Who is comforting whom?

last Shabbat to this, we travel from moments of al eleh ani bochiya, “for these I weep,” to nachamu nachamu ami, “Take comfort, take comfort, My people.” Between these two points in Jewish time, the pain peaks with Tisha b’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar, when we sit on the floor, when we read Lamentations, when prophets and poets weave the tragedies of Jewish history into a tapestry of texts. We read Eicha, the Scroll of Lamentations, a word which, with the switch of two vowels, can also be read as Ayeka, “where are You?” — a primal cry from the depths, a question to G-d emanating from the Jewish people’s sense of loneliness and abandonment in their moments of anguish over the […]