TISHA B’AV
This week marks the Jewish sacred day of Tisha B’av. It is a day that commemorates many of the terrible things that have happened to us as a people. These are just some of the sources of ancestral trauma. They include the destruction of both the first and second Temples in Jerusalem, the crushing of the rebellion of Bar Kochba in 135CE, the last grasp of Jewish independence before the modern state of Israel, expulsions from England, France and Spain. In WW 2, the final solution was approved on the 9th of Av in 1941 and in 1942 the transfer of the Jewish population of the Warsaw ghetto to the death camps began. A truly black day.
Martin Prechtel and Frances Waller, two great contemporary thinkers, teach us that grief and praise are completely intertwined. That we must grieve in order to be able to truly praise and we must truly praise in order to grieve.
I want to offer up three practices for your consideration this coming Tisha B’av (starts Wednesday night, July 26).
I learned to sing Ani Ma’amin in camp. I want to a Labor Zionist camp, and we certainly did not believe in the coming of the Messiah in the same way that this song does. And yet, our singing of the song was a declaration that even remembering the darkest, most traumatic moments of our history, hope is both possible and necessary. And we are in a dark period of history, that’s for sure. Here’s the lyrics. You can find versions of it on Spotify, Youtube or wherever you get music.
Ani Ma'amin
אֲנִי מַאֲמִין
Ani ma'amin
b'e munah sh'leimah
b'viat ha mashiach,
veaf al pi sh'yitmameah
im kol zeh achakeh lo
behol yom sheyavo.
אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶּאֱמוּנָה שְׁלֵמָה בְּבִיאַת הַמָּשִֽׁיחַ, וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיִּתְמַהְמֵֽהַּ, עִם כָּל זֶה אֲחַכֶּה לּוֹ בְּכָל יוֹם שֶׁיָּבוֹא.
Translation:
I believe with perfect faith in the coming of the Messiah, and, though he tarry, I will wait daily for his coming.
The second practice is to marry grief and praise. Make a list of some of your biggest losses in your life. Write a little bit about the loss and sing a song of praise for having this person or thing in your life. Express your gratitude. As an example, when I left the commune I lived on after college, I lost my daily connection to land that I loved. So I’d explore that a bit more and then go into how grateful I am for having had the time with that beautiful land and I’d sing my songs of praise to that land, a love song to it.
A third practice is to write a prayer or a lamentation. We traditionally read Lamentations on Tisha B’av. This prayer/lamentation extents extends both our praise and our grief to the more than human world. I hope that this prayer stimulates your own prayers. Feel free to borrow or steal all or part.
I acknowledge and feel all the ancestral pain and trauma of our lives. We were invaded, we were persecuted because we were other. Our Temples were destroyed, our righteous uprising was defeated with Bar Kochba, we were expelled from this country and that, most notably Spain. We were persecuted by the Russians and the Slavs who scapegoated us routinely. We were systematically murdered by the Germans while too much of the world stood by and watched.
It is my vow that I limit how much I pass on this ancestral trauma. I can’t completely eliminate it, but I can name it and acknowledge it and not let it fester. I can commit to not perpetrating it on other humans, to not use my ancestral trauma to justify creating ancestral trauma for others, as is currently happening in my ancestral homeland.
I also acknowledge the pain and suffering I am inflicting on multiple species and the more than human world as a whole. Most of those species are completely invisible to me, of course. But I know that my species is killing other species, and this is unacceptable. I vow to live my life in such a way that I cause less harm. I am trapped in a society where we kill others through habitat destruction, through pesticides and fertilizers. I will limit my participation in this destruction as I am capable, and I will grieve our human actions and the results they cause.
I pray that my words and my actions be acceptable and make some kind of difference.
