Mourn, but don’t despair

A breach is made in the wall. The enemy begins to pour in through the opening. Scenes of carnage follow. Burning, pillaging, murdering, torturing, and violating. Captives taken away to an uncertain fate. Screaming, wailing, pleading, contrasted with sounds of laughter and mirth by the perpetrators.

2023 or 70 CE?

On the 17th of Tammuz in the year 70, the Roman armies breached the walls around Jerusalem. Utter destruction followed, as the city was razed to the ground by the invaders, its inhabitants subjected to pain and suffering of epic proportions. The survivors were dragged away as slaves in faraway lands. This came to a climax exactly three weeks later, on the 9th of Av, when the Temple was set on fire and totally demolished.

We mourn during these three weeks, which commenced this past Tuesday, and will end on Tuesday, 13 August. Both of those days are fasts. On the intermediate days, marriages and haircuts are prohibited and we refrain from activities that will lead to joy and levity.

Sadness and the Jewish people are antonyms. We’re commanded to serve G-d with joy and to be perpetually happy.

Hence commemorating this sombre period doesn’t mean walking around dejected, wallowing in the past. For the Prophet Zachariah prophesied that “these days shall become occasions for joy and gladness and happy festivals for the House of Judah”. This is in the same chapter where he describes how “Hashem will return to Zion and dwell in Jerusalem”, and that “there shall yet be elderly men and women sitting in the squares of Jerusalem, each with staff in hand because of their old age, and the streets of the city will be filled with boys and girls playing”.

The current three-week period is thus not only about grief and lamenting. It’s also about dwelling on the future, on hope, and pondering how we can turn the dream into a reality.

The painful memories of 22 Tishrei 5784 (7 October 2023) are still etched in our mind and won’t go away. While Jeremiah predicted, centuries ago, that “disaster would break loose from the north”, today, we are also under threat from the west, south, and east.

Yet, we dare not fall into despair. This isn’t our nature. We have continued to celebrate marriages and other joyous life-cycle events. We are the people who adopted the slogan, “We will dance again” almost immediately after bullets rained on our young people’s party. Centuries of a difficult and painful history have taught us to smile even as we cry.

For we are the indomitable people – am hanetzch. Nobody will break our spirit, and nobody will destroy am Yisrael.

As the elders return to the settlements of the south and the north, and the children resume playing in the streets, these days will, please G-d, very soon become occasions for joy and gladness and happy festivals for the House of Judah.