Joanne Greenway

Tomorrow the Jewish community marks Tisha Ba’Av, the 9th of Av, a fast day to commemorate the destruction of the 2 holy Temples in Jerusalem (by the Babylonians in 586BC and by the Romans in 70CE) as well as many other calamities that have befallen the Jewish people through the centuries.

Those that are familiar with the process of mourning a loved one in Jewish tradition will notice a remarkable feature of the mourning for the Temple on and leading up to Tisha Ba’Av.  HaRav Yosef Dov Soloveitchik (the great 20th Century American Rabbinic thinker) in his series of lectures, Shiurei haRav, most famously explained the reverse correlation between new and old mourning (‘aveilut’).  With new mourning, a person is grieving and distraught.  The Jewish law and practice reflects this, setting out a framework to follow our psychology by gradually lifting the strictures of the mourning practice. For Rav Soloveitchik, having a sequence helps to manage one’s feelings and give them a framework with limits. Conversely, old mourning feels less natural.  In order to keep events of the distant past in memory, we need a process of gradual build up.

When mourning a relative, one starts with the strictest practices, effectively withdrawing from the physical world until the burial, then mourning intensely during the initial 7 day ‘shiva’ period, then lessening the mourning rituals to the observance of the 30 day ‘shloshim’ which includes not hearing music, cutting hair and nails, wearing freshly laundered clothes.  Finally, certain elements of this practice remain for 12 months, including attending celebratory events.

When mourning an ancient historic event, we start with 3 weeks of observing customs similar to those of the ‘shloshim’, followed by 9 days of withdrawal from physical pleasure which includes not eating meat or drinking wine, culminating on Tisha Ba’av itself when we are expected to feel a palpable sense of aveilut (mourning).  Given that this is not a natural feeling, we are given the tools to help build up to it, including a set of sombre prayers (kinot) to create the appropriate mood on the day and redramatise remote events.

For many, the impact of political events in Israel this week and, more particularly, the deep societal divisions that they have highlighted, have indeed created a context in which to mourn and reflect. According to many opinions, the Temples’ destruction was caused by baseless hatred amongst the Jewish people.  Current events bring those distant events back to an unsettling proximity and remind us of the imperative to strive for love, trust, tolerance and peace. As Rav Soloveitchik commented “experiential memory somehow erases the borderline separating bygone from present experiences. It does not just recollect the past, but re-experiences whatever has been. It quickens events which man considered dead and it actually merges past with present - or shifts the past into the present. Judaism has recommended what I would call a "unitive time consciousness" - unitive in the sense that there is a tightening of bonds of companionship, of present and past”. The gradually intensifying mourning practices have felt very natural and a day of fasting will be apt. 

We pray it will be a unifying and a restorative day and that Rav Soloveitchik’s concept of ‘unitive time consciousness’ will connect us strongly both to the history of tragedy we have inherited and the covenant that binds us together for the future.  Indeed, as the Rav stresses, we must not allow hope to give way to despair: “No matter how difficult times are, no matter how great the loss is, however dreary and bleak the present seems, the future shines with a brilliant glow full of promise. The messianic hope has never vanished.”

Joanne Greenaway is Chief Executive of the London School of Jewish Studies