A Thought on Tish B’Av
So, it’s the traditional Day of Mourning on the ninth of Av, commemorating the destruction of the temple and the exile of the Jewish people and mourning all the horrible things that have happened to the Jews. We’re meant to fast and to mourn and basically to reflect back the gloomy parts of Jewish history to ourselves.
But what if you believe, like I do, that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in ancient times was, from a historical point of view, the best thing ever to happen to the Jewish people?
Had we remained a temple cult, we would probably have long ago been relegated to the dustbin of history by now, like so many other sacrificial cults. Had we not internalized our culture and our faith, built a temple in the mind and carried it around the globe, the greatest achievements of the Jewish people would never have occured. And of course, we are no longer in exile. Any Jew who wants to go move to Israel (for now…of course, the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel might problematize the whole notion of who gets to be a Jew pretty soon).
So why do we mourn?
Anshel Pfeffer argued in Haaretz last week that we shouldn’t. He wrote:
Mourning on the Ninth of Av in this day and age flies in the face of both secular Zionism and religious Zionism. It contradicts the right of Jews around the world to decide where they prefer to live. The exile is over, and the temple has not been rebuilt because we don’t want to do it.
There is plenty to mourn in the world for Jews and non-Jews alike, although the Exile is no longer one of those things. I believe Diaspora is a blessing, for all peoples. It made me who I am. It made my parents and grandparents. It made artists and thinkers and scientists and cultures. It is not a thing to grieve.
We can mourn violence. We can mourn the continued abuse of our planet and our neighbors in defiance of God and common sense. We can mourn that Israel, the nation to which we returned, is far from perfect, but to mourn that which made us a global people is to mourn that which created me.
I am a product of Diaspora. I just can’t bring myself to mourn my own existence.
