Imagine that you and a small group of beloveds are about to be exiled to a faraway island. Jewishly speaking, what would you take with you?
Speaking personally, my answer isn't a thing at all, but a principle from this week's Torah portion – which comes exactly on time.
Speaking personally, my answer isn't a thing at all, but a principle from this week's Torah portion – which comes exactly on time.
Stones left over from the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem (70 CE), left in place nearly 2,000 years later below Robinson's Arch. This week's Torah portion (Vaethanan) brings our "Jewish Greatest Hits" – Moses' deuter (second) onomy (telling) of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-18), followed by the Shema and V'ahavta (Deut. 6:4-9). We could spend the whole year – indeed, our whole lives – lingering on just these sentences alone. We'll come back to this thought in a moment.
This week also brings Tisha b'Av, the Jewish year's traditionally lowest day associated with an uncanny number of Jewish calamities. These calamities include the Second Temple's destruction (70 CE), the start of the Crusades (1096), the Jewish exile from Spain (1492), and the Third Reich's official approval of the "Final Solution" (1941). Historically, all of them – and more – happened on Tisha b'Av: it's not a matter of faith or convention, but a contemporaneously documented matter of fact that diverse historians have confirmed over and over again.
What this confluence of historical events means theologically is above my rabbinic pay grade. As a rationalist, I shudder and shut down at the idea that "God" "caused" these events all on the same day. As a pastoral caregiver, I shudder and shut down at the idea that such immense suffering exists in our world, much less commemorated on any one day. As an archeologist of the soul, I shudder and shut down at the idea that there's some spiritual benefit much less purpose to the concentration of calamities.
I bet you shudder and shut down, too. I bet we all do. And therein lies the hidden point.
Life's whys and wherefores are ultimately inexplicable: they're too big. If we're honest, we tend to spend much of our lives keeping its enormity at bay, safely distant, boxed in. If we think about it all, we're likely to implode or go numb, so mainly we don't – except, tradition offers, on Tisha b'Av. (To be sure, even most rabbis prefer to take Tisha b'Av off, and I get why.)
Tisha b'Av busts the illusion not only that it's all knowable but also that we ultimately can conquer or outrun the unfairness of suffering and the frailty of the human condition.
And, at that very moment of realization, it all turns around.
Tradition holds that redemption itself is born on the afternoon of Tisha b'Av. If there's such a thing as "messiah" or "redeemer" or redemptive consciousness, its birthday is the afternoon of Tisha b'Av. From the lowest depth, immediately we begin lifting for the next seven weeks leading into Rosh Hashanah.
It's no coincidence that the Torah portion of this week of Tisha b'Av also is the Torah portion of "Jewish Greatest Hits." Even as the Temple's destruction on Tisha b'Av was the historical jolt that launched Jewish exile, and Tisha b'Av is the spiritual jolt that begins our journey beyond the illusions of ego toward the High Holy Days, Talmud assured us that we wouldn't be alone on our journey. If we must move, Talmud declared, so too must God: Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God that mystics associate with the divine feminine, would go into exile with us.
It's an extraordinary idea – especially in Talmud's era of exile, antisemitism and all kinds of privations. And it's an idea that's quintessentially Jewish: even God is diminished when we are diminished. Even God goes into exile. Even God's transcendental unity is offended by exiles and human destructions.
This week also brings Tisha b'Av, the Jewish year's traditionally lowest day associated with an uncanny number of Jewish calamities. These calamities include the Second Temple's destruction (70 CE), the start of the Crusades (1096), the Jewish exile from Spain (1492), and the Third Reich's official approval of the "Final Solution" (1941). Historically, all of them – and more – happened on Tisha b'Av: it's not a matter of faith or convention, but a contemporaneously documented matter of fact that diverse historians have confirmed over and over again.
What this confluence of historical events means theologically is above my rabbinic pay grade. As a rationalist, I shudder and shut down at the idea that "God" "caused" these events all on the same day. As a pastoral caregiver, I shudder and shut down at the idea that such immense suffering exists in our world, much less commemorated on any one day. As an archeologist of the soul, I shudder and shut down at the idea that there's some spiritual benefit much less purpose to the concentration of calamities.
I bet you shudder and shut down, too. I bet we all do. And therein lies the hidden point.
Life's whys and wherefores are ultimately inexplicable: they're too big. If we're honest, we tend to spend much of our lives keeping its enormity at bay, safely distant, boxed in. If we think about it all, we're likely to implode or go numb, so mainly we don't – except, tradition offers, on Tisha b'Av. (To be sure, even most rabbis prefer to take Tisha b'Av off, and I get why.)
Tisha b'Av busts the illusion not only that it's all knowable but also that we ultimately can conquer or outrun the unfairness of suffering and the frailty of the human condition.
And, at that very moment of realization, it all turns around.
Tradition holds that redemption itself is born on the afternoon of Tisha b'Av. If there's such a thing as "messiah" or "redeemer" or redemptive consciousness, its birthday is the afternoon of Tisha b'Av. From the lowest depth, immediately we begin lifting for the next seven weeks leading into Rosh Hashanah.
It's no coincidence that the Torah portion of this week of Tisha b'Av also is the Torah portion of "Jewish Greatest Hits." Even as the Temple's destruction on Tisha b'Av was the historical jolt that launched Jewish exile, and Tisha b'Av is the spiritual jolt that begins our journey beyond the illusions of ego toward the High Holy Days, Talmud assured us that we wouldn't be alone on our journey. If we must move, Talmud declared, so too must God: Shekhinah, the indwelling presence of God that mystics associate with the divine feminine, would go into exile with us.
It's an extraordinary idea – especially in Talmud's era of exile, antisemitism and all kinds of privations. And it's an idea that's quintessentially Jewish: even God is diminished when we are diminished. Even God goes into exile. Even God's transcendental unity is offended by exiles and human destructions.
So right now we're given the Shema and V'ahavta for our journey: "Listen, Israel! YHVH our God, YHVH is One. Love YHVH your God with all your heart.... These words that [God] commands this day will be on your heart. Speak of them... on your way...."
And right now we're reminded of the Ten Commandments: "I, YHVH, am your God who took you from the Land of Egypt" – literally, from the land of narrowness – "from the house of bondage." The other commandments flow from that first one.
And right now we're reminded that we humans can't have all the answers, and that the walls of ego we tend to hide behind (the ones that maybe grew back since last year's High Holy Days) need to fall again. Only then, from that place of un-knowing and vulnerability, can we take the spiritual journey anew. And only then can we learn anew that this spiritual journey is one that we never take truly alone.
Only then can we discover how much more there is beyond our walls than behind them.
These are our shared beating heart of Judaism: love, identity, community, journey, becoming. We begin renewing that beating heart now.
So if I were exiled with a group of beloveds to a faraway island, that's what I'd take with me: this spiritual principle that we descend for the sake of ascent – that if we must be exiled, we take this journey so we truly can return home.
And right now we're reminded of the Ten Commandments: "I, YHVH, am your God who took you from the Land of Egypt" – literally, from the land of narrowness – "from the house of bondage." The other commandments flow from that first one.
And right now we're reminded that we humans can't have all the answers, and that the walls of ego we tend to hide behind (the ones that maybe grew back since last year's High Holy Days) need to fall again. Only then, from that place of un-knowing and vulnerability, can we take the spiritual journey anew. And only then can we learn anew that this spiritual journey is one that we never take truly alone.
Only then can we discover how much more there is beyond our walls than behind them.
These are our shared beating heart of Judaism: love, identity, community, journey, becoming. We begin renewing that beating heart now.
So if I were exiled with a group of beloveds to a faraway island, that's what I'd take with me: this spiritual principle that we descend for the sake of ascent – that if we must be exiled, we take this journey so we truly can return home.
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