the holiday of “may my head melt in tears,” I hope we at least see the power of poetry to break hard hearts open.
On that theme, let me share a few lines from Hayim Nachman Bialik’s lament over the 1903 Kishinev pogrom, “The City of Slaughter.” In this passage, the poet summons a witness to stare into the faces of children hacked to death as they hid in an attic. On this Tisha B’Av, I trust we can transpose this lament from the Jewish children of Kishinev to other locales and other children in misery.
לַחְתֹּם פֹּה בְּמֶבָּטֵי עֵינֵיהֶן בַּפַּעַם הָאַחֲרוֹנָה
אֶת כָּל-צַעַר מוֹתָן הַתָּפֵל וְאֶת כָּל-תַּאֲלַת חַיֵּיהֶן,
וְהִתְרַפְּקוּ פֹּה זָעוֹת וַחֲרֵדוֹת, וְיַחְדָּו מִמַּחֲבוֹאֵיהֶן
דּוּמָם תּוֹבְעוֹת עֶלְבּוֹנָן וְעֵינֵיהֶן שׁוֹאֲלוֹת: לָמָּה? –
וּמִי-עוֹד כֵּא’לֹהִים בָּאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר-יִשָּׂא זֹאת הַדְּמָמָה?Here, seal the looks in their eyes, one last time
All the pointless pain of their deaths, all the cursedness of their lives
Here, shaking and trembling, they leaned against each other,
And together, from their hiding places, silently, their eyes demand an account and ask why?Who but God could bear this silence?
The Bible’s all-important ethical claim is that all human beings are created betselem Elohim, “in God’s image.” This teaching appears explicitly only three times in the Torah, all in the first nine chapters of Genesis, before Abraham appears on the scene. The Torah never once teaches that Jews are in God’s image. It insists that every person is.
On this Tisha B’Av, let every religious soul shudder at the death, hunger, and anguish foisted upon millions of Gazans bearing the same divine image as you and me. Let us use whatever modest powers we possess to raise our voices on their behalf and contribute funds to improve their care.
Of course, I know this conflict is complicated. If you’re associated with Ansche Chesed and you know me, you know I do not apologize for Hamas. You know I do not renounce Zionism or ignore Israel’s legitimate security challenges. You should know I love my fellow Jews like I love my own life.
But I want Ansche Chesed to have a spiritually ennobling Tisha B’Av. So please fast from Saturday evening to Sunday nightfall. Refrain from food, drink, and self-exculpatory polemics. Refrain from explaining and explaining away. Take responsibility for the world’s wreckage. Including the wreckage we have caused.
May we have a meaningful fast.
