Rabbi Alan Lew zl in 2003 I find it impossible to read the texts of Tisha BAv, with their great themes of exile and return, andtheir endless sense of longing for the land of Israel, without thinkinf of the current political tragedy in the Middle East. i write this at a very dark moment in the long and bleak history of that conflict. Who knows what will be happening there when you read this? But I think its a safe bet that whenever you fo, one thing is unlikely to have changed.There will likely be a tremendous compulsion for historical vindication on both sides.Very often, i think it is precisely the impossible yearning for historical justification that makes resolution of this conflict seem so impossible. The Jews want vindication for the Holocaust, and for the two thousand years of European persecution (...). And the Palestinians? They would like the world to acknowledge that they lived in the land now called Israel for centuries, that they planted olive trees, sheperded flocks, and raised families for hundreds of years (...). And I think the need to have these things acknowledged-the need for historical affirmation- is so great on both sides that both the Israelis and the Palestinians would rather perish as peoples than give this need up. In fact, I think they feel that they would perish as peoples precisely if they did. They would rather die than admit their own complicity in the present situation, because to make such an admission would be to acknowledge the suffering of the other and the legitimacy of the others complaint, and that might mean that they themselves were wrong (...). I wonder how many of us are struck in a similar snare. I wonder how many of us are holding on very hard to some piece of personal history that is preventing us from moving on with our lives, and keeping us from those we love. I wonder how many of us cling so tenaciously to a version of the story of our lives in which we appear to be utterly blameless and innocent, that we become oblivious to the pain we have inflicted on others, no matter how unconsciously or inevitably or innocently we may have inflicted it. (...) Tisha BAv is the beggining of Teshuvah, the process of turning that we hope to complete on Yom Kippur, the process of returning to ourselves and to G.od. And the acknowleedgment of the unresolved in our lives, as a people and as individualsm is the beggining of the sacred power the Days of Awe grant us (...). From This is Real and Youre completely unprepared. The days of Awe as a Journey of transformation., p.47-50
Posted on: Thu, 31 Jul 2014 09:28:16 +0000
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