Tisha B’Av is a day of fasting on the Jewish calendar. It is the year’s low point; almost every major tragedy in Jewish history is somehow tied in mythology to Tisha B’Av. The two ancient temples in Jerusalem were said to have been destroyed on this day. The essence of the holiday is that Jews mourn the destruction of the ancient temples and long for a return to Jerusalem and the rebuilding of the temple.
It is this essence that doesn’t make any sense to me. Liturgists have added new lamentations to reflect the Holocaust, but otherwise Liturgy is stuck in time almost 2,000 years ago. The fact that there is today an Israel with a politically united Jerusalem, headed by a Prime Minister who a few years ago catapulted himself into the prime ministership after setting forces into action by taking a walk on the Temple Mount reasserting Israeli sovereignty over the site – this is not part of the liturgy. Nope, we are sitting on the floor mourning a lost past as if all is desolate.
The point of the following is not to be jingoistic or to offend a global audience but to test the present reality against religious liturgy. I would argue that Jews have never had it so good in their entire history of existence and that Tisha B’Av feeds a siege mentality that helps Jews avoid the responsibility their present power affords them.
Today’s reality: Israel is the major power in the region. A million native inhabitants of the land are under curfew so that Israelis can attempt to do whatever they want. Every country including Arab ones with a quarter of the world’s oil that want to get anywhere in the world today or defend themselves against their Arab neighbors feels they have to suck up to Jews in order to get a direct line to America, where Jews are the top fundraisers and powerbrokers and hold many of the top positions. [Why else are Jewish leaders constantly being called in to visit Arab heads of state?] In certain cases, they rely on Israel for their ultimate defense. Orthodox Judaism has been enjoying a renaissance, and religious literature and amenities have become available in the world as never before. Jews can live almost anywhere in the world, eat kosher, and be reasonably secure; their money and property is as safe as anyone else’s (some might say safer), and there is nothing they can’t achieve. Indigenous People in third world countries from Peru and India to Ethiopia will do anything to prove themselves Jewish or convert because immigration to Israel means life in a Developed Country.
Israel’s GDP is higher than that of several EEC countries and almost all of the Arab oil-producing countries. It can land a nuclear bomb anywhere in Europe or Asia and monitor goings-on anywhere in the neighborhood. It launches satellites, sells weapons to countries such as the UK, China and Turkey, develops kick-ass medical treatments and IT-innovations with the world’s leading companies as investors, and its enemies are among the poorest educated, technologically decrepit and politically, economically and socially dysfunctional societies in the world, according to the latest UN-sponsored report. They constantly try to attack Israel and the West only to suffer endless self-inflicted humiliations; just this past week, Morocco found its soldiers shoved off a deserted island off its coast that it claimed as its own in less than just one hour after Spain which owns the island sent troops to get rid of them. And you can bet the King of Morocco will somehow declare victory. There is a new book out with regard to the 1967 war which says that by all accounts, the Israelis had no intention of seizing all this Arab territory in the war but were prodded to do so by all the Arab attacks that took place as the war progressed.
What is the substance of the threat to Israel today? Even now, two years of intifadah have achieved absolutely nothing and have only turned the clock backward 15 years for Palestinians to a state of full occupation before the first intifadah. Considering their economic situation is even worse now than it was then, 25 years is more the figure. The world has come to think of them as mafia-led suicidal martyrs in waiting who know only how to back losers (there is something comical when the American favorite Mr. Dahlan says that as long as Israel is against Arafat he will be with him); the West and the Israeli Left now privately figure there’s nothing to do except keep them fenced off in their asylum till they come to their senses, get rid of Arafat and come to the table. Sharon never had it so good his whole life. The Arabs humor the Palestinians and their mythological “Street” with lip service publicly and cheer Sharon on privately. (You know that Mubarak’s public statements don’t match his private ones.) Every time people get together to talk about peace and Israeli concessions, another bomb goes off. Just like clockwork. Here’s a recent Sharon quote that tells you exactly where he’s at: “We are in the middle of the beginning of the continuation of the process.” He can talk this way as long as the people on the other side of the fence consider anything less than declaring victory a concession.
Sure there are suicide bombers and attacks with dead and wounded, but the Israelis are not intimidated and in fact have rediscovered Zionism and their mission to fight for survival. In the last call-up of reserves, over 95% showed up. It’s not for nothing they were marked in the Bible as stiff-necked people. Many Israelis figure given what they hear and see that they would have this terrorism and more so if they gave up half the land to the Palestinians, so therefore there is no incentive to compromise. Since the Palestinians keep bringing the war to Israel proper and keep talking about 1948 Israel, there isn’t very much to think about. The main threat of unconventional weapons comes from Iraq and Hussein will be history a year from now. Meanwhile, Jews can get on a plane at dinner time in New York or almost anywhere else in the world and find themselves in Tel Aviv the next morning. And they keep going there to visit and live and even commute for work. This last week a 747 filled with new immigrants from North America landed in Israel.
Deuteronomy opens with stories of Jewish conquest of Canaan. The text says that God hardened the hearts of the local warlords in order that they should fight the Jews and then be humiliated by the Jews who would then conquer them. History repeats itself, if you believe this. Here’s a quote from an obviously progressive professor of Islamic law in Riyadh speaking last week to a reporter from the New York Times (who after all brought himself to speak to a Times reporter): “Well, of course I hate you because you are Christian, but that doesn’t mean I want to kill you.” With enemies as predictable and didactic as what Israel faces today, Israel can’t lose.
So what am I mourning about this Tisha B’Av? That I can’t walk on Ben Yehudah Street and not fear terrorism any less than I can walk on 34th Street in Manhattan and fear a dirty bomb? (Last October I was scared to return to New York from Tel Aviv.) That I can’t offer animal sacrifices in a holy temple that is under Israeli sovereignty and that my own rabbis decided I shouldn’t step foot upon because it is so holy (one of the biggest theological and political mistakes of the modern era, in my opinion) and that our politicians have decided to abdicate the Temple Mount to Moslems because they consider it too sensitive? The question for the purpose of this discussion is not whether or not I want to do this, but whether or not I can do this. Think about it – say the Jews decided to take over the Temple Mount and rebuild the third temple. What would the Arabs do? Complain. Sue. What else? Send a million people in their sandals across the desert to take it back? Sitting ducks. Lob over a nuclear bomb? Goodbye, Mecca and Medina. Besides, the Christians see that as bringing the Messiah and would back the Jews to the hilt.
It is amazing to see the shift in America with evangelical Christians lining up with Israel in a very vocal way that is forcing an overall realignment in American politics and which explains why Bush, who should have been the biggest friend the Gulf ever had, has been one of the best friends Sharon ever had. At the March rally in Washington it was the Christians at the microphones that said all the stuff the Jews didn’t have the guts to say. It was Christian money that paid for that 747 filled with immigrants and which gave those immigrants stipends. I trust all this Christian evangelical support about as far as I can throw it (the only thing special about Billy Graham telling President Nixon how he secretly hates Jews and that they are ruining America, but that publicly he is friendly to them and maintains many friendships is that the tape was discovered); the leaders have their evangelical motives, but the alliance of support is tangible on a real-people basis across grass-roots America and 9/11 has strengthened it.
Think about it. Put politeness aside and just consider where the Power is. Tisha B’Av is about the loss of power. Jews lost it to the Babylonians and then the Romans and were forced into exile for 2,000 years. Now they have neither exile nor the lack of power, be it military, economic or political. How can we ignore the change in our history?
Tisha B’Av has many reasons to exist. There are many reasons to take a day out of the calendar and mourn the death and destruction that has befallen Jews throughout their history if for no reason other than they are Jews. A Jew cannot escape his heritage and the fact that he is targeted because of what he is born into, not what he has done in his life. There are anti-semitic attacks almost all over the world almost every day, even where there are hardly any Jews around to attack. It is a day to ponder sin and to think about repentance. But the liturgy has to catch up. And our attitude of siege mentality needs to shift toward a realization of our power and a consideration of the responsibility that comes with it. Perhaps even a sense of magnanimity and the willingness to take risks, not only because it might produce rewards but because it may be the right thing to do.
It is too easy to assume there is no power or responsibility if one always feels himself a victim under attack in an endless search for perfection of security akin to a search for financial security before retirement — something people always feel they can never reach, no matter how much they ever get. Today we are under attack not because we are vulnerable but because we are powerful and using that power to keep others down and of course they are resisting it. Over 99% of Palestinians are not involved in terror but they are suffering the outrage of its effects and, because they are ruled from the barrel of a gun on both sides of the equation, are powerless to stop it. Many innocent people have been killed, their lives ruined and their daily existence made into a living hell. There is communal punishment, something which is unfair and mean, even if rationalized or justified as a necessary act of self defense. There is discrimination to Arab-Israelis and others who live in Israel proper and the occasional attempt to enshrine it in legislation. We can’t ignore these effects even though there is popular support for terror sown out of this frustration because we know we wouldn’t just sit there and take it ourselves if the power were on the other side. Tisha B’Av in the Hebrew year 5762 needs its mourners to come to grips with the delicate balance between power, responsibility and security. Holding ourselves to standards we don’t expect from our enemies is not the call of a knee-jerk liberal; it is a sacred supreme religious duty bestowed upon a kingdom of priests toward the sanctification of God’s Name. To do otherwise is to invite the condemnation of the world and to thus commit the sin of defiling His Name.
