I remember traveling from Israel to Boston after 9/11 and after the attempted shoe bombing, enduring seemingly interminable security lines, including, for the first time, removing my shoes. While I was relieved to see how thorough and serious the security was, I remember also thinking: Of course next time terrorists will use a new method.
I think about this when I think about Tisha b’Av, the national day of mourning of the Jewish people.
Imagine, if you will, the time leading up to the destruction of the Second Temple. That generation was informed by the reasons for the destruction of the First Temple. They were the famous three sins of murder, idolatry and sexual promiscuity. So here it is, this next generation feeling secure that its Temple won’t be destroyed, since it moved away from these root causes of the destruction of the First Temple.
The only thing is, those three big sins they had conquered turned out to have been the battles of yesteryear.
What was plaguing the Jewish people in the lead up to the destruction of the Second Temple was deep divisiveness, militant self-righteousness, and corruption.
Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it — a companion sentiment might be to identify a current threat or challenge that a could escalate into tragedy. Certainly, Tisha b’Av is a time when we reflect on the tragedies of our past and grieve for their profound losses that shaped our painful exiles.
Learning from mistakes and endeavoring not to repeat them are hard enough. Identifying the next danger, the new one, is near impossible. Yet, that is part of the legacy and lesson of Tisha b’Av.
We know now that the cause of the destruction of the Second Temple was not the big three sins, but something new: baseless hatred.
It was 2,000 years of gut-wrenching wanderings and tortures, culminating in genocide, before the Jewish people found their way home again. It seems that is was a lot harder to rebuild a society destroyed by baseless hatred than by the terrible three sins that caused the first destruction. The interim between those two temples was only 70 years.
Like every generation, we must try to crystallize our generation’s challenge that is keeping the temple from being rebuilt. Just like security personnel need to anticipate what the next destruction can theoretically be in order to prevent it, so must we, on a national Jewish level, guard our long awaited, blessed return to the land of Israel. Just like security personnel add shoe removal and other safety measure to keep the skies safe, we must continue to reign in baseless hatred. It seems not to be a time-bound characteristic, limited to a particular era, but a danger always lurking. It could lead the Jewish people to the abyss again, G-d forbid.
“Baseless hatred” — these are such strong words.
I don’t think most people hate others. What animates strongly held opinions is often a strong sense of principle that can border on self- righteousness. Loyalty to a cause can become blinding. Giving an inch feels like a failure. Compromise feels like weakness, when in reality it can be the strongest maneuver of all.
When you read the stories of the destruction of the Second Temple, it was militant self righteousness that played a key role in radical acts that led to the actual destruction — for which we still mourn today each year on Tisha b’Av.
Destructive finality just comes or happens in a day. It often unfolds like the “boiling frog.” By gradually increasing the temperature on a pot of water containing a frog, the frog does not realize he is being boiled alive. If the heat were to be turned up in one shot, the frog would feel it, and immediately jump out, thereby saving itself. The process of destruction can be incremental, to a point of no return.
And so it was. It started at a certain point, and the next thing the ancient Jews knew, they were at the abyss wondering: “How?” “How did we get here?”
Ernest Hemingway touched on this in The Sun Also Rises. “How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.” Those incremental pivots, that one day for good or for bad can create a sea change.
In our grieving for the losses that litter our history, there is that duality: Our knowledge of what caused destruction in the past, baseless hatred, which translated as militant righteousness, the inability to see or respect another point of view. And our current challenges, unique to our own generation.
If destruction can come in “two ways,” “gradually, but suddenly,” perhaps rebuilding can too. Perhaps if we each individually and nationally “gradually” saturate our lives with small pivots for good, we can find ourselves “suddenly” transmuting the crying eye and the painful chanting of Lamentations on Tisha b’Av into the music and song of comfort and redemption.
Copyright © 2021 by the Intermountain Jewish News
