Updating the Book of Lamentations

“Arise, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches! Pour out your heart like water before the presence of the Lord; lift up your hands to Him [and pray] for the lives of your infants …

“In the streets, on the [bare] ground lie [both] young and old, my maidens and my young men have fallen by the sword…”

These words come from the Book of Lamentations, Chapter 2, verses 19 and 21, a book written by Jeremiah while he witnessed the destruction of the First Temple in 586 BCE. The day on which we remember the destruction of both of the Temples, as well as other horrendous events, is Tisha B’Av, which begins at sundown on Saturday. But one of today’s thinkers could just as easily have written these words.

This Shabbat, we start the Book of Deuteronomy in our cycle of Torah readings. It is a collection of Moses’ farewell addresses to the Children of Israel, a series of speeches delivered over the last month or so of his life. The people are poised on the other side of the Jordan River from the Promised Land, which Moses would never get to enter. The Children of Israel were at a major transition point during the course of these days. 38 years earlier, the parents of this generation had also been on the brink of entering the Promised Land, but they were frightened by reports about the inhabitants and were doomed to wander until almost all of them had died out. Only their descendants, not born into slavery, would be able to return to their ancestral homeland.

Here was a people on the brink of something huge, something that could have gone in several different directions! They could turn away again. They could start to fight the inhabitants of the land, lose heart because it was too daunting a task, and have to make their way elsewhere. Or they could cross the river and conquer the land and settle it, becoming a nation with a country, no longer a nomadic people without roots. They could also have entered the land and found a way to coexist with the people who were already living there.

This week, Rabbi Benjamin Blech wrote an essay about the recent mass shootings in conjunction with Tisha B’Av on the website Aish.com. He points out that the Jewish reaction to the destruction of both Temples was not centered on either the Babylonians or the Romans. Instead, they were searching their own souls, scrutinizing their behavior, trying to come up with an explanation for these two appalling events and what role they could have played in them – the assumption was that God was punishing them for their behavior somehow. “[T]he Sages did not shy away from acknowledging the collective sin they saw as true cause of Tisha b’Av: The Temple was destroyed because of … needless and unwarranted hatred,” noted Rabbi Blech. He continued, “The bloodbaths of mass murder are rooted in a veritable plague of hatred – hatred of other views, hatred of people who differ with us in any discernible way, hatred of anyone to whom we can attach a name or label that can be used to justify our loathing. The very word civilized, implying civil discussions with respect for others who do not share our opinions, can no longer be used to describe a society in which disagreement is met not by tolerance but by total rejection and excommunication.”

Like the Children of Israel, we too are at a turning point. We can turn away from these issues as being insurmountable or we can address them while keeping our core values in mind – caring for those less fortunate than ourselves, treating the stranger in our midst the same as anybody else, respecting our planet and remembering that our role was to serve as steward for all life on earth. The founding principles of our great nation parallel the virtues imparted to us by the Torah.

My father always said that the pendulum swings and then swings back again. Trends, fads, pretty much anything can go too far in one direction and then, in reaction, people take them back in the other direction. On this Tisha B’Av, let us focus on the ideals that we cherish and help to restore respect and civility - and a sense of personal safety - to our beloved nation. How long must our maidens and our young men succumb to the sword?