Current events and Tisha B’Av

AND DAVID said to Gad, I am deeply distressed; let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for His mercy is great, but let me not fall into the hand of man (II Samuel 24:14, and recited twice daily during week-days).

Columnists comment on the events of the moment. And there is much that deserves attention: nationally, the presidential contests continues; with regard to international affairs, success seems now to characterize American actions in Iraq, but new challenges appear in Afghanistan, and the threat of an Iran with nuclear weapons looms closer. Regarding Israel, we wonder about the fate of negotiations with the Palestinians and with the Syrians, as well as the threat from Iran, and we shake our heads in dismay over the announced resignation of the Prime Minister, as we wonder who will take his place, and to what end.

Locally, the Jewish community ponders the fate of the Jewish Community Day School that promised so much so recently. There is a lot that merits commentary.

The current moment also contains Tisha B’Av, the saddest day of the Jewish calendar, observed this year from sundown on Shabbat, Aug. 8 to nightfall on Sunday, Aug. 10. We are obligated to mark the point in time with fasting, signs of mourning, the reading of Kinnot, the special dirges of the day, and repentance. Tisha B’Av brings into our daily lives the destruction of both Temples, and it reminds us that on this day occurred too the expulsion from Spain, the outbreak of World War I, and the initial deportations of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto. The day underlines people’s brutality.

By bringing the profound into our daily lives, the Jewish calendar offers a context to understand current events. What is the link between daily events and Tisha B’Av?

The answer may be found in one of the paradoxical elements of the day’s observance. The Talmud understands that the Temples caught fire in the afternoon, and yet as the day wanes, the laws of mourning are lifted, even as the fast continues. The Talmud explains the reason: by destroying the Temple, God indicated that he would sacrifice the stones and wood and not destroy people. As King David notes in the passage that introduces this column, God is merciful, but people are not.

For the past several months, I have been doing research on the Holocaust in Lithuania. I was drawn to this topic, because of the extensive array of sources that describe this extraordinarily rich community and the actions of the invading Germans and the native Lithuanians. It enables me to begin to understand the brutality of the killers and the diverse responses of the Jews.

The heart of this story is utter destruction. Between June 23, 1941 and the end of December of that year, a period of six months, Germans and Lithuanians murdered approximately 180,000 Jews – that’s a rate of about 1,000 per day. In the towns and villages, the massacres unfolded in two steps: first the German killing units and their Lithuanian helpers gathered, beat, and shot the able-bodied men, and then a few weeks later, they killed the women, children, and old men.

That devastation took no more than two months. In the cities where there were many more Jews, the process was slower. Enclosed in ghettoes, the Jews who had survived periodic arrests and murders at nearby forts imagined that they might survive. That proved illusory.

Less than three years, after the German Army entered Lithuania, more than 90 percent of the country’s Jews had been murdered. Recalling the Holocaust on Tisha B’Av brings man’s cruelty to the fore, as it reminds us of the other destructions in our history.

But political destruction and devastation is not a uniquely Jewish story. At the moment, the massacres in Darfur, the political murders in Zimbabwe, the arrest of the Serb indicted for mass killings in Bosnia underscore these points. And, as I write these words, the media report the death of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. A Russian nationalist and devout Orthodox Christian (and so not a great friend of the Jews), Solzhenitsyn was a prophet of the end of Communism. He devoted his life to detailing the evil of Stalinist Russia in particular and Communist rule in general. If you want to know, how people can arrest someone whom they know to be innocent, read Solzhenitsyn’s description of the “blue caps,” in the first volume of the “Gulag Archipelago.” Solzhenitsyn’s books offer profound insight into the political evil that people perpetrate.

From studies of the Holocaust, the Soviet regime, and contemporary political brutality, we know that people murder in the name of political goals and we know how they do it.

In these circumstances, they do not show God’s mercy to each other. And so David pleads that he fall into God’s hands, because David knows that He will sacrifice the Temple to save the people, and David doubts that man will do the same.

Observing Tisha B’Av helps to put the day’s events in proper context. If you want to deepen your appreciation for the day, you can do no better than to attend to the words of R. Hirsch Weinreb, on the web site of the Orthodox Union (www.ou.org/holidays/tishabav), on the day itself. He will lead you through the day’s prayers and you will recoil from man’s inhumanity and strive to move closer to God’s mercy.

Alan S. Zuckerman can be reached at alan_zuckerman@brown.edu.