Today is a calamitous day in Jewish history, when we observe the destruction of both Temples, by the Babylonians and Romans respectively.
It’s not a holiday the observance of which is mandated in the Torah, so I consider it entirely optional to participate in the public mourning. Nevertheless, I am always surprised and disappointed how very, very few secular types find enough meaning in this day to listen to Eicha (Lamentations), to fast or to visit the Temple Mount (this is reflected in a total ignorance and lack of interest in the Three Weeks preceding 9 Av).
In part, this is a direct result of the explicit and implicit message of 9 Av: we sinned collectively, and we will repent collectively; we were exiled, and we will be redeemed; the Temples were destroyed, and will be rebuilt.
The Reform approach to Judaism that dominates outside Israel, and that increasingly informs the Israeli elites’ view of Judaism when they choose to take one, stands against attaching any relevance to 9 Av at every level. Reform is uninterested in the causes leading to the destruction of the Temples because they rather unlike the notion of the Temples and prefer for them to have been destroyed. They don’t see what they call “diaspora” as any sort of exile at all, since they believe a Jew’s place is in Berlin, Hollywood and Boca Raton every bit as much as it is in Jerusalem, Petach Tikva and Afula. And they most certainly detest the whole idea of having a single and singular Temple standing in a certain geographical location around which the entire world revolves, which is why they call their houses of worship “temples” – though I must say that I’ve been to Reform “temples” and an awfully small amount of “worship” actually transpires in one. Fundamentally, Jews who think in the Reform manner hate 9 Av and everything it represents.
The other reason 9 Av is so little observed in Israel is that the men and women who crafted Israel’s civil religion, wary of coming across as too religious or of promoting secular observance of holidays whose messages they didn’t endorse and couldn’t transform, plucked a new set of holidays entirely out of thin air. Thus, we’re given to listen to a memorial siren and stand in silence on Yom HaShoah and again on Yom HaZikaron, holidays with no historical justification on which we’re supposed to mourn Holocaust victims and then soldiers and terrorism victims, respectively. Most religious Jews feel very uncomfortable with the arbitrariness of these holidays and only observe them out of respect for their secular neighbors and coworkers, and actually many Haredim ignore them entirely. If some rabbis and nationalist-religious thinkers had had their way, the above two observances could have been grafted onto the Jewish calendar of mourning in a more organic way. As it is, we’ve got secular mourning days in the spring that the religious don’t like, and religious mourning days in the summer that the secular barely know about, and wouldn’t like if they did.
But I think it’s important to fast on 9 Av, and I do it every year.
We did sin, and in fasting we do start the process to the correct behavior that will make us worthy to rebuild the Temple. That means, in the plainest language I can conjure, that we must look for what unites us rather than what divides us. For example: my ancestors lived in the Rhine River area 1000 years ago, and yours might have lived in the Iberian peninsula at that time, or in southern Arabia, or in northern Africa, or the Indian subcontinent – but there is no reason to be fixated on that historical moment. Instead, we can think back to 2000 or 3000 years ago and to a vast expanse of time when we were united and sovereign in this country.
We were exiled, though Jewish historians are now relearning that our Exile was not so cut and dried as we recently thought. In fact, the Babylonian exile never really ended (until the second half of the 20th century), and already in the Mediterranean world in 70 CE there were large, vibrant Jewish communities in many places, such as Alexandria and Rome. But undoubtedly exile was then a long process, lasting several hundred years, that led to a slow and almost total removal of Jews from Israel. There is no reason whatsoever to think that redemption – exile in reverse – will be any different or will somehow take a much shorter time. Already the Zionist movement has been bringing Jews to live in the land of Israel for nearly 130 years, since even before the term “Zionism” existed, and the vast majority of Jews already live here in Israel (this is arguable and it depends on how you count Jews).
The destruction of the Temple 1,940 years ago was the culmination of Jewish history up to that point and the defining moment of Jewish history until now. Modern Jews like me – even if they were raised to be religious – have no concept of how important the Temple was. It was at the center of the national and religious life of every Jew and of the whole Jewish nation. The Temple concept is actually of exceptional importance for secular Jews, and there’s a vast amount of meaning to be found in 9 Av for any Jew who cares to look for it.
For what it’s worth, I observe the Three Weeks, the Nine Days and 9 Av in my personal life, though I don’t follow all the rabbinic pronouncements – I keep those that resonate in my life and add some that are unique to me but meaningful. For example, I don’t shave or cut my hair during the Three Weeks (except before shabbat), but I do shower and wash my clothes during the Nine days. I also celebrate a feast – usually a steak and a glass of red wine – in the mid to late afternoon of 9 Av, to prepare for the future, when 9 Av will be a celebratory day. For many years on the evening of 9 Av, I’ve been going to the wall adjacent to the Temple Mount and listening to the assorted readings of Eicha, which is read with a specific and unique tune to sound more like a dirge. Every group there has its own style. I try to sit with a variety of yeshivot, making sure to find the Yemenite reading, since their pronunciation is so different from mine. For those who can’t make it this year, you may listen to Eicha in mp3 format here. And I hope it won’t be necessary next year.
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I admit, I just don’t understand secularist Judaism; that is, Jews who, though not religious, still self-identify as Jewish, seeing it primarily as an ethnicity, or, more accurately, as a hyper-ethnicity (since there are several ethnic groups making up the world of Judaism – Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Falashas, etc.). The reason I don’t get it, is, absent the reason why Judaism existed in the first place – they were Hebrew-speaking people who believed they had a special covenant with God, that they were His chosen ones – why bother to maintain one’s identity as a member of a group that has suffered so much from so many different peoples throughout its history – from the Israelites’ neighbours, to the treatment at the hands of the Romans, through medieval Europe, to Inquisition-era Spain, to the Caliphate, to Dreyfus-affair-era France, to early-mid 20th-century Western Europe, to Russia, to the Black Muslims and neo-Nazis of today – why fricking bother, absent a belief in the Covenant-giver, the One who made the Jews a Chosen People? As a non-religious Jewish girl I used to know bitterly lamented, “Chosen; chosen for what? To be picked on more than anyone else out there?” And yet she still strongly identified, and had her goyim fiance officially convert for her benefit!
Whereas, for most Christians, our identity is only tied to our faith; absent the faith, there is no reason to identify with believing Christians, rather than merely one’s nationality, one’s ethnic group, etc. (I did qualify with ‘most’, though, because I do know that many non-religious ‘Protestants’ and ‘Roman Catholics’ in Northern Ireland still self-identify thusly and unfortunately accordingly dislike or even hate each other, alas; also, I’ve encountered non-religious ‘Christians’ of Sri Lankan background who wish to make their parents happy by marrying someone who also self-identifies thusly (rather than Hindu or Buddhist), whether or not either of them believe anything. But in both those situations, Northern Ireland and Sri Lanka, that’s simple tribalism and/or colonialism at work, there.)
Is it just shared experience, and/or sense of high degree of persecution by outsiders, that inculcates the sense of “we’re a people” in secularist Jews, making them want to live amongst their own rather than assimilate completely into the cultures into which they may have been born, and circumcize their children even though not actually believing in the divine covenant thus symbolized? Or is it some residual level of religious belief, even though most would likely deny such?
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