This article appeared in the Summer 1994 issue of Jewish Action.
On Tishah B’Av morning, we would begin davening in the Maimonides School in Brookline, Massachusetts, at 8:00 a.m. At about 9:00 a.m., after Shacharit, the Rav, zt”l, would deliver a shiur me’inyana deyoma for about an hour, and after a five-minute break, would begin the recital of the kinot. After reading a few words or lines, he would stop to comment. On a regular basis, those assembled would interrupt with questions or insights which the Rav would address as well, sometimes for as long as a half-hour. This mixture of reciting and learning, the traditional sing-song of the kinot alternating with the traditional sounds of Torah teaching, would continue for many hours—very often, in the years when he was well, until 5:00 in the afternoon. We would then daven Minchah and the Rav would leave to visit the grave of his wife, a”h.
For a number of years during the 1970s, it was my zechus to be present at these marathon Tishah B’Av sessions with the Rav. I would like to share some of the Rav’s teachings from those years, and dedicate my words leilui nishmas haGaon Morenu haRav Yosef Dov ben Moshe Halevi, zt”l.
* * *
The Rav pointed out that Tishah B’Av has two characters or two identities, one as a yom ta’anit (fast day) and one as a yom aveilut (day of mourning). It is a ta’anit tzibbur like Yom Kippur in that it begins the night before and also prohibits the same five activities prohibited on Yom Kippur (i.e., eating and drinking, washing, anointing, wearing leather shoes, and sexual relations; see Shulchan Aruch, OC 554:1).1 It is also a yom aveilut, a day set aside for mourning Jewish tragedies. The entire Jewish people are aveilim, mourning for the Churban and subsequent tragic events.
There is, however, he said, a major difference between an individual mourner faced with the death of a close relative and the Jewish people mourning for an event which occurred over 1,900 years ago [at the time of this writing]. The former is in the category of aveilut chadashah; the experience is very real, very immediate; it just happened. The latter is in the category of aveilut yeshanah; it is an old, familiar aveilut, over 1,900 years old. Whereas in the first case, mourning is real, immediate, spontaneous and instinctive, in the second case it is very removed; there is no immediate sense of pain, grief or loss. It is for this reason, said the Rav, that we read for the haftarah on Tishah B’Av the words of Yirmiyahu (9:16–17): “Thus said the Lord of Hosts, Listen! Summon the (hired) dirge women, let them come. Send for the skillful women, let them come. Let them quickly start a wailing for us, that our eyes may run with tears, our pupils flow with water.” Aveilut chadashah does not require such instruction as to how to weep. An individual, personal mourner need not be taught how to cry or be inspired to mourn. Such a reaction is natural and instinctive. It is only because we are removed and distant, engaged in an aveilut yeshanah, that we need to be instructed how to cry and mourn.
And this instruction is critical, said the Rav. For it is not enough for us simply to say the words, to go through the motions and to recite the formulae. Kinot recitation, said the Rav, is like tefillah and like aveilus in general; it is avodah shebeleiv, requiring an emotional, personal experiential feeling.
It was his desire to personalize the Churban for himself and for each of us who had the zechus to be present that animated the Rav’s teaching on Tishah B’Av, and it is this which I hope will be achieved in the next few pages. What follows is a presentation of only a tiny, tiny bit of the Rav’s teachings over the years. Indeed, I will deal here only with the first three stanzas of the very first of the kinot recited on Tishah B’Av morning, beginning “Shavat suru meni.” (In the edition of Rev. Abraham Rosenfeld [London, 1965] it is on p. 91. All subsequent page numbers will also refer to this edition.)
1. “Shavat suru meni—[The joy of my heart] ceased . . . ‘Depart from me.’”
Shavat usually means to stop or to terminate, but it also reflects a connotation of suddenness, something happening unexpectedly. Rabbi Eliezer haKalir wanted to point out, said the Rav, that after all that Klal Yisrael knew about the impending Churban from the nevi’im, they still never believed that it would actually occur and when it did, it struck them “suddenly.”
The Rav related this to Yirmiyahu 32 (the haftarah for Parashat Behar) which describes how Hashem commanded the navi Yirmiyahu to leave Yerushalayim to visit his cousin in Anasos in order to buy a field. When he left, the Beit Hamikdash was still standing, but when he returned, he could not see from afar the column of smoke which always rose in a straight line over that building. (Chazal [Avot 5:5] noted that one of the ten miracles performed for our ancestors in the Beit Hamikdash was that “the wind did not disperse the vertical column of smoke rising from the altar.”)² It was only then, say Chazal, that he understood. He, to whom Hashem had often foretold the Churban, understood it only suddenly, at that moment, after having returned from a night away from the Beit Hamikdash, outside of Yerushalayim.
On occasion, the Rav also related this to his personal experience of the death of his wife, a”h, drawing a parallel between Yirmiyahu’s experience and his own on two levels. Firstly, throughout his wife’s illness, he was constantly at her side, and it was only when he left her for a short period of time that she died. (According to Chazal, the destruction of Yerushalayim would have been impossible had Yirmiyahu and other pious men been present in the city.)³ Secondly, for him too, her passing was “sudden” although he had been logically prepared for the possibility for a while.
2. “Shima’uni ochrai . . . hesimuni —[when] those who troubled me caused me to hear … They made me . . .”
The Rav pointed out that Rabbi Eliezer ha-Kalir here deliberately speaks in the first person in order to underscore that it is impossible to fulfill the obligation of experiencing this communal catastrophe unless one personalizes it by relating it to his or her own personal life. Rabbi Kalir does not portray this event merely as a distant, far-removed historical phenomenon but as a personal one. If one cannot make this association, if one’s life continues as it did before, then one clearly has not personally experienced the horror and has not fulfilled his Tishah B’Av obligation. It is not even enough to sympathize; one must personally experience it, as it is written, also in the singular, “ani hagever ra’ah ani—I am the man who has seen affliction” (Eichah 3:1).⁴
3. “Sechi uma’os hesimuni bi’edrei chaverai—They made me as scum and refuse among the flocks of my companions.”
The Rav always took a moment to reflect on the degraded place of Israel in the community of nations and especially in the United Nations. Not only did the Churban result in the physical decimation and destruction of Jews, but here, said the Rav, Rabbi Kalir stresses another element. As an outgrowth of the Churban, the Gentile world developed an attitude of disdain, a lack of respect, for the Jewish people. (See, too, Eichah 1:8: “All who honored her despise her.”) Jews were portrayed throughout history either as subhuman, as demons and devils, or as superhuman, in a negative sense, i.e., as too smart, too clever or too cunning. This sense of Gentile contempt for the Jew was perhaps the most awesome result of the Churban, said the Rav.
4. “Eini chikta lachazon ben Berechya—My eye yet awaits [the coming of] the vision of the son of Berechya.”
This clear reference to the prophet Zechariah is most simply an illusion to his famous prophecy (8:19) that, “the fast of the fourth [month, Shiv’a Asar B’Tammuz], the fast of the fifth [month, Tishah B’Av], the fast of the seventh [month, Tzom Gedaliah], and the fast of the tenth [month, Asarah B’Tevet] will be for the House of Judah occasions for joy and gladness.” (See, too, Rosh Hashanah 18b.) However, the Rav also interpreted it by reference to the well known talmudic passage at the end of Makkot (24b):
Once again they were coming up to Jerusalem together, and just as they came to Mount Scopus they saw a fox emerging from the Holy of Holies. They fell aweeping and Rabbi Akiva seemed merry.
“Wherefore,” said they to him, “are you merry?”
Said he: “Wherefore are you weeping?”
Said they to him: “A place of which it was once said, ‘And the common man that draweth nigh shall be put to death,’ is now become the haunt of foxes, and should we not weep?”
Said he to them: “Therefore am I merry; for it is written, ‘And I will take to Me faithful witnesses to record, Uriah the priest and Zechariah the son of Jeberechiah.’ Now, what connection has this Uriah the priest with Zechariah? Uriah lived during the times of the first Temple, while Zechariah lived [and prophesied] during the second Temple? But Holy Writ linked the [later] prophecy of Zechariah with the [earlier] prophecy of Uriah. In the [earlier] prophecy [in the days] of Uriah it is written, ‘Therefore shall Zion for your sake be ploughed as a field, etc.’ In Zechariah it is written, ‘Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, There shall yet old men and old women sit in the broad places of Jerusalem.’ As long as Uriah’s [threatening] prophecy had not had its fulfillment, I had misgivings lest Zechariah’s prophecy might not be fulfilled; now that Uriah’s prophecy has been [literally] fulfilled, it is quite certain that Zechariah’s prophecy also is to find its literal fulfillment.”
Said they to him: “Akiva, you have comforted us! Akiva, you have comforted us!”
Since Rabbi Akiva chose Zechariah as the navi representing the restoration of Klal Yisrael to its land, so did Rabbi Kalir.
5. “Al penei ferat nuptzu chasidehah—Her pious ones were crushed at the Euphrates . . .”
The Rav pointed out that this is a reference to the fate of the Jews after the destruction of the first Beit Hamikdash. We mourn on Tishah B’Av, he often noted, not just for the final Churban, under the impact of which we suffer today, but for all Churbanot, for all galuyot, for the one long Jewish historical experience of exile. There is no difference between golut Bavel, golut Roma, golut Germanyah or golut Tzarefat, he said; it is all one experience of exile. Our enemies had only one goal, i.e., to exile and to destroy us—whether to Chalach and Chavor during the first Churban (see Divrei Hayamim Alef 5:26 and Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol’s piyyut recited on the night of Tishah B’Av, p.37) or that which took place on the Rhine in Germany during the Crusades of the Middle Ages.
In fact, the Rav pointed out that the selection of kinot recited on Tishah B’Av includes not only references to the two Churbanot but also to the Asarah Harugei Malchut (“Arzei haLevanon,” pp.125–26), to the Crusades (“Hacharishu Mimeni,” pp.127–28 and “Mi Yiten Roshi Mayim,” pp. 132–34), and to the burning of talmudic manuscripts in thirteenth-century France (“Sha’ali Serufah Bi’eish,” pp.161–62). Although none of these events occurred on Tishah B’Av, this is the day we remember them, for this is the day set aside to remember all Jewish tragedies.
In connection with this, the Rav repeatedly pointed out that, in his opinion, Tishah B’Av was the appropriate day to remember the Holocaust as well. He cited the Rashi in Divrei Hayamim Bet 35:25: “Whenever there will occur to them an event for which they will lament and cry, they should mention this painful experience (i.e., the death of Yoshiyahu) with it, similar to Tishah B’Av when one mentions kinot for those killed during the tragedies that occurred in our day.” Since Rashi feels that it is appropriate to mention the tragedies of his day on Tishah B’Av, so should we.5
Furthermore, in this context, the Rav noted how he was very opposed to what he called “creative liturgy.”
“I don’t believe in liturgical creativity,” he said. “I don’t believe that any contemporary has the inner ability, the faith, the depth and sweep of experience, ecstasy or taharat hanefesh (purity of soul) to give him permission to write a piyyut. Only the Anshei Knesset Hagedolah or the nevi’im could do it. The Ba’alei haTosafot could also do it because they were the progenitors of the chachmei hamesorah. Rabbi Kalir could do it. But no contemporary has all the qualities indispensable for so called creative liturgy.” (This is a direct quote from the Rav’s presentation on Tishah B’Av, 1978).
As a result, the Rav insisted that when we read the kinah of “Hacharishu Mimeni” (pp. 127–28) written for the Crusades, we should keep in mind that it relates not only to eleventh-century Southwestern Germany but also to Vilna and Warsaw and to the thousands of towns and villages where faithful, dedicated and devoted Jews lived sacred committed lives and were exterminated in a period of two to three years during the Second World War. “The scenes described and the words of despair, mourning and grief expressed are the same,” said the Rav.
The Rav also made reference to the Holocaust in commenting on a specific passage in the second kinah cited earlier about the Crusades. After explicitly noting that the destruction of the Jewish communities of Speyer, Worms and Mayence occurred during the months of Iyar and Sivan (p.133), the author of the kinah explains that “since we may not add (an extra) season (of mourning) for the destruction and conflagration . . . therefore I will cause my cry of woe to rise this day.” He is suggesting that since no new days can be set aside to commemorate Jewish historical catastrophe, these events are mentioned on Tishah B’Av even though they did not occur on this day. Tishah B’Av becomes the day designated to commemorate all Jewish tragedy, regardless of when it may have happened. The Rav pointed out that this applies to the Holocaust as well. No new days of commemoration or fasting should be designated for the Holocaust. Its place of commemoration is on Tishah B’Av and on Tishah B’Av alone.⁶
6. “Asah venicham vayikra labechiyah, venam, al eleh ani bochiyah—He [i.e., G-d] brought it about, yet He regretted and called for weeping, saying, ‘For these things do I weep.’”
The Rav pointed out that this is a reversal of the pasuk in Bereishit (6:6): “Vayinachem Hashem ki asah et ha’adam—and G-d regretted that He had made man.” There He regretted having created man; here He regretted having destroyed man, i.e., the Jewish people, through the Churban.
But what is most striking, pointed out the Rav, is that this passage indicates that G-d did not summon others to mourn for the Churban but, as it were, mourned for it Himself. The pasuk in Eichah (1:16) which is simply understood as Yirmiyahu speaking in first person upon witnessing the Churban, “For these things do I weep,” is co-opted here to refer to G-d Himself. Kaviyachol, G-d Himself is saying, “For these things do I weep.” The Rav made reference here to the talmudic passage in Chagigah (5b) which cites the verse in Yirmiyahu (13:17), “bemistarim tivkeh nafshi—my soul will weep in ‘mistarim,’” and comments:
Rabbi Samuel b. Inia said in the name of Rav: “The Holy One, blessed be He, has a place and its name is ‘Secret’ . . . . But is there any weeping in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He? For behold Rabbi Papa said: ‘There is no grief in the presence of the Holy One, blessed be He; for it is said: “Honor and majesty are before Him; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary!”‘ There is no contradiction; the one case [refers to] the inner chambers (bevatei gava’i), the other case [refers to] the outer chambers (bevatei bera’i). But behold it is written: ‘And in that day did the Lord, the G-d of Hosts, call to weeping and to lamentation, and to baldness, and to girding with sackcloth!’ The destruction of the Temple is different, for even the angels of peace wept [over it]; for it is said: ‘Behold for their altar they cried without; the angels of peace wept bitterly.’”⁷
One final thought. There is a striking paradox on Tishah B’Av, pointed out the Rav. As strange as it seems, as incongruous as it might appear, in spite of all the sufferings and tragedies we commemorate on Tishah B’Av, this day is a day of hope. Chazal tell us (Y., Berachot 2:4) that Mashiach was born on this day, or, in other words, that in the very day of destruction are sown the seeds of redemption.
But the paradox and incongruity are even sharper. The Talmud tells us in Taanit 29a that the Beit Hamikdash was set afire on Tishah B’Av in the afternoon. (Parenthetically, that is why Rav Hai Gaon, quoted by the Rav, ruled that there is no miktzat hayom kikulo on Tishah B’Av because the major tragedy of the day first occurred in the afternoon.) Yet, it is precisely then, on the afternoon of Tishah B’Av, that the laws of that day take on a more lenient character! Our entire mood changes after chatzot. For example, we are allowed to sit on a chair, we can begin preparing food for the evening, certain types of work are permitted, we put on tefillin, and we actually recite a tefillah which begins with the word nachem or “comfort!” At precisely the moment of greatest tragedy we, paradoxically, lessen the stringencies of the day.
Indeed, the Rav explained that this is all deliberately done. For during the entire time the city of Yerushalayim was surrounded and breached, the Jews felt that they would be personally and directly punished for their sins. But once the Beit Hamikdash began burning, they collectively breathed a huge sigh of relief because they realized that G-d decided to vent his anger on the building rather than on them; to exact punishment from a substitute rather than from the real guilty party; in the words of the Rav, “to take collateral instead of torturing the real debtor.” And so, at that moment of greatest Churban, the Jews knew that they would be saved and, therefore, paradoxically, while the tragedy intensifies, the kulot of the day begin.⁸
May we all merit the fulfillment of the talmudic passage in Taanit (30b), “Whoever mourns for Jerusalem will merit to see its happiness,” bemeheirah beyameinu.
Notes
1. In this connection, the Rav also pointed to the Mishneh Torah in Hilchos Ta’aniyos 5:10 where the Rambam, based on a talmudic passage in Pesachim (54b), writes that the last four prohibitions apply on Tishah B’Av, “kiyom hakippurim.”
See, too, ibid., 5:7 where the Rambam also notes that one is enjoined from eating on the bein hashemashot of Tishah B’Av, “kiyom hakippurim.” This parallel to Yom Kippur is not just a superficial one, he said, with both days happening to share similar halachot, but one which goes to the essence of Tishah B’Av itself. In fact, the Rav was so convinced of the ta’anit tzibbur aspect of Tishah B’Av and its parallel to Yom Kippur that (in 1979) he dealt at length with why ne’ilah is not recited on that day.
2. Cf. Pesikta Rabbasi, ed. Meir Ish Shalom (Tel Aviv, 1963), 131b which notes that Yirmiyah did see the smoke arising from the Beit Hamikdash on his return from Anasos.
3. See Louis Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia, 1936), IV, 303, 322.
4. Note this theme as well on pp.144–45, contrasting the situation which existed “when I departed from Egypt” with that which obtained “when I departed from Jerusalem.” Just as one is obliged “to see oneself as if he departed from Egypt” (Pesachim 116b), so too, in order to fulfill the obligation of Tishah B’Av, one must see oneself “as if I departed from Jerusalem.” See too Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, Zakhor: Jewish History and Jewish Memory (Seattle-London, 1982), 43–45.
5. For another example of the use of this statement of Rashi to argue for subsuming the Holocaust under Tishah B’Av, see Rabbi Menachem M. Kasher, “Hatza’ah l’Kevo’a Zichron haShoah b’Tes b’Av,” No’am 19 (1977): 373.
6. For similar applications of this passage to the Holocaust, see ibid.; Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, “beDevar Kevi’as Yom Ta’anis leKedoshei haShoah,” Am HaTorah 2, no. 10 (5745):17–18; Rabbi Moshe Shternbuch, She’elos u-Teshuvos: Teshuvos veHanhagos II (Jerusalem, 1989), 408, #721 (My thanks to Rabbi Hanan Balk for this reference); Rabbi Shmuel Tuvyah Stern, “Yom Hashoa le-Or ha-Halakhah,” Ha-Pardes 59, no. 10 (Tammuz 5745):12. For an attempt to deal with this passage by someone who felt that a separate Holocaust Memorial Day was appropriate, see Rabbi Yitzchak Halevi Herzog, She’elos u-Teshuvos Heichal Yitzchak, Orach Chayyim (Jerusalem, 1972), 155, #61; reprinted in idem., Pesakim u-Kesavim (Jerusalem, 1989), II, 438, #99.
7. I subsequently found this notion also expressed in Berachot 3a; Midrash Eichah Rabbah, ed. Salomon Buber (Vilna, 1899), 13a–14b (Pesichta 24), 82a (on Eichah 1:16); and Seder Eliyahu Rabbah, Chapter 30. It is further developed in Melvin Jay Glatt, “G-d the Mourner – Israel’s Companion in Tragedy,” Judaism 28 (1971):72–79; A. Marmorstein, The Old Rabbinic Doctrine of G-d (London, 1937), 68–76; and Norman J. Cohen, “Shekhinta ba-Galuta: A Midrashic Response to Destruction and Persecution,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 13, nos. 1–2 (1982):147–59. Peter Kuhn, Gottes Trauer und Klage in der rabbinischen Überlieferung (Leiden, 1978), 351 estimates that there are some 75 text traditions which deal with G-d lamenting for the Churban. See N. Cohen, 148, n. 6. See too David G. Roskies, Against the Apocalypse: Responses to Catastrophe in Modern Jewish Culture (Cambridge, 1984), 32–34.
I have dealt with this issue at greater length in a recent video tape (#9) prepared for the Orthodox Union in February, 1994, on the subject of “Imo Anochi biTzarah.”
8. I subsequently found this notion in Midrash Eichah Rabbah, 74b (on Eichah 4:11); Tosafot, Kiddushin 31b, s.v. istiya’a milsa; and Mishnah Berurah, OC 555:3 in the name of the Gra.
Rabbi Dr. Jacob J. Schacter is university professor of Jewish history and Jewish thought at Yeshiva University and senior scholar at the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). He serves as a contributing editor of Jewish Action. At the time of this writing, Rabbi Schacter was rabbi of The Jewish Center in New York City and editor of The Torah U-Madda Journal.