 | This weekend in the year 70 CE, Rome destroyed the Second Temple, launched a wave of exile and depravity, and ended Judaism as it then existed. The destruction became a symbol and stand-in for much that we try not to see or think about about Jewish persecution, loss and suffering. Humans are adept at limiting our vision to avoid overwhelm when it's too much to bear alone. Jewish experience drives Jewish resilience today. Our people who faced and lost so much over the centuries knows how to survive and thrive. History then is character now. We'd rather not see some things about ourselves. It's one reason Jewish life evolved this solemn day to breach our inner walls and rivet us on what we often don't or won't see – all to help us build resilience, grow and thrive #StrongerTogether. |
By Rabbi David Evan Markus
Parashat Devarim 5785 (2025)
There's a half-joke about Tisha b'Av – the day of Rome's destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), and a day of uncanny confluence of other Jewish calamities happening on the same day for the next 1,900 years (crusades, expulsions, the Final Solution).
The half-joke is that on Tisha b'Av, he rabbi took the day off. Modernity taught that a sad day won't be a draw whether in good times or amidst strife. I bet most of us never honored Tisha b'Av: we weren't raised with it, or we don't see the point of it. So, the half-joke goes, the rabbi took the day off.
Skipping Tisha b'Av is no laughing matter. Now especially, Jews worldwide, of all stripes, are reclaiming Tisha b'Av – and with good reason.
Here's why. We can't fully feel joy unless we let ourselves fully feel sadness. Life teaches us to protect our hearts from seemingly negative emotion (and lately there's been lots of negative emotion in Jewish life). To protect our hearts, most of us go through life partly awake, often on autopilot, unaware or deliberately not seeing, prone to fragility, repeating the same cycles of behaviors and choices that we promise away every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Tisha b'Av aims to help break these cycles of feeling and behavior by impelling us to unite in community, in common cause and common fate with others worldwide, to hold and feel together what maybe is too big for any of us to feel alone. If we can let ourselves feel it, then it loses some of its inner power over us. We become more resilient, and #StrongerTogether.
Parashat Devarim 5785 (2025)
There's a half-joke about Tisha b'Av – the day of Rome's destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE), and a day of uncanny confluence of other Jewish calamities happening on the same day for the next 1,900 years (crusades, expulsions, the Final Solution).
The half-joke is that on Tisha b'Av, he rabbi took the day off. Modernity taught that a sad day won't be a draw whether in good times or amidst strife. I bet most of us never honored Tisha b'Av: we weren't raised with it, or we don't see the point of it. So, the half-joke goes, the rabbi took the day off.
Skipping Tisha b'Av is no laughing matter. Now especially, Jews worldwide, of all stripes, are reclaiming Tisha b'Av – and with good reason.
Here's why. We can't fully feel joy unless we let ourselves fully feel sadness. Life teaches us to protect our hearts from seemingly negative emotion (and lately there's been lots of negative emotion in Jewish life). To protect our hearts, most of us go through life partly awake, often on autopilot, unaware or deliberately not seeing, prone to fragility, repeating the same cycles of behaviors and choices that we promise away every Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Tisha b'Av aims to help break these cycles of feeling and behavior by impelling us to unite in community, in common cause and common fate with others worldwide, to hold and feel together what maybe is too big for any of us to feel alone. If we can let ourselves feel it, then it loses some of its inner power over us. We become more resilient, and #StrongerTogether.
 | This special teaching links to Tisha b'Av, which this year (2025) begins at dusk on Saturday, August 2. Shir Ami will convene online at 7:00pm that evening for a musical havdalah followed by a solemn, soulful observance. If there's enough interest in future years, we can shift to gathering "live" for Tisha b'Av. Please have ready a Yizkor candle. Register for Tisha b'Av 2025 here. |
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The immensity of Jewish losses in history drives the power of Jewish resilience today. Our people who faced and lost so much over the centuries knows how to survive and thrive.
We must renew our resilience – precisely now when so much of the world seems like a dumpster fire, precisely now as the High Holy Days slowly appear over the distant horizon.
To renew our resilience, we must touch its source. We must touch the immensity of loss, grief and hurt that are catalysts for transformation.
As I write these words, I feel myself rebel: I don't want to see it. I won't see it. It's too much.
We all have our "it." Maybe it's health, economy, disappointment, corruption, antisemitism, moral ambivalence, climate change, the suffering out there, the suffering in here, our foibles and character flaws, bad habits, addictions, missteps, missed opportunities, unwise priorities, unkept promises, over-defended hearts, prejudices, a loved one's mortality, our own....
You know your "it." The heart knows its own bitterness (Proverbs 14:10). And if we're deeply honest, whatever our "it" is, we spend much of our lives trying to avoid "it."
We protect ourselves from it. We change the subject. We distract ourselves. We distance ourselves. We justify ourselves. We tell ourselves convincing stories about who we are, and who they are. We wear rose-colored glasses. We moralize. We judge. We blame. We do, and say we did the best we could (but did we?). Or we resign ourselves and give up.
We humans are wired to protect ourselves from hurt, and sometimes self-defense is good and necessary. We also know that sometimes truth demands ... well, truth. Those truths are inconvenient, unsettling and risky – and also essential to a whole and authentic life in which we can fully feel total joy and love. Whole truth is essential to our resilience and thriving.
Truths we suppress tend to lurk as far on the edge of our awareness as we can send them. The problem is that we humans aren't exact modulators. When we turn off or diminish some emotions, we tend to turn off or diminish others – until something knocks down the walls and forces our vision and emotions. Your life has taught you that something always will.
This week's Torah portion shows one way we evade truth and build inner walls. This opening of the Book of Deuteronomy, literally the second (deuter-) telling (-onomy), is Moses' personal narrative of what happened since the exodus from Egypt. (That's how next week's portion can reprise the Ten Commandments – as Moses' remembered narrative, not the direct experience at Sinai in Exodus 20.)
Moses, however, wasn't a perfect narrator. Time and time again, his "second telling" changed key events. He added his own gloss. He absolved himself of his character flaws and blamed others entirely. Some things he added to the story whole cloth. He even changed the Ten Commandments: the Exodus version and Deuteronomy version aren't exactly the same!
Deuteronomy is Moses' story about a story – and that's the point. What "is" (objective truth) and how we speak, feel, think, remember and narrate about what "is" (subjective truth) are rarely if ever the same. In the gap between them lies our ability not to see and feel what we don't want to see and feel. Know it or not, we change the narrative or change the subject.
This week's Torah portion comes precisely now, on the runway to Tisha b'Av, to remind us that our narratives aren't the whole truth about anything and especially not about ourselves – and especially not when we try to avoid truths hiding in plain sight. In the words of this week's haftarah (Isaiah 1), we must summon the vision and courage to see the real truth, the whole truth, including all that we typically don't want to see about ourselves and our world – without changing the narrative or changing the subject to protect our hearts from them.
If we can do so, if we can sit for just a day – even an hour – in the rubble of the ruined Temple, in our broken hearts and in our broken world, then its power over us will lessen. Together we can rediscover that we can face it, that our hearts aren't too brittle to face it, that we are far stronger and more resilient than we know, that we can work with the truths we keep distant – indeed, that we must work with those truths if we're to truly better our lives and our world.
We must renew our resilience – precisely now when so much of the world seems like a dumpster fire, precisely now as the High Holy Days slowly appear over the distant horizon.
To renew our resilience, we must touch its source. We must touch the immensity of loss, grief and hurt that are catalysts for transformation.
As I write these words, I feel myself rebel: I don't want to see it. I won't see it. It's too much.
We all have our "it." Maybe it's health, economy, disappointment, corruption, antisemitism, moral ambivalence, climate change, the suffering out there, the suffering in here, our foibles and character flaws, bad habits, addictions, missteps, missed opportunities, unwise priorities, unkept promises, over-defended hearts, prejudices, a loved one's mortality, our own....
You know your "it." The heart knows its own bitterness (Proverbs 14:10). And if we're deeply honest, whatever our "it" is, we spend much of our lives trying to avoid "it."
We protect ourselves from it. We change the subject. We distract ourselves. We distance ourselves. We justify ourselves. We tell ourselves convincing stories about who we are, and who they are. We wear rose-colored glasses. We moralize. We judge. We blame. We do, and say we did the best we could (but did we?). Or we resign ourselves and give up.
We humans are wired to protect ourselves from hurt, and sometimes self-defense is good and necessary. We also know that sometimes truth demands ... well, truth. Those truths are inconvenient, unsettling and risky – and also essential to a whole and authentic life in which we can fully feel total joy and love. Whole truth is essential to our resilience and thriving.
Truths we suppress tend to lurk as far on the edge of our awareness as we can send them. The problem is that we humans aren't exact modulators. When we turn off or diminish some emotions, we tend to turn off or diminish others – until something knocks down the walls and forces our vision and emotions. Your life has taught you that something always will.
This week's Torah portion shows one way we evade truth and build inner walls. This opening of the Book of Deuteronomy, literally the second (deuter-) telling (-onomy), is Moses' personal narrative of what happened since the exodus from Egypt. (That's how next week's portion can reprise the Ten Commandments – as Moses' remembered narrative, not the direct experience at Sinai in Exodus 20.)
Moses, however, wasn't a perfect narrator. Time and time again, his "second telling" changed key events. He added his own gloss. He absolved himself of his character flaws and blamed others entirely. Some things he added to the story whole cloth. He even changed the Ten Commandments: the Exodus version and Deuteronomy version aren't exactly the same!
Deuteronomy is Moses' story about a story – and that's the point. What "is" (objective truth) and how we speak, feel, think, remember and narrate about what "is" (subjective truth) are rarely if ever the same. In the gap between them lies our ability not to see and feel what we don't want to see and feel. Know it or not, we change the narrative or change the subject.
This week's Torah portion comes precisely now, on the runway to Tisha b'Av, to remind us that our narratives aren't the whole truth about anything and especially not about ourselves – and especially not when we try to avoid truths hiding in plain sight. In the words of this week's haftarah (Isaiah 1), we must summon the vision and courage to see the real truth, the whole truth, including all that we typically don't want to see about ourselves and our world – without changing the narrative or changing the subject to protect our hearts from them.
If we can do so, if we can sit for just a day – even an hour – in the rubble of the ruined Temple, in our broken hearts and in our broken world, then its power over us will lessen. Together we can rediscover that we can face it, that our hearts aren't too brittle to face it, that we are far stronger and more resilient than we know, that we can work with the truths we keep distant – indeed, that we must work with those truths if we're to truly better our lives and our world.
It would no longer be, as poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it –
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet.
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
That's how Tisha b'Av serves as entrance gate into our Season of Meaning. On Tisha b'Av, the walls fall. We touch grief and loss. We force ourselves to see inner bondage and falsehoods that clutch our hearts and lives. From them we move forward together, maybe battered but certainly unbroken. From the rubble emerges new resilience and new hope. The season of teshuvah (return) begins.
We are stronger than we know. We are #StrongerTogether, if only we will open and see.
Most like a monumental statue set
In everlasting watch and moveless woe
Till itself crumble to the dust beneath.
Touch it: the marble eyelids are not wet.
If it could weep, it could arise and go.
That's how Tisha b'Av serves as entrance gate into our Season of Meaning. On Tisha b'Av, the walls fall. We touch grief and loss. We force ourselves to see inner bondage and falsehoods that clutch our hearts and lives. From them we move forward together, maybe battered but certainly unbroken. From the rubble emerges new resilience and new hope. The season of teshuvah (return) begins.
We are stronger than we know. We are #StrongerTogether, if only we will open and see.
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