The Charlotte Jewish News - June/July 2002 - Page 30
Loss of Temple Teaches Us Pain That is Caused by Senseless Hatred
By Rebbetzin Tzipporah Heller.
www.aish.com
Jerusalem — On the 9th of Av
we seek to understand the source
of the senseless hatred that caused
the destruction of the Second
Temple in Jerusalem, and dedicate
ourselves to “senseless love."
Mourning is never easy, nor is
it meant to be.
Recognizing that there is an
empty space that can't be filled
with distraction or replacement is
one of life’s most awesome expe
riences. There are losses so pro
found that words, no matter how
carefully selected, are cheap and
banal at best, patronizing at worst.
When we have no words, there
is no way to transmit information.
A tragic result is that the losses
that are most profound are often
the ones least understood and
most forgotten.
We have never met anyone who
can begin to understand the enor
mity of the loss of the Temple, or
Beit Hamikdash. When it stood,
the Temple let us experience our
spirituality directly. No external
catalyst was needed. God’s pres
ence could be felt in every stone
and comer. We have been mourn
ing the loss of this connection for
thousands of years, and no longer
have the words to convey its
meaning. We go through the
motions of mourning, but we need
words to make it real.
Let us focus on what the loss of
the Temple in Jerusalem two thou
sand years ago means to us in the
new millennium.
The Temple as '^Home*'
The words Beit Hamikdash lit
erally mean “The Sanctified
House." .A house by. definition is a
place to find shelter and comfort
and express our identity.
Without a house to call our
own, we Jews are not comfortable
in the world. We are not comfort
able physically in the face of the
persecutions from which our gen
eration is relatively free. We are
not psychologically comfortable
unless we have spiritual means to
be ourselves. Without it, our col
lective life is not only gray but
painful.
Our need to express our most
genuine selves is expressed some
times in pursuit of justice. This is
reflected in our social activism.
Our collective need to give has
been reflected in our caring and
generosity. We are an extraordi
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narily interactive people, but still
restless. The inner serenity that we
seek eludes us; we are not quite at
home.
The reason for this is that the
world that fulfills us also distracts
us from our search for our deepest
sense of identity, and at time cor
rupts us. Other religions have rec
ognized this and idealize “rising
above" worldly desire. We recog
nize the power and beauty of the
world as a catalyst for our capaci
ty to live meaningfully, and we
embrace it. But our two worlds,
the outer and the inner one, some
times remain separate realms. In
the Beit Hamikdash, the spiritual
world was not obscured by the
physical; the two worlds existed
perfectly together through the
grace of God’s presence.
God himself is refen'ed to as
“The Place" — He is the place in
which the world exists. The
engaging nature of the world con
ceals God from us and we drown
in the endless pursuit of what the
world cannot give us. The excep
tion to this was intense realization
of God in the Temple, where the
physical stones revealed more
holiness than they concealed. It
was a place of intense joy. There
we were truly home — we were
ourselves, at our best.
The Temple as a "*Bond"
The Beit Hamikdash was the
glue that held us together as a peo
ple. This resulted in our develop
ing a collective identity. Not only
were we “at home" but we were
one family with common goals
and identity, while retaining our
individual roles. The external dif
ferences between us faded, leav
ing only our yearning for good
ness.
When our ability to see the
common bond of goodness that
binds us together fades, our focal
point changes. Inexorably, we
focus on the limitations that sepa
rate us. Our sense of justice is
degraded into ceaseless nega
tivism and biting criticism. This
eventually leads to senseless
hatred.
Hatred is senseless when there
is no desire to improve the rela
tionship between oneself and
another person. The fact that
“they" are not you is enough of a
threat to tlrsl fear and then hate
them. The more different they are,
the greater the threat.
The Temple's destruction was
caused by senseless hatred. The
factionalism and xenophobic fear
of others set us on a 2,000-year
journey toward rectification that is
still incomplete. We are not at
home. The world has not always
been kind to us and we have not
always been kind, to ourselves or
to each other. We are held togeth
er by the world’s hatred, rather
than by love for each other.
While the physical return to
Israel has given us for the first
time in centuries a physical means
of redefining our nationhood, is
there anyone dishonest enough to
say that we have successfully
done so? Will we ever be truly
home? Is there a way out?
Maimonides gives us a formula
that has often been referred to as
“senseless love." We must reach
out to each other without “agen
das" that corrupt into another form
of acquisition. The process is
transformative in the way that it
changes our focus. This is what it
consists of:
We are obligated to speak well
of our fellow Jew. When someone
displays his or her inner beauty, let
us share it with another. The act of
speaking positively allies us to
each other. It makes us aware that
we are on one team.
We are obligated to care for
each other's material needs. By
being aware of how frail and
needy our bodies make us, we
become more forgiving and toler
ant.
We are obligated to seek out sit
uations that will bring status to
others. We give them the precious
gift of self-esteem and simultane
ously remove ourselves from cen
ter stage.
This three-step process is
deceptively simple, yet it can
change us dramatically. It can
change not only our relationship
to others, but can lead us to redis
cover ourselves. The endless
mourning for our lost selves and
our tragic history will cease.
The 9th day of Av, which is the
day we lost the First and Second
Temples, is also the day the
Inquisition edicts were signed
more than 500 years ago. It is also
the fateful day in 1914 that started
World War I.
We have been defined again
and again through hatred and per
secution. Things can change. This
year can be the beginning. It is a
day that God himself has
promised will be turned into a day
of rejoicing when we use it to
finally inspire ourselves to come
home. 0
Article courtesy of Aish
HaTorah. www.aish.com.
Tisha B’Av in Jerusalem
We climb an exotic path of narrow side streets,
centuries old mud huts, stone houses lead us
to The Wall. We are overwhelmed by a large crowd,
equipped with prayer books, sitting on the ground
reading “Lamentations” with sad voices, falling tears.
They remember Zion destroyed, exile to Babylon
harsh years of captivity in Rome, the sufferings,
our people endured through Nineteen Centuries ...
I suddenly realize that 1 cry not from sadness
For I hear the voice of redemption in the “Aicha” ...
The redeemed are sitting right next to me
bursting forth with song in many dialects,
1 can hear the footsteps of the Messiah
in the banging of hammers, noise of drills,
building homes, schools, restoring Jerusalem.
With my ears I hear the lamentations of the past,
within my heart 1 feel happiness and joy, to be
with the returned exiles from lands of oppression,
the vision of the prophets are visible reality:
The city of despair is turning to cheerful glory!
—Herman Taubc