I don’t really want to get a tattoo, but those words are starting to feel truer today than ever before. Even here, in the UK, in the 21st century, where we live with safety and freedom, it’s starting to feel, once again, a little hard to be a Jew.
Not hard in the way it was for our great grandparents, surviving pogroms or murdered in the Holocaust. Not even like it was for our family and friends in Israel reeling from the massacre of October 07, and more recently sitting in bomb shelters under ballistic missile fire. Yes, social media is an annoying sewer of antisemitism, and yes, Jews are not welcome at Pride events or at some comedy clubs. That pain is real, but it’s not what I’m talking about.
Here’s what I mean. It’s hard to be a Jew when you see other Jews as enemies. It’s hard when the community you love doesn’t recognize the Jew you are as fully valid. It’s hard when the threads that bind us start to fray—not because of outside pressure, but because of what we do to one another.
I come from a South African, shtetl-rooted background. Some of you grew up here in the German Liberal or British Reform world. Different accents. Different worldviews. And sometimes, we find it hard to understand one another. We speak the same language—but we don’t always hear each other. That’s the pain I feel the most. <> And it’s exactly the pain that this week’s Torah portion, and this moment in our Jewish calendar, dares us to face. This week, we begin the final book of the Torah: Sefer Devarim. In Parashat Devarim, Moses tells the Jewish people how they got to this moment, before their entry into the land of Canaan. It opens softly: “These are the words that Moshe spoke to all Israel…” (Devarim 1:1) These are the words of Moshe’s parting speeches—his final testimony to a people on the cusp of a new beginning. After forty years of wandering, they are about to enter the Land. And Moshe, who will not go with them, gathers his people and speaks to them.
After 40 years in the desert, there’s now a lot of them, and Moses says: ‘How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering!’ (Devarim 1:12). Let’s look at each of these qualities – through Rashi’s commentary that he takes lock stock and barrel from Sifrei devarim 12.1, a book of commentary that was compiled around 220 ACE.
Rashi says the trouble of you means the Israelites were troublesome. ‘If one perceived that an opponent in a lawsuit was about to be a victor in the case, he would say I have more witnesses to bring and further proof to introduce or I will add more judges to the judges who are already sitting.’
On the burden, Rashi says ‘the Israelites were like apikorsim. If Moses went to work early, they would say what problems is he having at home. And if he went to work late, they would say, what do you think, He is sitting and devising evil schemes against you and is plotting against you.’
The third description the bickering means they were contentious or combative. In summary the people were a pain in the neck, they suspected Moshe of corruption, and of bias. They didn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. They would just go on and on. And that wore Moses down. It exhausted him.
I know these people. I am these people. We haven’t changed much, have we?
So, from Parashat Devarim – the difficulties before we enter the Promised land, to Tisha B’Av, the tragedies while losing the Promised Land till today
Tonight is the start of Tisha B’Av, the day we mourn our greatest communal traumas. It started as a day of mourning for the destructions of the first and second Temple, the Beitar massacre, and the banning of Jews from Jerusalem and now it includes mourning for the massacres of the Crusades, the expulsions from Spain and from England, and it is also the day Charedi Jews mark the Holocaust. Tishah b’Av addresses the pain of the Jewish people, as Yiddin.
Tonight, we’ll sit on the floor and read Eikhah, the Book of Lamentations written in response to the destruction of the first Temple. We’ll dim the lights, set aside comfort, and lean into grief. No greetings. No Torah study, except for texts about destruction. For extra pain, I highly recommend the Talmud in Gittin from daf 55b to 58a, that describes the failure of leadership and Zealots burning their own food supplies. It describes what happens when judgement fails, when kindness to each other and humility and accountability fails.
Tisha B’Av is not only about destruction done to us by our enemies. The rabbis of the Talmud ask: Why was the Second Temple destroyed? The answer they give is that it wasn’t because of Roman military might. The answer is sinat chinam— our baseless hatred for each other. Mistrust. Division. The erosion of the bonds of community from within. We are not just grieving what was done to us – our Jewish bodies. We are grieving what we have done—and still do—to each other.
The rabbis of the Talmud recognize that the Temple was not lost in a single moment of military defeat, but through countless small failures of heart, and lack of judgement, each one a missed opportunity to choose compassion over pride. At least that version of events gives us some agency. If only we were nicer to each other, maybe that would protect us from those who seek to kill us and take us hostage. I used to scoff at the idea that we can make that naïve exchange of please don’t hurt me, look how nice I am. Or how German Jews were surprised about how they were treated by the Germans from 1933 onwards considering how German, they saw themselves compared to Ost-Juden. Now, sitting in the hotseat of history, I’m starting to think that maybe that’s actually true. The less fractured we are, the more we can work together to protect ourselves from the agony that is done to us, over and over and over again.
So maybe I’ll get that tattoo on one arm: ס׳איז שווער צו זײַן אַ ייִד — It’s hard to be a Jew.
But on the other? I can imagine a different tattoo: אַהֲבַת חִנָּם — Love freely given.
If sinat chinam destroyed the centre of our Jewish world, maybe ahavat chinam can help rebuild a better Jewish world. And it starts with me feeling my pain and making space for your pain too. We’re all hurting.
This Shabbat, and this Tisha B’Av, I want to ask…Eicha How can we build trust back? What words have we spoken, or withheld, that have hurt others? Where have we assumed the worst instead of believing the best? Where can we listen with more curiosity, and speak with more compassion?
Tisha B’Av doesn’t let us skip to the happy ending. We first have to sit with the pain. We have to name what’s been lost. We have to mourn what was done to us and feel the pain where it hurts. We have to sit in the discomfort, because that’s where the healing could potentially happen.
At the end of Eikhah, after all the pain, comes my favourite line in the service, where we return the Torah to the ark on Shabbat morning. After all the pain described in the book of Eikhah, we beseech God. We hark back to the innocent days before any damage was done to us. We say: we’ll come back to you God but first you come back to us.
We say: “Hashivenu Hashem eilecha v’nashuvah, chadeish yameinu k’kedem.” “Return us to You, God—and we shall return. Renew our days as of old.” (Eikhah 5:21)
Alevei
