Tisha B'Av

from JoeUser Forums

Good Morning Everyone,

Today is Tisha B'Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av. It is a day of mourning. On this day both Temples were said to be destroyed some 600 years apart from each other. On this day, the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492 and on this day the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began to be transported to Death Camps.

We are to remember. We are to mourn. Many fast on this day. Many do not wash or wear clean clothes on this day. It is considered a mitzvah to be sad.

I understand this. Each year on May 29th I am sad. This was the day I was shot in the head. Trauma is like that. Trauma burns into your memory. And time does very little to dull the pain.

Jews are a traumatized people. Hated, killed, tortured, oppressed and expelled from this country to that since the diaspora began, we were a people living without a home and at the mercy of those who permitted us to live in their country. Jewish citizenship in the nations has only been a fairly recent invention. The common assumptions of life, such as safety, fairness, and predictability, did not apply to Jews. And to a great extent, still doesn't.

So a Jewish world is a trauma survivor's world. We live by and through our wits. We build a nation in Israel. We remember. We do not forget. We have excellent crap detectors. We are hypervigilant regarding anti-semitism.

With Tisha B'Av, we have ritualized our suffering into a day of mourning (actually a three week period). We have developed methods to deal with our history. There is much value in ritual. It helps us organize and focus. It becomes a frame upon which we can paint our heart. It should not be empty, done just because "its done." Nothing religious should be done in this manner.

It is our practice as Jews to make all of our life cycle and their constituent emotions a part of our practice life.

May you each be well and free from suffering.
Shalom.

religion
1,411 views 2 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

we were a people living without a home and at the mercy of those who permitted us to live in their country. Jewish citizenship in the nations has only been a fairly recent invention.

You, or anyone else for that matter, will never know how much your statement above pains me. not that i can relate to what you said. I can't of course. but the sadness is enormous.

Having said that, i always wonder why Jews look at their religion as a "Nationality". Nationality is where home is. that is where you were born, raised and grew with the ingredients of the land ingrained in you be it cultural, moral or otherwise. Your religion is something personal and if you allow it you will have it fused in you with that land's characters and flavors.

could it be that "if you allow it" is the key to the problem you alluded to above?

As a Muslim, i dont even think of making Saudia Arabia my home. As far as i know, no Christian anywhere outside the old Palestine wish to make it home either. So why do Jews only feel at home there? why can't you be a Jew with your home wherever you were born or where you like to live. and your Nationality is where you make your home. I am only wondering about these points here... no criticism should be implied from it.

I fully appreciate how sensitive and emotional the subject is ... so if you dont feel adressing it, i understand.

 

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

As a Muslim, i don't even think of making Saudia Arabia my home. As far as i know, no Christian anywhere outside the old Palestine wish to make it home either. So why do Jews only feel at home there? why can't you be a Jew with your home wherever you were born or where you like to live. and your Nationality is where you make your home. I am only wondering about these points here... no criticism should be implied from it.

 

Shalom, TA,

No offense taken.  This is a valid and important question, I believe.  I am comfortable addressing it. Thank you very much so your sensitivity. 

I think Judaism is so many things.  Jews are a religion, a people, a culture, and a nationality.   As you know for two thousand years we have been scattered around the world.  And before that we were sent into exile from Israel several times after being invaded or conquered by hostile neighbors. Judaism is and has been always deeply connected with the land of Israel.  It is our biblical home, if you will.

Living in many countries sometimes successfully, sometimes not, without a home of our own, we were a nation without a land, a people without the protection of borders  Yet, as I say, we have lived everywhere and thrived, unless hunted down and killed, forced to give up our homes, businesses, etc, and relocate.  Citizens one day, the next day, not, and with no power to appeal these decisions. Many people see us as closed or "clannish".  Perhaps it appears that way because we have often been walled in by others.  Perhaps because God has asked us to keep ourselves separate as a people.  Perhaps a little of many things.

I think American Jews are Americans. 

And in this, I think we are much like the Jews of Germany were prior to the rise of the Third Reich.  These Jews thought of themselves as Germans.  They fought for the Kaiser.  They worked hard for the Fatherland.  But the moral and social situation changed, as it often does as far as Jews are concerned.  Suddenly, they were no longer Germans.  They were Jewish.  At first still human, but gradually reduced to a class lower than pigs. Next step, final solution.

We American Jews think of ourselves as Americans. We believe we are full citizens living in a country that constitutionally, at least, supports pluralism and religious freedom.  We fought, and continue to fight, for our country.  In Germany, the Germans, rules conscious as they were, always followed the law.  Laws that they changed in small increments until mass extermination was legal. All the government need was a reason, a fear, something they could exploit.  Jews are good for that.

During WW II nation after nation rejected Jewish immigrants, includinjg the US.  Many ships full of Jews fleeing from Nazi Germnany were turned around.  Jews by the thoudands died as a result. 

In the US, our national fear of terrorism, the fear of Muslims, of Islam, and anything not Judeo-Christian (preferably the latter part of the hyphen) has led us into a costly war, given fuel to our enemies, and gave justification to a gradual erosion of our own freedoms here within our borders.  Many Jews I know are just a little antsy about these events.

In the end, a people can know they are only safe in a land of their own.  Just as we all feel safer in our homes than on the street.

 

I hope this makes a degree of sense.

 

Be well.

 

 

 

 

 

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