c. 2006 Religion News Service
(UNDATED) On July 12, Hezbollah, a terrorist group as defined by the United States and other Western democracies, defied a U.N. Security Council resolution by crossing the internationally recognized border between Lebanon and Israel where it captured two Israeli soldiers and killed others.
That reckless but carefully planned attack compelled Israel to vigorously respond in self-defense. As usually happens in such circumstances, there was an immediate stream of haughty pronouncements from some political and religious leaders who, in the smugness of their own physical security, chastised Israel and warned the Jewish state about “overreacting” and its failure to exercise “proportionality.”
When directed at Israel, these two terms are code words for obsequious appeasement of terrorists. Sometimes the supercilious phrases are accompanied by a not-so-subtle whiff of anti-Semitism.
I always ask those who love to lecture Israel on its national security how the U.S. would behave if al-Qaida terrorists crossed our southern or northern borders to kill and kidnap members of the American military or other public officials.
Imagine our nation’s reaction if San Diego, Houston, Seattle or Detroit were struck with deadly rockets launched by a terrorist organization the Mexican or Canadian governments were either unwilling or unable to disarm and control. I wonder whether those who make a career badgering Israel have conveniently forgotten President Kennedy’s forceful response in 1962 when the Soviet Union carried out its own reckless act by placing missiles in Cuba, only 90 miles from Florida.
In a bitter ironic twist, the Hezbollah attack that triggered the current crisis took place just as Jews throughout the world began a mournful three-week period of historic memory that culminates Aug. 3, a date corresponding on the Jewish calendar to the ninth day of the month of Av, or “Tisha B’Av” in Hebrew.
It is another painful example of how ancient history collides violently with contemporary events.
Because many horrific tragedies took place on or near that date in history, Tisha B’Av is a day of fasting when the biblical book of Lamentations is read in synagogues. The book’s authorship is ascribed to the prophet Jeremiah who grieved when Babylonia (now Iraq) destroyed the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.
Jeremiah’s poetic opening words about cities under attack, written nearly 2,600 years ago, remain poignant: “How lonely she (Jerusalem) sits, the city once thronged with people, as if suddenly widowed. Though once great among the nations, she, the princess among the provinces, is now reduced to vassalage.”
The Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple on the ninth of Av in A.D. 70, and the last Jewish rebellion in ancient Israel against the Romans ended on the same date in 135. In August 1492, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain ordered by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella took place on Tisha B’Av, and on July 18, 1994, a day after Tisha B’Av, the Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was blown up by terrorists (the case remains unsolved), killing 86 people and injuring more than 120.
Interestingly, less than 150 years after the Roman destruction of the Temple, Rabbi Judah Ha Nasi, a monumental figure in Jewish history, suggested abolishing Tisha B’Av, but his colleagues overruled him. And in recent years, a Conservative rabbi, Theodore Friedman, said the creation of an independent Israel with Jerusalem as its capital negated the need for a full day of fasting on Tisha B’Av, but he too was overruled.
But Judaism is not a religion nor are Jews a people that revel in collective mourning and grief. In the seven Sabbaths following gloomy Tisha B’Av, the consoling words of another prophet, Isaiah, are read in the synagogue beginning with this well-known message: “Comfort, O, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and declare to her that her term of service is over.”
Do not let anyone tell you that ancient wisdom has no place in our so-called “modern” world. The lessons of Jeremiah and Isaiah were clear thousands of years ago, and they remain equally clear today.
Nations and individuals need to mourn because loss and pain must not be suppressed. However, in their lamentations, nations and individuals must not “overreact” to sorrow. A realistic sense of hopeful comforting “proportionality” is required lest nations and individuals become so paralyzed by grief they are unable to act and move forward.
(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)
DSB/PH END RUDIN
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