After the tragedy in Surfside, I’m not sure if I can mourn the destruction of an edifice; even one as significant as the Temple. I can mourn people, but bricks and mortar just don’t seem that important. After a year and a half of COVID and its destructive nature, life has taken on new meaning. I am less concerned about things and more concerned about health and safety.
To be honest, I think we focus too much on the fast and too little on humanity. Tisha B’Av is about a people who were murdered and exiled from their land. The edifice is merely symbolic. COVID has taught us that a building is not nearly as important as we were led to believe.
Tisha B’Av is about the value we place on humanity. It’s about treating people with dignity and respect. It’s about focusing on interpersonal relationships. It’s about embracing friendships. It’s about caring about life before tragedy strikes. It’s about realizing that the sanctity of an edifice is far less important than the sanctity of time.
Of course we refrain from food, but that is not the essence of Tisha B’Av. We refrain from greeting one another to teach us the importance of daily greetings. We refrain from interpersonal relationships to teach us the importance of these relationships. We read the book of Lamentations which enables us to focus on our daily good fortune.
It’s always been difficult for me to mourn an idea that doesn’t compute with my intellect. The belief in the existence of the Temple is a fundamental aspect of Judaism but one that I always had difficulty comprehending. I find it difficult to grasp animal sacrifices and am confident that when the Temple will be rebuilt it won’t resemble its predecessor. I doubt the stones will be hewed by a prehistoric worm or that it won’t be wired for high speed internet. I doubt the floor will be covered in earth and I’m pretty sure it will have central air conditioning and heating. I’m not trying to make a mockery of our past inasmuch as I’m trying to relate Tisha B’Av to the 21st century.
This idea (according to some) follows the teaching of Maimonides and Rav Kook [Olat Reiyah, Vol.1 (Jerusalem 1983) 292]
"In the future, the abundance of knowledge will spread to and penetrate even animals...and the "sacrifices" which will then be from Grain, will be as pleasing to G-d as in days of old (when there were animal offerings)"
The tragedies of the past year must play a role in how we think of tomorrow. Complacency is no longer an option as we have seen the evolution of society. We can either give up or we can choose to adapt and forge ahead. Tisha B’Av has to be more about dealing with tomorrow than focusing on yesterday.
I want you to have an easy fast but I also want you to have a difficult day. I want to use the fast day to think about the loss of life in Surfside and what we learned from the year of separation from our family and friends. I want to use the fast day to remind us that life as we know it can change in an instant, and to remind us that very few things are as important as our family and friends.
