IRRESPONSIBLE RESPONSES

The same Talmud that tells us that it was baseless hatred among Jews that brought ruin to the second Beit HaMikdash or second Temple in Jerusalem, also provides over a dozen other reasons that contributed toward the destruction that ultimately led to 2000 years of homelessness of our people. Despite remarkable and praiseworthy prescriptions and soundbites on the part of individual rabbis (HaRav Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of Israel, was known to have said: If baseless hatred brought about destruction, then baseless love will bring about construction), it’s most unfortunate that the Talmud never addressed the topic of bringing an end to this two-thousand-year-old national wound that refuses to heal. However pompous and self-aggrandizing this may appear to be, I should like to do just that. Unless we as Jews are prepared to rectify the following conditions, the advent of Moshiach will remain as elusive as ever.

The other week at Se’udat Shlisheet, the third meal of the Shabbat, we took a look at five calamities that occurred on the 17th of Tammuz, a date seminal to the Tisha B’Av destruction. Among those catastrophes was that Apostomus burned a Torah scroll, and that an idol was placed in the Temple. I maintained that it was highly doubtful that this was the first time in our history, and neither was it the last time in our history, for such reprehensible acts to have occurred. What brought these calamities to the fore, I believe, was our response to these calamities – no one gave a damn. Not one of the five calamities seemed to faze us. That was the true calamity that led up to the destruction of the Temple. When Jews are blasé about events that ought to be of major concern, destructive forces that will quite likely decimate cannot be far behind. As of late, we have spent a great amount of time and a great amount of energy on Pew reports and other studies that raised red flags about our future as American Jews, only to wave those flags aside, lest they get in the way of our daily doings.

Earlier this month, a most controversial rabbinic figure met a most unusual death, as he immersed himself in a lake in Mexico in preparation for Shabbat. This controversial yet charismatic figure spent time in jail for kidnapping (he spirited a pre-Bar Mitzvah age child away from his insufficiently observant parents and brought him to Israel where he would be raised in a proper atmosphere under the tutelage of a G-d fearing family). He was a cult figure, where his followers living in a commune of sorts were following his dictates that governed dress code (facial features aside, the women could be easily mistaken for Muslims), behavior and lifestyle. His followers were being regularly visited and cited by Child Protective Services and he was in arrears of tax payments and other monetary obligations. Yet not only did the article reporting his death omit all these ugly details, it concluded with three Hebrew words: Yehi zichro baruch, May his memory be a blessing! When Jews choose to compartmentalize, where they focus solely on the ritual but overlook obligations toward civil law as is unfortunately the case in all too many cases, then the lessons of Tisha B’Av become misunderstood and totally irrelevant. To paraphrase the essayist and philosopher George Santyana: Those who fail to understand Tisha B’Av are condemned to repeat it.

In his book “Changing the Immutable,” Professor Marc B. Shapiro points out that there are Orthodox communities for whom history must be altered for it to be palatable. Put differently, they (certain Orthodox) can’t handle historical truth. That’s why there are coloring books for children that depict our forefather Abraham as though he belongs on the Lower East Side of New York in the 1940s. G-d forbid Abraham should be seen as a four thousand year old Iraqi! Perish the thought that we should realize that when Tisha B’Av did occur, there is a great likelihood that our ancestors physically resembled modern day Palestinians.

History happens. So too do events. At times, those events are a great source of shame. When we as a people react nonchalantly or gloss over them and pretend they didn’t happen, or rewrite history because we can’t deal with reality, we only serve to inhibit the advent of Moshiach, who will once and for all put Tisha B’Av behind us.