When facing sadness or despair, the poet Wendell Berry seeks "the peace of wild things, who do not tax their lives with forethoughts of grief." Life in the wilderness takes place in the moment, without obsessive focus on either the future or the past. Berry follows Mishlei/Proverbs 6:6, which bids us to "go to the ant, consider its ways, and become wise." Among the many things that Creation can teach us is the importance of living in the present.
Though we are mostly like our animal cousins, human nature differs here. We welcome wilderness as a distraction from our usual preoccupation with time gone by, and time yet to be. This is especially true for we "people of the book" who lionize our written records, and look constantly to the past for guidance on the future. The Jewish festivals, for instance, revolve in large part around historical events -- the Exodus at Pesach, Sinai at Shavuot, wanderings at Sukkot, deliverances at Hannukah and Purim.
One date stands out for commemorating the painful parts of our history. The ninth day of the month of Av -- Tisha B'Av, falling this year on August 6-7 -- is the day on which, by tradition, numerous evils befell our people. The golden calf was supposedly made on this day, which the Talmud cites as the cause of continuing calamity. Both Temples were destroyed on 9 Av, by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE. The expulsion from Spain in 1492 was among numerous other tragedies to strike on (or near) this fraught anniversary.
Like the breaking of the glass at the end of a wedding, Tisha B'Av introduces sadness near the end of our mostly joyful year cycle. Along with Yom Hashoah and Yom Hazikaron (Holocaust Remembrance and Israeli Memorial Days), Tisha B'Av tempers our gladness with reminders of past tragedy. It also highlights our ongoing vulnerability, while raising the specter of possible future adversity as well. Through our fasting and abstaining and hearing the mournful melody of Eicha trop (Lamentations chant), Tisha B'Av prevents us from forgetting what victimhood feels like.
But Tisha B'Av fills a particular niche within the Jewish calendar, the mostly-upbeat-remainder of which forbids our feeling like perpetual victims -- freeing us to hear and respond to other peoples' pain, as well as our own. Tisha B'Av recalls past grief, and taxes our lives with forethought of the grief that lies ahead. But in context, it helps us balance the past and future with the present. It helps us balance joy with sadness, leaving us with a cautious optimism (or hopeful pessimism, take your pick). It is precisely the balance that we need in this era of war and terror and vulnerability, of epidemics and economic and ecological crises, of dubious leadership and soaring debt and searing doubt.
This year, as happens every so often, the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars bespeak simultaneous horrors. On this day in the year 70 the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, tens of thousands of our people were killed, and an era of exile began. On this day in 1945 the center of Hiroshima was destroyed, tens of thousands of people were killed, and an era of fear and danger began (even as a terrible war was foreshortened). We ignore the symbolism of this cosmic and calendrical alignment at our own peril.
On Tisha B'Av's past, only local temples/Temples were destroyed. Yet today we are poised to destroy not just God's preferred roost in a particular Israelite or Buddhist or Shinto temple, but the global revelation of God's handiwork. The "forethought of grief" with which we should now tax ourselves concerns God's temple writ large, namely the Earth ("the whole world is full of God's glory," says Isaiah 6:3). Now it is we who are playing latter-day Babylonians and Romans, incrementally destroying that which is most sacred and irreplaceable with our SUV's and Mc'mansions and love of mammon. Now the threat is not to one person or one people, but to all peoples, all species, all ecosystems.
Still, it's not too late to heed the bat kol (divine voice) of conservation and of consciousness. The same holiday cycle that commemorates history also celebrates nature -- Sukkot for the fall harvest, Pesach for early spring barley, Shavuot for late spring wheat, and so on. What will sprout this Tisha B'Av? May it be remembrance, and hope, and a recommitment to preventing all kinds of future destruction.
