Tisha B’Av

What we do, and more importantly, what we do not do

Today is Tisha B’Av, the day when we remember all of the calamities which have befallen the Jewish Nation during the last three thousand years. Rebbetzen Yamima Mizrachi put out this talk just before Tisha B’Av.

It is so beautiful that I wanted to translate it and post it on this saddest of days.

In some places I have paraphrased her words, but mostly this is directly quoted from the Rebbetzin.

So what do we do on Tisha B’Av? And why do I say “do”, when actually we don’t do things on Tisha B’av?

Rabbi Nachman M’Breslev says the lack of doing is perhaps the most important kind of “not doing”.

What don’t we do?

1. Eat. We do not eat or drink.

We fast on Tisha B’Av. Fasting: the word for “fast” in Hebrew is tzom, the same letters that are in the word l’tzamtzem, to minimize, to reduce. We reduce our place, we minimize ourselves, so that we can make room for someone else next to us.

And this year, when we fast, we remember the the hostages, the people who only receive a piece of dry pita to eat, if even that.

2. We do not wear leather shoes.

Barefoot. We remember Shiri Bivas, who was taken barefoot with her two red-haired babies to Gaza, as a hostage. She picked them up in her arms and was forced to walk on the hot earth with thorns. We go in your path, Shiri, barefoot, and we are waiting for you to return with your beautiful children.

3. We do not have intimate relations on this day.

We remember all the women who are left alone, without their husbands in this war. So many women are still waiting for their husbands to come back from captivity. We remember the soldiers who will never come back; we separate ourselves a little bit to remember what they are going through.

4. We are not allowed to wash.

And this way remember the hostages who have not been allowed to take showers for many moths. Our soldiers, who cannot take showers for weeks at a time because they are fighting in Gaza. And also because of this wounded soldier who lost both his hands and told me he cannot take a shower by himself. So we wash our hands only up to the ends of our fingers to be connected to you, dear man.

And I want to talk about what we are allowed to do on Tisha B’Av, and that is the mitzva, the commandment to cry.  A tear. We don’t wipe away a tear that flows from our eyes. Tradition tells us, at the destruction of the First House of God, when the boys were taken into captivity, their arms were tied: they were not able to wipe away the tears that flowed. So we remember our hostages by not wiping away our tears. According to the hostages who came back from Gaza, they were not allowed to cry--they were threatened with death if they made a sound. So we remember them with our tears.

But even more. A tear has an amazing function, according to Judaism. A tear always erases the reality that came before it. Take, for example, the very first terrible Tisha B’Av in history. God tells the people that He is giving them the promised land, and they cry! They don’t want it. So the Land is erased and is distanced from them for 40 years while they wander in the desert. But on Tisha B’Av, when we cry about the destruction and death and the bereavement, this tear erases death, destroys the destruction, and removes the bereavement and even erases the tear itself.

All those things we are not allowed to do [as we said above] are actually the ways in which we respond to and make room for someone else’s pain.

And my dear student who tells me that on Shabbat when, in her village, many army vehicles are driving to the end of the street, they understand that a family lost their child in a battle in Gaza. And everyone stays inside their homes to let them have those moments alone. And two soldiers knock on the window.

And she points in a different direction and says, “there…there…”

and they say, “No, here,”

and she says, “No! there!”

And they say, “There, also. And also here.”

And she hears that another boy, on the same street, also he fell.

And then, it comes down to all of us the understanding that this day, Tisha B’Av, it’s not just the unbearable pain of the Omnipresent One, and not of the neighbor, but of the neighborhood. It is all of our pain.

“Acheinu, kol Beit Yisrael, all who are in pain and captive.” our brothers, all of Israel. All of us [whether you are in our Land or whether you are in a different country]. This day is bigger than our fights, our arguments, our disagreements.

Let’s make ourselves smaller, on this fast day. Let’s make room for those who are in this painful place. Those who will soon return, and stand next to us , and we will wipe their tears away because death is dead, we’ll say to them, “captivity is over.”

Now you have returned home.