The Paradox of Tisha b’Av in Jerusalem

Having attended the ritual reading of the book of Lamentations at the Western Wall on the eve of Tisha b’Av—the fast day that commemorates the destruction of the First and Second Temples—Daniella Greenbaum shares her reflections:

I was overwhelmed when in a touching display of irony, a group of yeshiva boys began singing the somber tunes of Tisha B’av in the Roman ruins that catch the eye of so many tourists. They stood and swayed in a large oval, bracketed by the easily identifiable Roman columns. Rome had sacked Jerusalem, and destroyed the Temple—it was the reason I was fasting. And there, in the middle of Jerusalem, in the center of Israel’s capital, in Roman ruins, were the Jews, singing about faith and destruction and God’s mercy. . . .

There’s much to mourn [on this day], but sitting in a sovereign Israel, there’s also much to celebrate. What other people have been successful in reclaiming its homeland? The book of Lamentations begins: “How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! How is she become as a widow! She that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!” Last night the old city of Jerusalem was not empty, but packed with throngs of people who had come to pray at the Western Wall. The modern state of Israel, the start-up nation that has made the desert bloom, is no tributary, but once again great among the nations. With one breath we mourn, and with another we rejoice.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Book of Lamentations, Religion & Holidays, Tisha b'Av, Western Wall, Zionism

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society