COMMENTARY: Out of defeat, learning to be prisoners of hope

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.) UNDATED _ Victory celebrations are always easy, but it is more painful to acknowledge catastrophic defeats. Indeed, rituals commemorating a defeat frequently reveal more about moral temperament than the parades, fireworks, and orations associated with victories. And so […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Rabbi Rudin is national interreligious affairs director of the American Jewish Committee.)

UNDATED _ Victory celebrations are always easy, but it is more painful to acknowledge catastrophic defeats. Indeed, rituals commemorating a defeat frequently reveal more about moral temperament than the parades, fireworks, and orations associated with victories.


And so it is with the Jewish people.

Each year at this season, Jews throughout the world collectively remember Rome’s destruction in 70 A.D. of the Holy Temple that stood in Jerusalem.

Somehow, amid the destruction, the Romans left a part of the Temple’s Western Wall intact, a tangible remnant of the Temple’s lost grandeur. It has become Judaism’s holiest site, a place of pilgrimage and prayer.

The loss of the ancient Temple is annually marked with sadness and mourning on the ninth day of the Hebrew month of Av, observed this year on the evening of Aug. 1. It is a day of fasting that includes a melancholy synagogue liturgy featuring the reading of the book of Lamentations. Written by the prophet Jeremiah, the book’s five chapters are one long dirge describing the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.

I often attend the Spanish-Portuguese Synagogue service in New York City to mourn the Temple’s destruction. It is a unique religious experience. With sanctuary lights dimmed, windows covered with dark curtains, and black candles lighted, Jeremiah’s haunting words are chanted in plaintive tones in the original Hebrew. The sacred Torah scrolls are draped in black, and many sit on the floor or hard benches and even rub ashes on their heads as symbols of deep mourning.

I have seen adults break into tears when Jeremiah’s opening verse is recited:”How doth the city (Jerusalem) sit solitary that was full of people. How the city is become as a widow! She that was great among the nations.” However, the Jewish tradition insists that mourning the loss of the Temple and Jerusalem must never be ends in themselves. Rather, mourning is a necessary prerequisite for the ultimate return of Jews to their spiritual capital city.

The Talmud taught that”those who mourn for Jerusalem will someday be rewarded and will witness the renewal of the city. And those who do not grieve will not see Jerusalem restored.” Tradition also affirms that the Shechinah, the Hebrew word for God’s presence, dwelt for long centuries amid the huge beige-colored stones of the Western Wall. Whenever Jews were fortunate enough to reach the Holy City, they would press their faces and hands on the Wall and sadly recite the words from Lamentations. Because of the worshippers’ collective tears, the stones were called the Wailing Wall, although the correct term is Western Wall.

Today the Western Wall worship area is open around the clock, seven days a week. In Israel, and especially in Jerusalem, many places of entertainment and restaurants close during this mournful day of national remembrance.

It is a vivid, stirring sight when thousands of Israelis, the modern descendants of the Jews who were once expelled from Jerusalem, make a solemn pilgrimage to the Wall. Their prayers are both a bitter cry of anger over past defeats and a defiant cry of resolve to survive current vicissitudes.


Yet despite the gloom and grief of the ninth of Av, the spirit of optimism and hope surprisingly appears.

In Judaism no biblical reading, even on a day of traumatic memory, ends with a negative theme. Jeremiah, overwhelmed by sorrow for his beloved Temple that is no more, concludes Lamentations asking whether God is”exceedingly angry”with the Jewish people.

But the religious tradition will not permit the prophet’s question to be the last word. Instead, the reading closes with an earlier and more hopeful verse from Lamentations:”Turn us unto You, O God …. Renew our days as of old.”It is as if after singing the sad songs, the Jewish people end the fast day, arise from the synagogue floor, remove the black curtains, extinguish the ebony tapers, and resume a”renewed”life of service to the God of Israel.

Participation in the liturgy of the ninth of Av is an extraordinary religious journey. The death and desolation of the past is remembered, but at the end of the day the people are spiritually lifted beyond the rubble of remembrance. Instead, they become something else: prisoners of hope.

DEA END RUDIN

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