A Few Minutes More
July 31, 2008
Holidays | Jewish Living | Torah
(21 comments)
By David A.M. Wilensky
Yesterday a post by Rabbi Joel R. Schwartzman appeared on this blog titled "Ten More Minutes of Torah." It was a response to Lewis M. Barth's recent Ten Minutes of Torah for Masei, in which Barth argued that the current Haftarah cycle of three haftarot of destruction followed by seven haftarot of consolation suggest that Reform Judaism should reassess its relationship with Tishah B'Av. Rabbi Schwartzman's post expressed strong discomfort with this idea.
Rabbi Schwartzman's first argument is typical of Reform Jews who are uncomfortable with even talking about the Temple in a Reform context. He tells us that, "Given the importance of the Temple in the Conservative and Orthodox movements, whether spiritually or practically, we Reformists would do well to consider exactly what we would be tying onto ourselves were we to adopt Tishah B'Av observances."
"Would this, then, also entail re-instating the tri-fold division of our people into Kohanim, Levi'im and Yisraelim (Priests, Levites and Israelites), as we mourn the loss of the Temples and the sacrificial system it embodied?" asks Rabbi Schwartzman. Once again, certainly not. He is simply laying out a slippery slope for you.
Let me present an argument similar to Rabbi Schwartzman's: "Does mourning the loss of the immense and rich culture of European Jewry that existed before the Shoah mean that we desire to return to a ghettoized, isolationist shtetl lifestyle?" Obviously that's not what is meant when we mourn the loss of that culture. We accept that a Jewish way of life, full of culture, came to an end and we mourn its loss.
At the same time, we are able to see our current way of life for the acceptable and rich way of life that it is. It is the same for the loss of the Temple. Do we want to build the Third Temple and return to a sacrificial system of worship? No, but we mourn the loss of our ancestors' way of life.
Rabbi Schwartzman notes, "There is merit in our knowing the history of the calamities which befell our people on this date in the Jewish calendar." Holidays certainly serve an instructional purpose. The stories of Purim, Chanukah, and Pesach are well known to any Jew who attended just a couple of years of religious school at their childhood synagogue. Could they tell you word one about the destruction of the Temples? I doubt it. If, however, Tishah B'Av were on our Reform radar screens more prominently, we would all learn the story.
Indeed, according to a post today at Jewschool by blogger Aryeh Cohen, Rambam himself would agree that the purpose of Tishah B'Av is instructional. "The point of these fasts, according to Maimonides, is not their historical referent, but rather that their historical referent should cause us to reflect upon the reasons that brought us to catastrophe.
Tisha B'av (the ninth day of Av) is a fast which memorializes the breakdown of the polity, and forces us to confront the radical possibility that an ethical or just polity is itself impossible. For this reason the customs of the day, such as not greeting one another and sitting alone and not engaging in business or even in Torah study--all these are performances of the dissolution of society," says Cohen.
In the final paragraph of his post, Rabbi Schwartzman unintentionally points out a larger issue that is of great concern to me. "We often run the risk as Reform Jews of living as though we are observing our religion through the practices of our co-religionists," he says. God forbid we should do things similarly to our more conservative co-religionists, he seems to suggest! Sometimes we become so wrapped up in hesitant Reform dogma, that we miss out on a beautiful practice, such as reading the poetry of Eichah (Lamentations)!
Come Tishah B'Av you'll be able to find this blogger fasting and reading Eichah, and somehow finding it possible not to re-establish the priestly class.
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Perhaps there is a middle ground between where you and Rabbi Scwartzman stand. I understand why he states "we often run the risk as Reform Jews of living as though we are observing our religion through the practices of our co-religionists." We shouldn't follow an observance just because the more "traditional" Jews do it. As Reform Jews it is our responsibility to take an approach toward our observances in a more mindful way than merely following for the sake of following.
Within our own communities it would probably be a good conversation to have on whether or not we do find any meaning in Tisha B'Av. If we do, then it might be time to develop a different way to observe, to set apart the observances that mark a mourning for the destruction of the Temple and waiting for the messiah from our more modern sensibilities.