Dueling Eicha’s…with wheels

August 9, 2011 - 9:43 AM by · 1 Comment
Filed under: Religion 

Segway riders at the Haas Promenade

As David wrote yesterday, the holiday of Tisha B’av has befallen us (morbid pun intended) and Jews all over the world are spending the day reflecting, fasting or otherwise using the holiday’s restrictions to avoid shaving and bathing for a day.

On the evening of Tisha B’av, it is traditional to hear the book of Lamentations (Eicha) being read in a communal setting. In Jerusalem, there is no lack of options. One of the most moving is outdoors at the Haas Promenade (the tayelet in Hebrew), which overlooks the Old City. If one isn’t sure why we still bother to mourn the destruction of the Temples so many centuries ago on this day (especially when we have regained sovereignty over the land), you can just gaze from this lookout point and imagine what if the Jewish state no longer existed and access to what Judaism calls its most holy places was cut off (as it was between 1948-1967). David’s quote of Rabbi Stewart Weiss’s essay drives the point home.

But there’s a “lighter side” to Tisha B’av, as my experience last night at the tayelet proved. The scene is quite remarkable: tens of different minyans, small and large, bumping up against each other on the paved upper part of the promenade, on the grass below, and even further down in the direction of the Peace Forest. Unlike at the Western Wall, many are co-ed. The participants range from overseas yeshiva students to egalitarian vegetarians (each with their own group and leader).

I chose to attend a mixed modern Orthodox reading. I arrived late and sat near the edge of the congregation while a man chanted the 5 chapters of Eicha in a soulful yet dirge-like voice. About halfway through, another minyan set up camp directly above me and began their own reading of Eicha. The two were out of sync, the interplay playing out like an impromptu and not entirely welcome duet.

The effect didn’t make for easy listening; I eventually closed my book and stared into Silwan, the Arab village surrounding the City of David, adjacent to the Old City. Then, inexplicably, I heard a rumble from not too far away. It got louder and closer until about 15 men and women on Segways came barreling through our Eicha encampment. The Segways  stayed to the pavement, but it was still an amusing juxtaposition – the tall, sleek, two-wheeled vehicles with their helmeted riders bobbing back and forth, zipping past hundreds of modern day mourners seated on the ground in the dark with flashlight illuminating their prayer books.

The Segways made a second pass before leaving us in peace, but I couldn’t help thinking: if the goal is to remember the bad things that have befallen the Jewish people, some in this very spot, and in my case by soaking in the visual environment rather than following the text word-by-word, couldn’t you do it just as well from a Segway as from a 2000-year-old scroll?

With the Segways gone, it was back to the dueling Eichas. Remarkably, the two readings ended at the same point – kudos to the conductor (or as some would say the Conductor with a capital C).

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Tisha B’av with helicopters

July 19, 2010 - 10:11 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Religion 

The book of Eicha is traditionally read on Tisha B'av

Every year on Tisha B’av, there are pundits who write in the local newspapers that we should stop fasting and start celebrating.

Tisha B’av – the ninth day of the Jewish month of Av (which always falls somewhere in super-heated July or August) – commemorates various tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people, first and foremost the destructions of the first and second temples in Jerusalem and their subsequent exiles.

In order to properly mourn, traditional Jews refrain from eating from sundown to sundown on Tisha B’av.

But why, if the Jewish people have returned from exile to re-establish a sovereign Jewish state and even have control over Jerusalem itself, should we continue to fast? Anshel Pfeffer, writing in Haaretz, is the latest in an annual stream of columnists calling for an end to all the pseudo-sackcloth and ashes.

“Tisha B’Av was never supposed to be an eternal day of mourning,” Pfeffer writes. “The prophet Zechariah, who according to tradition lived 2,500 years ago, at the time of the first return to Zion and the building of the Second Temple, quoted the Lord of Hosts promising that ‘the fasts of the fourth month, and of the fifth, seventh and tenth months will become festivals of joy and happiness for the House of Judah.’”

Not only is the exile over, but those Jews who remain living outside of Israel are not being prevented from emigrating but rather are doing so out of choice, Pfeffer says. “Praying to God that all these millions of Jews will up themselves and make aliyah is hypocritical,” he adds.

Now, there are those who say we must continue to mourn until a third temple is built. Pfeffer has an answer for that as well. When Israel captured the Old City in 1967, it was Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan who assured Muslim Wakf officials they would have full control of the Temple Mount area. “The only reason that the third temple has not been built is that a majority of Israelis simply are not interested,” Pfeffer writes.

When I presented Pfeffer’s point to some friends, though, I was quickly reminded that the temples were destroyed by what the rabbis deemed “baseless hatred.” And we are far from overcoming such feelings today. Indeed, a Ynet-Gesher poll asked Israelis “What, in your opinion, is the worst source of tension in Israeli society?” 42 percent indicated religious vs. secular issues (there’s lots more in the poll – worth checking out).

So, said my friends, we continue to mourn – not for the destruction of the temples but for the continued brokenness of our fragile society.

That’s also what our rabbi said in a preface to reading the book of Eicha (Lamentations) in the garden of the Jerusalem Nature Museum earlier this evening. But as we sat outside, listening to the mournful tunes being chanted under the stars, the silence was repeatedly broken by the sound of a helicopter circling directly above us. I timed it – it came around regularly every 5-6 minutes. The copter must have made at least 10 very noisy flyovers during the reading.

None of us knew what the helicopter was doing. Was it police or army? Had their been a tip-off that a terror attack was immiment? Or was this area – close to the Knesset – always patrolled and we just normally never stop to listen?

In any of those cases, the symbolism seemed clear: exile must truly be over – we have our own security forces with our own helicopters that can protect the Jewish people from future disasters.

Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe the reason we need the helicopters is that we still have enemies who are bent on our destruction. Only once we have true peace in the region can we start eating again on Tisha B’av.

Food for thought…well at least for after the fast.

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Nostalgia Sunday – Jerusalem the Center

July 18, 2010 - 8:26 PM by · 2 Comments
Filed under: Art, General, History and Culture, Holidays, Life, Nostalgia Sunday, Religion, Travel 

Jerusalem is central to Judaism. And no day is that fact made more evident than Tisha b’Av, the Ninth of Av, the day on which both the First and Second Temples were destroyed and the Jews exiled. It is a day of fasting and mourning, but also of study, prayer and hope that Jerusalem will one day be truly rebuilt and the Jews returned to their ancient homeland.

To mark the upcoming holy day, here are some pictures of Jerusalem, ancient and modern, courtesy of the excellent Jerusalem Shots website.


© trionfo


© RomKri


© trionfo


© Misha Burlatsky


© G. Eric and Edith Matson


© RomKri


© trionfo


© Олег Велобегов

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Missing Dad

August 10, 2008 - 7:03 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: History and Culture, Holidays, Immigrant Moments, Life 

It’s Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. Although I don’t fast, I do feel an affinity, a closeness to the destruction of the Second Temple, maybe because my Dad talked about it a lot. This is what happens when you’re the child of a Jewish historian – or maybe just the child of a Jew – some far-away events become very immediate and very real.

The destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE marked the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora, and the beginning of the long and complicated relationship between the Church and the Jews – a topic on which my Dad built his career. But all this is very abstract and that’s the hard part of trying to mourn on a midsummer day when the weather outside is gorgeous and life in general is pretty darn good. And so I find my thoughts wandering towards the personal and missing my Dad, who passed away four and a half years ago.

“Who am I going to call when I have a question about something? I’m going to have to buy an encyclopedia,” my sister Becky said, only half-jokingly, at the shiva. It was true. If you ever had a question about anything, at any time of the day or night, all you had to do was call Dad. My father had a prodigious memory and was interested in just about everything, from the Sumerian cuneiform glyphs on which he’d done his PhD. (with a good deal of prodding from my mother, as he was always easily distracted) to Jennifer Lopez’s impending marriage to Ben Affleck (he was relieved when it got called off). Now we were going to have to fend intellectually for ourselves.

My mother died when we were young, so there was no one to oversee this absent-minded professor while we were growing up. Her death was our own personal First Temple destruction – damaging on a psychic level – but his death has sent us into a familial Diaspora. Spread out over three continents, we work very hard now to see one another.

Partly as therapy, but mostly to keep alive the work of a great teacher and lecturer who didn’t publish very much, Becky has spent a good part of the last four years sorting, editing and publishing audio and video versions of Dad’s lectures. My other sister had a baby and named him for Dad. Me? I think about him and my mom, and write stuff down.

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Light up the sky

August 3, 2008 - 8:56 PM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: General, History and Culture, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

Driving into Jerusalem this evening, we were treated to an array of firecrackers lighting up the sky over our general neighborhood. We couldn’t quite figure out where they were coming from at first, but given that we’re in the period of the nine days before Tisha B’Av, it was clear that they weren’t coming from a wedding hall in Talpiot, as weddings aren’t held during this mourning period. As we approached our ‘hood, it became clear that they were coming from Beit Safafa, a nearby Arab neighborhood where someone, somewhere, was probably celebrating something.

It isn’t an unusual happening to have firecrackers going off in our neck of the woods, particularly during the spring and summer months. It starts with Purim, when the noisy merrymaking includes firecrackers, although local rabbis have been prohibiting their use after the number of injuries goes up during the three-day holiday. Then it continues into Yom Haatzmaut, with massive displays in local towns and cities as a sign that Yom Hazikaron/Memorial Day has ended and the celebrations of Yom Haatzmaut, Independence Day, can begin.

But once the merrymaking starts in the spring, it continues unabated into the summer, with nearly every event, whether it’s the nightly weddings, outdoor summer concerts or just general solstice revelry that brings out the fireworks. It’s sort of the westernized version of firing a gun into the air during a celebration, a local Middle Eastern custom, or the slightly tamer version of the Israeli love of fire scultpures, witnessed in Scouts ceremonies, when an entire banner or symbol will be set ablaze in the evening light.

Whatever the reason, once you get over being spooked by the sound, which can sound a lot like a bomb — tfu, tfu, tfu — you head outside and look up at the sky for the latest pyrotechnic display. Fun for free.

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