Time to let Tisha B’Av go

I sometimes think we’re happy only when we have reason to be miserable. And that we get way too much pleasure from the tragedy of it all. Which is why there’s something ironic about the nine days. Along with the deep question: are we observing the laws of the period if we are happiest when we sink into the swamp of sadness?

For some, the Jewish law of not greeting another on Tisha B’Av is a bit of a relief, something they have worked on year-round. And when we lived in New York and caffeine suppositories were available, I recall many fasters who had a distinct spring in their step.

It didn’t start with us. My late grandmother was blessed with the gift of misery. “Tania!” someone would say on seeing her, “You look wonderful!” “Really?” was her standard response. “You should only know how I feel.” The implication being that she might look as healthy as a horse but internally, she was a short breath away from heartbreak.

A family simcha would end with our faces being washed because of the evil eye that no doubt someone wanted to visit upon us because that night, we were too happy. And when anything went slightly awry, she would lament, “Man plans and G-d laughs,” as though she wasn’t in the least surprised that whatever it was had turned out the way it did. Because in her world, there seemed to be the view that G-d might take perverse pleasure in making bad things happen to good people. Even if it meant conjuring up a quick thunderstorm just when she wanted to go for a walk.

“It’s tough to be a Jew,” was another favourite. And for her generation, it was. Pogroms and the Holocaust, antisemitism, and the challenges of feeding a family while trying to be an observant Jew, meant that it was more than just tough. It was life threatening, and it was stressful beyond anything our generation could imagine.

Suffering in 2023 means something very different. Personal challenges around health and wealth aside, we’re blessed to live in a generation that has hardly ever had it so easy. Jewish observance might take commitment, but it’s rarely about feeding one’s family. There might be antisemitism, but we have a voice, we have a state, and we have an infrastructure that will lend whatever support is needed.

For our grandparents’ generation “tough” didn’t do it justice. For our generation, it’s an exaggeration.

My worry is that we seem to default to misery. When researching my book, Smile Dammit, I used social media to gauge our reaction to happy versus sad stories. What I found was that whereas we speak about the good stuff for about 24 hours, we tend to spend a week engaging in miserable news. This seems to indicate that the sad stuff is much more enticing, and gives us some kind of perverse reward. Which is why I’m concerned about our drive towards things that are negative.

The approach to recent events in Israel is no different. And whereas I don’t profess to understand the complexity of coalitions and judicial reform, I do know that it’s not “the end of democracy” and the end of the state. To me, the protests look like darn good fun and a lot more like Yom Ha’atzmaut at King David Linksfield than the unravelling of society. Yet the language around it is so hyperbolic that it makes civil war not only seem a remote possibility, but an inevitability.

We need to recognise that what we have is worthy of celebration. Not lamentation.

Words matter. Attitude matters. Together, they have the power to create reality. The nine days of mourning end with Tisha B’Av. It’s time to let them go and focus on the gifts of our generation, where it’s indeed a blessing to be a Jew.